Chapter 37
On Friday morning, Kelly felt fresher, but this case was taking over her every waking thought and some of her unconscious ones too.
Last night she’d dreamt Lizzie opened a sachet of YouthBlast and sucked it dry, and started foaming at the mouth and convulsing. She’d woken in a sweat and had to pad next door to her daughter to check on her. She’d started checking food labels too.
Everybody at work had.
Kelly was first into the office and she examined the footage of the fall again.
The influencer’s video had been isolated in parts so the audio and visual were now separated at Kelly’s request. It had been sent to a specialist here in the Lakes who’d forensically isolated the talking off camera that Kelly had heard.
At first, without isolation, she’d heard an American accent, and when she’d met Hank she’d known it was his voice.
Now, she rewound it several times to make sure.
She compared it to the visual which was on a different file.
She watched the footage a few times, concentrating on where Tilda Dent was looking.
And she focused on the background. The YouTuber who’d recorded it was American and had argued that the laws of the UK didn’t apply to her, so she’d been reminded that the UK and the USA had a mutual legal assistance treaty (MLAT).
So far, the footage hadn’t been shared again, as far as Kelly’s team was aware, and Meta and X had blocked it.
They relied on Emma to police activity like it.
She knew how to do a quick check of viral posts, as well as for individuals.
She was quicker than their digital department.
The other matter that must be dealt with, via the US Embassy, was the fact that private security had cocked their weapons on British soil.
The bodyguards were presumed currently resident at Dow Bank House, but they’d been filmed and that had been shared on social media.
It made the Cumbria police look like fools.
The woman had started filming after Jamie’s body had hit the floor, but only by a matter of seconds.
Kelly guessed she was used to whipping her iPhone out at a moment’s notice to get a potential post that might attract more financial endorsement for her channel.
She’d been investigated. The woman was harmless enough.
No criminal record, no link to the victim apart from the obvious invite to the conference, and she had clearly been downstairs when the fall happened.
What interested Kelly more was the footage itself.
The woman’s hand was steady as a rock as she filmed.
She didn’t comment, indicating her experience when it came to filming live disasters unfolding in real time.
She whipped around the scene like a pro.
Each time Kelly watched it, she scanned people’s feet for large CAT boots, and their necks for pretty scarves.
But she hadn’t spotted them yet. Then she saw Sandy and registered the scream she’d heard and seen dozens of times.
The woman’s face was etched in horror. She saw Lee trying to give Jamie reassurance and witnessed him slip in the blood and fall on the victim.
It was desperately shocking even though she’d seen it dozens of times now.
Jamie’s body twitched and jerked. She watched as pairs of feet ran away, stopped dead, or shuffled around.
Nobody knew what to do. Disasters were uncommon for most people.
Then she saw Hank look to the side and she started the audio alongside. This was what she was looking for. From the position of the camera and the direction of Tilda’s face, Kelly knew that she was nodding towards Hank. Then he said it.
The words chilled her soul.
He’d said, ‘I told you this would happen.’
It was resolute. There was no mistaking the words.
She moved past the frame and allowed the film to finish.
The YouTuber panned out to the rest of the foyer and Kelly got a glimpse of Hank. He was about three feet away from the phone, which made him about four feet away from Tilda.
As the footage took in a 360° Kelly let it run to the end.
In total it was five minutes long and it was their best piece of evidence so far.
It was rare to be in possession of real-time footage of a homicide and Kelly experienced a weird sensation of privilege.
She turned to her notes on the two siblings.
Neither was on the police national computer system.
Nor were they on any databases flagging up deviant behaviours, including minor ones.
Fin had found contact details for foster parents who’d looked after the pair when they were teenagers, but apart from that, they seemed to have zero links to family.
The camera zoomed in on Jamie’s face and Kelly shut her eyes.
She was staggered at the macabre desire to do such a thing to a dying man.
She fought the urge to allow tears to fall from her eyes and she caught them in a tissue just in time.
The moment of somebody’s death, especially such a violently dramatic one, was something so intimate that being a witness to it was something Kelly didn’t get to see very often.
It was repulsive.
She forced herself to watch again to the very end.
Emotion did curious things to memory and several people had been through the same footage since Tuesday night. But coppers weren’t machines. And video couldn’t be analysed by robots, yet. Things were missed. Shock and personal bias dictated what the human brain focused on.
And that’s when she saw somebody in the background who wasn’t there before. A man wearing a hoodie with casual shorts and his hands in his pockets. He’d also turned away from the camera.