Page 8 of Gone in the Night (Detective Morgan Brookes #16)
EIGHT
‘Well done, Morgan, you made it.’ Marc’s praise wasn’t lost on her, and she could hear the pure relief in his voice that the tent hadn’t toppled off, spilling its contents all over the side of the fell.
‘You guys can take it from here; I’ve done my part.’
Ben smiled at her and nodded. ‘Do you want to get Cain to come pick you up and you can both get back to the station, get those social media checks and background checks started on the victim?’
She didn’t need asking twice and sent Cain a quick message.
Hey, come rescue me now. I need to get back to the station.
Three dots appeared immediately.
On my way.
She sighed as she walked down the road towards the officer who was standing all alone like a fish out of water with a crime-scene logbook in her hands. She took it off her and smiled.
‘I think they might release the scene as soon as the body is recovered from the tent.’
‘Oh my God, there’s a body inside of that tent. How did you manage to drive it down without it toppling over?’
‘Very slowly.’
‘Well done, that’s really impressive.’
‘Thanks, I can add that to my list of ever-expanding skills on my CV.’
The student officer, who looked even younger than she did, giggled, and Morgan smiled at her then carried on walking down the road before anyone could change their mind and call her back.
She’d done her part. It could take hours before they managed to get the Land Rover recovered for a full forensic lift.
They were lucky the entire crime scene had been contained inside of that small tent, with possible forensic traces outside and surrounding the vehicle.
She saw the white car Cain had been driving heading their way and carried on walking towards him, not sure why but desperately wanting to get away from this scene.
Maybe it was the contrast of the beautiful surroundings with the desolation of the crime combined with the absolute horror she felt inside her stomach at what had happened.
How had the killer found Sharon Montgomery?
It was weighing heavy on her mind. As far as she was concerned there were three options: it was an opportunistic kill carried out by someone who just happened to be passing and had a sudden urge to commit murder; it was someone Sharon knew, someone she had told where she was going to be and they had followed her up here planning to kill her.
Or thirdly, it was someone unknown to Sharon who knew her, someone who had been closely monitoring her social media accounts.
Morgan got into the car, and Cain nodded at her.
‘That poor guy, I feel bad for him. He’s not been well and now this happening right on his doorstep.’
‘I feel even worse for Sharon. She didn’t ask to be murdered in a tent whilst she slept.’
‘Well, when you put it like that.’
‘What is the world coming to, Cain? I always thought that living around here we were a safe bet far from all the horrors that happen on a daily basis in the big cities, but it seems as if there’s a chance we’re in more danger than ever before.
Every violent weirdo is flocking to this part of the Lake District as if it’s some kind of challenge. ’
He shrugged. ‘Or maybe it’s always been this way, but we didn’t realise because we were too young and the murders happened before we joined the police.’
That gave Morgan pause for thought. Had it always been this way? Maybe it had and she hadn’t been aware of it until she’d become a detective. She sighed. ‘I’m going to look into it one day, when I get a minute.’
‘I bet if you gave it a good old google you’d be horrified. I also don’t think you help matters much.’
She snapped her head in his direction. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, don’t take this personally but—’ He stopped and looked as if he’d changed his mind about what he was going to say.
‘But?’
‘I keep telling you, the weirdos are coming here because of you. They want to be the killer that the famous Detective Brookes couldn’t catch. I’m pretty sure there’s a secret club they’re all members of and they get to take a turn to see if they can try and outwit the one and only Morgan Brookes.’
‘Rubbish.’
‘Maybe, but you’ve made quite an impression on the media, and look at that detective from Birmingham who said he’d heard of you.’
‘Gulfam, how do you know about that?’
‘Ben said.’
Morgan wondered what else Ben said about her when she wasn’t around, but she knew it would never be anything bad.
He wasn’t the kind of guy to talk about her that way, and besides, as much as they had the occasional argument and disagreement, they were still as in love as when they first got together, even though he hadn’t proposed to her.
Damn it, Declan, why did you have to go and put that idea in my head?
I had never even considered it until you brought it up .
They drove back to the station in silence, Morgan too consumed with the task of finding out all about the victim and wondering if Ben was as madly in love with her as she was with him.
The office was empty when Morgan walked in, and she breathed a long sigh of relief; occasionally it was nice to have a bit of time to think.
Amy had been about to go grab lunch and Cain had gone with her, giving Morgan free rein.
She logged on to the computer and then signed herself into Instagram to see if she could find Sharon Montgomery’s account. It popped up straight away.
There was a picture of the distinctive purple 4x4 parked in the same position they had found it a couple of hours earlier.
She sighed; this was too easy. Almost anyone could find out the location – all they had to do was right click on the picture, select information or properties and see if the GPS coordinates appeared, then it was a simple case of typing them into Google Maps to find out the exact location.
Morgan knew that not everyone would be aware of this, but it was a straightforward way to try and find a location.
However, because Sharon had added her exact location to her photograph with an Instagram tag, she may as well have tied a flag to the top of her tent to alert people exactly where she was and how to come find her.
Morgan sat back in her chair. People did this all the time, especially when they were on holiday or doing something remotely exciting.
They had no idea that it could be dangerous if the wrong person was following their account.
She clicked on the post to see how many people had liked it and was shocked to discover she had over a thousand likes just on that one post. This made her scroll up to her bio to see she had almost five thousand followers.
Her bio said she loved wild camping in and around the Lake District.
Morgan began to read the comments below the pictures, looking for usernames that commented a lot or made odd remarks.
By the time Cain and Amy came back from lunch she had compiled a list of thirty-six names that usually commented on almost all of Sharon’s posts.
It was a lot; she was going to have cross-reference them to determine if they were Sharon’s friends in real life or whether they knew her from social media, and also try to find where they lived in relation to Sharon and the Lake District.
Morgan felt deflated, as none of the many comments were helpful to the investigation, they were all comments like ‘I love this’; ‘So perfect’; ‘Have fun.’ And there were so many purple heart emojis on posts she couldn’t get any kind of information from them except the usernames, clicking on those took her to their profile pages but it really was looking for a needle in a haystack.
It wasn’t going to be as easy as she’d hoped to find this killer.
Cain handed her a latte, and she sighed. ‘I needed this, how did you know?’
‘You always need coffee, Morgan, and it looks like that is a complete shit show. Have you come across any Michael Myers kind of stalkers on there yet?’
‘Nope, they don’t tend to post pictures of themselves in navy blue boiler suits wearing a mask and waving a huge knife around, there is nothing obvious at all.
Just a lot of love for Sharon’s solo adventures.
You know what I’m so angry about this whole case?
The fact that she was out there doing what she loved, causing no harm or upset to anyone, and some sick bastard thought they had the right to take it all away from her.
For what reason? What was the point? She wasn’t hurting anyone.
She was literally camping on her own, living her life and, from what it looks like on her Instagram page, sharing her adventures online to inspire other women to do the same. ’
Amy was tearing apart the cheese savoury baguette and dropping crumbs all over her. She nodded. ‘Have you checked YouTube? I bet she’s got a channel on there, too. Most of these solo adventurers like to vlog their trips and expeditions.’
Morgan groaned. ‘Christ, how many hours before you finish?’
Amy looked at her watch. ‘Four, give or take depending upon what kind of mood the boss is in. Would you like me to make a start on it?’
Morgan paused, she felt bad. Amy should be having a relaxing last afternoon, packing her stuff, saying goodbye to everyone – and then she realised that none of them had even organised a leaving do for her and that was downright disgraceful.
‘I, erm. You don’t have to, I’m just feeling sorry for myself.’
Amy grinned at her. ‘It’s allowed, occasionally. I don’t mind; I’m not doing anything else.’
Cain stood up, taking his coffee with him. ‘Got to go speak to Madds, be back soon.’
He left them to it, and Morgan sent Ben a quick message:
We need to organise gifts and a cake for Amy. Why did we not organise this sooner?
Then she began the painstaking job of clicking the username of each person on her list to check out their bio.