Confused, panicked, he ran into his sitting room and headed for the desk. Before he got there, he nearly tripped over the large, navy rucksack that was strewn on the floor, its contents spilling onto the cream carpet.
He bent down to look more closely and picked up a heap of women’s clothes. When his fingers brushed the cheap pink satin skirt worn by waitresses at the All American Diner, he fell backwards onto the floor.
“Claire?” He saw her image in his mind, wearing the skirt on the day she had died. “I didn’t. No. No, I didn’t. I couldn’t.”
But he remembered the hate he had felt after she had rejected him. He thought of his most secret, hidden fantasies and the encouraging words of the man who had understood them.
CHAPTER 15
MacKenzie stayed long after everyone else had packed in for the day, poring over the grainy CCTV footage which had, miraculously, been delivered by a spotty-faced youth on behalf of the owner of the All American Diner.
Her optimism that Jimmy Moffa had turned a corner in his life was short-lived, once it became clear that the footage had been tampered with. Befitting the high-spec camera system circling the Diner, it began with crystal clear images of Claire Burns clearing tables and mopping floors after her shift had ended. It showed her retrieving her small handbag from the staff locker room, before she waved a friendly ‘goodbye’ to her colleagues. She couldn’t have known that it would be the last time.
The footage showed Claire opening the main doors to leave, then it skipped and jumped, the image blurring so badly that no figures could be seen. After a time-lapse of around three minutes, the exterior camera showed an empty street outside, where Jimmy stood smoking a cigarette while his driver waited from the comfort of a white Porsche Cayenne.
MacKenzie would send the footage to the techies to see if they could do anything to clear it up, but all that would take time. As things stood, the only thing that it could confirm was that Claire Burns left the All American Diner at 11:33p.m.
Disappointed, MacKenzie moved onto the communications she had received from the tech department about ANPR footage. There was a snarky e-mail from one of the I.T. managers, telling her in no uncertain terms that there was no way he could provide her with the footage she needed before the end of the week.
In other words, she had precisely nothing to contribute in the way of visual evidence, no leads about potential vehicles and certainly nothing they could use to incriminate Colin Hart.
Ever the realist, she decided that it was no use crying over spilt milk, so she collected her things and turned off her computer for the night. The hallways were quiet, empty of the usual bustle of swift footsteps and echoed sounds of industrious typing or police banter. The overhead lighting had reverted to night-mode, so instead of shining a garish banana yellow, they shone a murky grey-white light.
MacKenzie locked the Incident Room behind her and made quickly for the elevator, before remembering that it too had been shut down for the evening.
That left the stairwell.
She recognised the signs of heightened stress in her own body and put it down to the cumulative effects of a disturbing few days. It was always unpleasant to find a fresh body, and her experience with Colin Hart had only compounded her distress, regardless of training and experience. So, when faced with the prospect of a dark, empty flight of stairs as her only means of getting out of CID Headquarters, she was understandably hesitant. It was classic Hitchcock, after all.
“Come on, Denise,” she muttered, giving herself a firm mental shake.
She took the stairs quickly, the heels of her smart boots clicking on the concrete as she went. She counted off each passing floor, unable to shake the sense of danger and the illogical feeling that she was not alone. The sound of her footsteps echoed loudly and masked other sounds, but beneath the din she thought she heard a voice. Immediately, she froze, like a startled deer. While her eyes darted between the path she had already taken and the stairs she had yet to follow, her ears strained to hear the sound again. The silence was deafening.
She could have sworn she smelled lavender.
Clenching her teeth against the shaking which was working its way through her body, she gripped the handrail and forced herself to finish the journey. Her leather saddlebag smacked heavily against her hip as she raced down the stairs. Finally, when her feet hit the ground floor, she gave in to the impulse to run along the wide corridor leading to the car park exit, her bag flapping behind her. She fumbled with the door code twice but, eventually, it opened. She thrust outside into the cool night air and cast her eyes across the darkened tarmac to where her car stood, illuminated by one of the large spotlights lining the staff car park. As her stomach jittered, she asked herself why she had stubbornly refused Phillips’ offer of a lift home, or his offer to stay with her while she went over the footage.