Someone Who Isn't Me Danuta Kot (best books to read .TXT) 📖

to be interviewed. And there might be some visitors. You get walkers and birdwatchers here. There’s a campsite and there’s caravans over to the east just here.’ She put her finger on the map. ‘But someone taking that turn-off in the evening, if they don’t live there and aren’t visiting – I’d want to know what they were doing.’

‘OK. Good work, Dinah. I’ll tell the DCI what you’ve been up to.’

He left her to get on with it. Dinah felt pleased. She settled her glasses on her nose and went back to the screen.

A couple of hours later, she’d identified all the cars that went onto or left Sunk Island the night Andy died. One of the cars on her list was probably the car that had taken Andy down to Sunk island.

Find the car, find the killer.

What else should she look at?

She was getting ahead of herself. It was time to check the cars she had against the database of owners and locations. If the database search didn’t come up with anything, then she’d have to start again. Let Hammond make that decision.

Fewer than 300 people lived on Sunk Island, and most of them lived in the small villages just off the main road to the north of the area, not in Sunk Island itself. Otherwise, there were a handful of farms and a small number of private dwellings, a camping site to the east, and a small business development down by Stone Creek on the estuary, where a few people kept small one- and two-person boats.

She got to work. A couple of hours later, she had the information she needed. Most of the cars caught by the cameras were registered to people who lived in the small villages just off the main road. There were a couple of 4x4s that were registered to farms. This left her with just six that were registered outside the area. She sent up a quick prayer of thanks that the holiday season was over, or the number would have been far higher.

There were no vehicles that rang alarm bells: no stolen cars, no false plates. Two of the cars were registered to people living on the other side of Hull. Dinah highlighted those names – why would someone who lived close by be driving down to Sunk Island in the evening? One was an overseas registration – she’d have to track that one down – one was registered in Greater Manchester and one was from the south coast.

She checked the time. It was getting on for five o’clock and she’d spent all day in front of the screen. She felt as tired as if she’d been on a ten-mile hike, but not in a good way. The artificial light, the glare of the screen, the hours of sitting had left her with a headache and a feeling of frowstiness. All she wanted to do was go home, order a pizza, have a beer and fall into bed.

That wasn’t happening. She’d go for a walk, then drop in to the pub where the team hung out to catch up and get a beer. It was important to keep in touch with the team, to be seen as part of it.

OK, she had a day of solid achievement under her belt. She had a list of locals for the uniformed guys to interview, and a list – a much smaller list – of cars that didn’t seem to have a good reason for taking the Sunk Island turn-off. Tomorrow, she’d get in early, put the out-of-town car owners in order of priority, and arrive at the briefing with everything in order.

And tell Hammond about Andy and Becca Armitage.

As she was putting her things together on her desk for tomorrow, she noticed an anomaly. She’d had six cars identified as out of towners, but the system had only given her five names and addresses.

Hang on. Hang on.

She went through everything manually, looking closely at the images again, and she spotted it almost at once.

The car that was registered near Manchester belonged to a woman called Elizabeth Bagnall. According to the cameras, this car had driven away from Sunk Island at around 21.45 the night Andy had died.

She’d missed it because an hour before that, the same car, followed by the motorbike that had its number plate slewed away from the camera, had taken the turn onto Sunk Island.

Why hadn’t she thought of that? The car that took Andy south that night would almost certainly have travelled back again. This car was starting to look good. And she had the registration, and the owner’s address.

Maybe, just maybe, this was a gotcha!

Chapter 23

Becca arrived behind the bar with her head in a mess. She felt exposed, as if someone was looking over her shoulder, stealing all her secrets. Standing in the back room behind the bar, she checked that last message again. It had come from Andy’s phone. The number was there. After a few hesitations, telling herself she was being stupid, knowing she was being stupid, she called it.

‘The number you want is unavailable. Please try later.’

‘Becca! Get a move on! We’ve got a queue!’ Carl, shouting at her from the bar. She dumped her coat and came through, locking her bag in the small cupboard beside the chill cabinet. Carl looked at his watch meaningfully – which probably meant the tight git would cut her pay for being five minutes late. That was another of his tricks – cut by half an hour if you weren’t there to do the full thirty minutes.

But it was busy, and she was glad it was busy. It was like it used to be before Andy died, the bar lined with punters wanting drinks, the screens crowded, groans and cheers ringing out as teams chased a ball from one end of the pitch to the other. It was like it had come alive again. She was glad, because it gave her no time to think.