Josiah pressed a kiss to Alex’s cheek, aware of what he was sacrificing. Every nerve and sinew in his body must want to be at the crime scene today, but he was giving that up for Sofie and Sem. “I’ll call you if we find anything,” he said. “And Alex – thank you.”
Esther called Sofie into her office the moment they arrived.
“Good luck,” Josiah mouthed, watching her go. She was nervous, unused to deceiving anyone, but she knew what she had to do; he’d coached her well.
Half an hour later, she walked through the SID accompanied by Esther and a large man with an almost comically huge moustache.
“Everything okay?” Josiah asked Esther, one eyebrow raised at the trio’s sombre mood. “I’m waiting to take Baumann with me to Lewes; I want her on standby in case we find anything.”
“Sofie’s brother is missing,” Esther replied. “She assures me that she knows nothing about it, but his houder, Mr Ryland, wants to search our IS accommodation to ensure Sem Baumann isn’t being harboured there.”
“Can you be quick about it?” Josiah demanded. “I have a job to do here, and I don’t want some tedious IS drama holding things up.” He shot a cool glance at Sofie. She looked upset, but then clearly remembered they were pretending and put her head down.
Reed grabbed him the minute he returned to his desk.
“I’ve got something to show you.”
“Have the divers found something?” Josiah asked, feeling his hopes rise.
“No, this is about the Dacre case.” Reed clicked on his holopad and a holovid appeared, hovering over Josiah’s desk. He recognised the view immediately as being the street outside Elliot Dacre’s house. “It’s taken awhile, because I had to get agreement from every single householder, but I’ve finally managed to collect the footage from all the different entry systems up and down the street, and this is the view at nine-thirty-two a.m.”
It looked fairly ordinary. The street was largely empty of people, but it was a quiet residential street, so that wasn’t surprising. Then, suddenly, he caught a glimpse of a figure, towards the far-left corner of the image. Reed paused the footage and pointed.
“We catch sight of this person at nine-thirty-two, then again at nine-thirty-four and nine-thirty-five. Then nothing until ten-fifteen.” On each time stamp, the image was frustratingly difficult to decipher.
“I’ve cleaned up the images as much as possible, but one thing is clear. He knows where all the cameras are, and he’s very good at avoiding them as much as possible. He’s nearly always facing away or his head is down. This was the clearest image I could get.” Reed clicked again, and a close-up holoimage appeared in front of Josiah. “This is almost certainly who killed Dacre,” Reed told him.
Josiah felt a tingle creep up his spine as he stared at the image. It was a man – that much was clear, but little else was. He was wearing a long black coat with the collar turned up, covering his face up to the nose, and a wide-brimmed black hat pulled down which obscured the rest of his face.
“AI says there’s not enough for facial recognition to get a hit,” Reed murmured, although that much was obvious.
“So, it’s a man.”
“Yup.” Reed gave a tight smile. “Although, I suppose it could be a woman under there, but given the height and gait, it looks like a man.”
“If he knew where all the cameras are, maybe he did a recce of the street in the days before the murder,” Josiah said. “Have you looked at the footage from then?”
“Yup,” Reed said. “There’s nothing. Nobody acting suspiciously, taking photos of the area. However, he wouldn’t necessarily need to go there in person to know where all the cameras are. He could find that information on any street-view holonav.”
“Fuck.” Josiah stared at the pictures despondently.
“There is some good news,” Reed said.
Josiah raised an eyebrow.
“This person can’t possibly be Lytton, because we know he was at the gym when they were taken.”
“I never believed Alex murdered Dacre,” Josiah snapped.
“Well, this isn’t exactly proof of that. He could still have murdered Dacre, and this is just an innocent passer-by. But that doesn’t seem likely, given the lengths they’ve taken to avoid all the different house security cameras.”
Josiah studied the close-ups of the man in the black coat and hat, but none of the pictures were clear enough to glean anything.
“So, despite this, we’re no further forward on the Dacre case, then,” he sighed.
“Nope, but I’ll keep looking.”
It was frustrating, but the Dacre case had been that way from the moment he’d started working on it.
