I See You(90)

Dana looked abashed. ‘The owner thinks we’re all on the take. It’s the same for the whole chain. We had a problem with antisocial behaviour last year and moved the camera to point at the front door. The boss went apeshit. Now we leave it be. Sleeping dogs, yeah?’

Nick and Kelly exchanged grim glances.

‘I’m going to have to seize whatever footage you’ve got from the last month,’ Kelly said. She turned to the DI. ‘Surveillance?’ He nodded.

‘We’re investigating a very serious offence,’ Nick told Dana, ‘and it may be we need to put in additional cameras for a few weeks. If that happens, it’s imperative your customers don’t know about it, which means,’ he gave Dana a serious look, ‘the fewer staff who know, the better.’

Dana looked terrified. ‘I won’t tell anyone.’

‘Thank you – you’ve been really helpful,’ Kelly said, although her heart was sinking. Every time she thought they had a strong lead on the offender behind the website, it collapsed into nothing. They could look at the CCTV footage at the times the offender used the WiFi connection to transfer his customers’ money, but with 90 per cent of the camera screen taken up with the staff and the till, their chances of getting a positive ID were tiny.

As they left the café, Kelly’s mobile beeped. ‘It’s from Zoe Walker,’ she said, reading the text. ‘She’s working from home for the foreseeable; just wanted to let me know she wouldn’t be on her office number.’

Nick shot her a warning look. ‘If she asks, there are no significant developments, okay?’

Kelly took a deep breath and tried to answer calmly. ‘I told Zoe how to access the website because I thought she had a right to see her own commute listed.’

Nick strode off towards the car, delivering his parting shot over his shoulder. ‘You think too much, PC Swift.’

Back in Balfour Street Kelly took the disk with Espress Oh!’s CCTV footage to the exhibits’ officer. Tony Broadstairs had more than twenty-five years as a detective on CID and MIT, and was fond of giving Kelly advice she neither wanted nor needed. Today he took it upon himself to outline the importance of the chain of evidence.

‘So you have to sign to say you’re passing this exhibit to me,’ he said, his pen drawing a circle in the air above the relevant section on the exhibit tag, ‘and I sign to say I’ve received it from you.’

‘Got it,’ nodded Kelly, who had been seizing and signing for exhibits for the last nine years. ‘Thanks.’

‘Because if one of those signatures is missing, you can kiss goodbye to your case at court. You can have the guiltiest man in the land, but once the defence get wind of a procedural cock-up, it’ll collapse faster than a soufflé taken out of the oven too early.’

‘Kelly.’

Turning round, Kelly saw DCI Digby walking towards them, still wearing his overcoat.

‘I didn’t realise you were in, sir,’ Tony said. ‘I thought you were still using up all that leave you’ve accrued. Didn’t fancy golf today, then?’

‘Trust me, Tony, I’m not here out of choice.’ He looked at Kelly, unsmiling. ‘My office, now.’ He called across to the DI. ‘Nick, you too.’

The relief Kelly felt at no longer having to listen to Tony’s lesson in exhibit-handling was swiftly tempered by the look on the DCI’s face. She scurried after him across the open-plan space to his office, where he threw open the door and told her to sit down. Kelly did so, a feeling of dread creeping over her. She tried to think of some other reason why the DCI would have hauled her so unceremoniously into his office – and indeed come in on his rest day to do so – but kept returning to the same thing.

Durham.

She’d really f*cked up this time.

‘I went out on a limb for you, Kelly.’ Diggers had stayed standing, and now he strode from one side of the tiny room to the other, leaving Kelly unsure whether she should keep her eyes on him, or stay facing forward, like a defendant in the dock. ‘I agreed to this secondment because I had faith in you, and because you convinced me I could trust you. I fought your bloody corner, Kelly!’

Kelly’s stomach clenched with fear and with shame; how could she have been so stupid? She’d hung on to her job by the skin of her teeth last time; the suspect she’d flown at had decided against pressing criminal charges, after a visit from Diggers persuaded him he didn’t want to be in the spotlight any more than was necessary. Even the disciplinary hearing had gone in her favour, thanks to Diggers having another quiet chat with the superintendent. Mitigating circumstances due to family history, the report had read, but she’d been left in no doubt it was a card she couldn’t play twice.

‘I got a phone call last night.’ The DCI finally sat down, leaning forward across the expanse of dark oak desk. ‘A DS from Durham Constabulary, alerted to the fact that we’d been enquiring about historical rapes. Wondered if they could help any further.’

Kelly couldn’t meet his eyes. To her left she could feel Nick looking at her.

‘Of course, this came as rather a surprise to me. I might be counting down to retirement, Kelly, but I like to think I still know what jobs the office is dealing with. And none of them,’ he slowed his speech, pausing between each word for added emphasis, ‘relates to Durham University. Would you care to explain what the hell you’ve been doing?’