Page 47 of Gone in the Night (Detective Morgan Brookes #16)
FORTY-SEVEN
Morgan heard the footsteps walking along the deserted corridor and opened the door. She knew it was Ben. He was the only person who would figure out where she was. He stepped into the room, closing the door behind him.
‘Palmer released a statement. You’ll be pleased to know he doesn’t mention you. You’re off the hook.’
Although this news was a huge relief to her that Fin hadn’t screwed her over again, she was a little annoyed with Ben’s attitude.
‘Marc came into the office guns blazing only to shut up when he saw PSD sitting there. We’ve had a little chat, and he agrees that it was probably a wise thing to do and the best course of action is to leave Palmer well alone. How are you getting along?’
‘Pretty good, I’ve found one person up to now that is linked to all three victims. Marie Jones is Insta friends with them.’
‘Should I know Marie Jones?’
Morgan turned her laptop screen so he could see her profile picture. He shook his head.
‘Imagine her with her hair in a bun, no make-up on and wearing a uniform.’
Ben bent closer to take a better look. ‘The maid?’
‘Yes.’
‘You think she did it?’
‘I don’t know, but I’ve cross-checked all the victims against each other.
Jack wasn’t following Lydia, and I don’t think he knew her.
I think if we could get some CCTV footage of Jack leaving Amy’s house, it could show Maria giving him a lift or at least talking to him.
There must be houses with cameras along the way. ’
‘We watched him leave Amy’s house remember?’
‘What about the rest of the way home? He would know Marie if he was dating Sharon, I’m sure he would. He was walking, he wasn’t in a car, so if she saw him and offered him a lift that would make perfect sense.’
‘I suppose so, but how is she strong enough to do that? And what about Sharon, why kill her?’
‘I think Marie and Beth have a thing going on. According to Caroline, Beth is besotted with Marie. What if Marie thought that by killing Sharon and trying to blame Stefan, that would clear the way for her to have Beth and that beautiful home all to herself.’
‘Why Jack?’
‘Jack saw something only he probably didn’t realise it at the time because he was in a funk about Amy.’
‘She was taking care of loose ends. But why Lydia?’
‘To make it look like there’s a serial killer and throw us so far off her trail, and it almost worked, didn’t it? I think poor Lydia was just a pawn in their game.’
‘Okay, wild theory but plausible. Completely plausible. I’ll find some PCSOs to do the door knocking and look for video footage of Jack. Do we have enough to bring this Marie in for questioning?’
‘Not really, this is my theory and there’s no forensic evidence to support it, unless we search her house and find the same blue rope she used to strangle Jack with.
There were fibres at the other two crime scenes, maybe she used the knives that killed them to cut up pieces of rope?
Or maybe if we searched Stefan’s house we’d find some there because she might have planted it to make him look guilty. ’
‘That’s more like it, especially if we go with the train of thought that she’s trying to get rid of everyone so she can be with Beth. I’ll see if we can get a search warrant for the Montgomerys’ house first. I think she would try and set him up if she wanted everyone out of the way, don’t you?’
Morgan nodded. ‘Yes, if there’s nothing there, we can search her home then. I don’t think you can arrest her until we’ve found something though. We don’t want her to know we’re looking at her, so make her think we’re after Stefan.’
‘Gotcha. I’ll go get the search warrant and tell Marc we might have something.’
He leaned down and brushed his lips against the top of her head. ‘Good work, Brookes, as always.’
She smiled at him and felt some of the knots in her shoulders begin to untie. They needed a break and hopefully this was it.