Cathy shrugged. ‘Rubbish. Sorry, Ben, but we’re almost at the end of the footage from the school and there’s nothing.’
Morgan saw his shoulders sag and felt bad for him. He’d been relying on this to give them a much-needed lead. ‘Bollocks.’
‘Yes, it really is. We still have a little bit left though, so you never know, we could strike it lucky. And before you ask, yes we have been paying attention, our eyes have been glued to these screens and we haven’t missed anything.’
‘Thank you both. It’s very much appreciated, and I didn’t doubt you for a moment. Sounds like I shouldn’t hold my breath though.’
‘Hmm, I bet you didn’t. I’ll come find you if there’s anything.’
He gave her a thumbs up, then walked out of the room. Morgan stayed behind.
‘For once, it would be great to have the killer caught on camera, wouldn’t it?’ Cathy said, clearly not as devoid of hope as Ben was.
‘Yep, it would.’
‘Hey, is it true that Cain is joining your team?’
‘Gossip really spreads fast in this place, does he even know yet?’ Morgan laughed, trying not to give anything away, it wasn’t really her place after all.
‘Not gossip, I heard it straight from the horse’s mouth. He was dancing around like one of those Irish Riverdance people at the brew station earlier. I thought Mads was going to have a heart attack, his face was a picture.’
‘Phew, he must have said yes then.’
‘Whoa, what’s this?’ Sam, who was viewing Maggie’s CCTV, had paused the screen.
Morgan bent over and she pressed play. Two figures came into view, one wearing school uniform, walking side by side down the street and heading for the Lawsons’ front door. A tingling sensation at the base of Morgan’s spine told her they might be onto something. The teenager wearing the uniform took out a key, then opened the door, and whoever was with him stopped and slowly turned to look up and down the street.
‘Why’s he bothered who’s watching them?’ asked Sam.
‘He’s checking to see if anyone has noticed him going inside. Sam, this is a gem, thank you!’
They continued watching as he eventually turned, stepped inside the house and closed the door.
‘Be back in a min.’
Morgan walked as fast as she could to their office. Pushing open the door she grinned to see Cain sitting there opposite Amy. ‘Where’s Ben?’
‘Didn’t come in here.’
She turned to catch him coming out of the gents. ‘Follow me, you need to see this.’
She led the way back to the room, Ben almost bursting with excitement.
‘Show me what you have.’
As Sam rewound the CCTV, they all crowded around her, the small, windowless room getting hotter by the second with their combined body heat. Morgan noticed that Ben was holding his breath. As they all watched the guy with Tim turn to check out the street, Cathy muttered, ‘Well, if that’s not creepy.’
‘That’s our guy, it has to be. Can you zoom in on his face, Sam?’
‘I can try, but this is not my area of expertise. I can only really fast forward, pause and rewind. You need to get it to the video imaging unit to get stills printed off.’
She did manage to zoom in, but the face was blurry. One thing was clear though: whoever this was looked older than the teenager he was with, and wasn’t wearing a uniform.
‘Who do you think he is?’ Cathy asked.
‘I think he’s the guy we’re looking for, that’s who I think he is. What did you do, Tim? You led a monster in through your front door, why?’ whispered Morgan.
‘Monster indeed. We need to go back and search Tim’s room. Does he have an iPad, computer, phone that might give us some idea who this is?’
