Chapter 2 #2
He nodded. ‘Yes, she works with me. I was manning the control room.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Mike Walker, who are you?’
‘Detective Morgan Brookes. I’m so sorry, the officer that attended found a woman upstairs with fatal injuries.
’ She didn’t get to say anything else before he pushed past both her and Amber, sprinting for the stairs.
Ben who had just reached the top of the stairs was watching and put his hands out to stop him, but he dodged around him and carried on running to the room where Scotty was standing outside.
‘Hey, you can’t—’
Mike pushed Scotty out of the way and ran into the room. Morgan sprinted after him and she heard Ben mutter, ‘Bloody hell.’
Mike was standing at the entrance staring down at the body on the floor. The two paramedics were just finishing up.
‘What are you doing? Help her!’
One of them shook their head and the other spoke in a hushed tone. ‘I’m sorry, there is nothing we can do for her.’
‘Yes, you can. Use your zapper, give her CPR.’
‘She was dead before we arrived. She lost too much blood.’
Mike’s face crumpled. ‘She can’t be dead, this isn’t right.’
Everyone was watching the big guy, afraid that he might lose his shit and start fighting them all.
Morgan stepped towards him, gently taking hold of his arm but not before she glanced at Lauren’s body and felt a tingle of fear.
There was a knife protruding from her chest, just like the ones she had seen a few months ago at Lydia Williams’s and Sharon Montgomery’s crime scenes.
‘Mike, I am truly sorry, but this is a crime scene and you trampling all over it could ruin any chance of us retrieving forensics. We need those to catch whoever did this to your friend, you get that, don’t you?’
His shoulders sagged, and he looked so much smaller than a few minutes ago, all the fight and bravado had gone. Tears spilled down his cheeks, and he let her lead him out of the room and back downstairs to where Amber had found a dining chair and put it near to the door for him to sit on.
‘Take your time, and when you feel up to it, could you tell me what happened that led to you coming here?’
He nodded, roughly swiped his sleeve across his face and swallowed the lump in his throat.
‘Lauren works the late shift Wednesday to Sunday, and as we’ve been short staffed for the last two weeks, she’s been doing the rounds on her own. I radioed her about an hour ago to ask her to go check the Mill House after she’d finished here, and she sounded okay.’
Morgan nodded. ‘Did she say she was scared, had she noticed anything different tonight than usual?’
He shook his head. ‘Not until I heard her shout there was someone there but then her radio went crackly and stopped receiving. I couldn’t get a signal.
I phoned her but there was no answer, so I got in the van and drove here like a maniac all the way from Kendal.
’ He stopped, sucking in a gulp of air. ‘I was too late though. Who did this? Have you caught them, because I’m going to kill them if I get hold of them first! ’
Alarm bells were screeching inside Morgan’s head, and she looked around the empty foyer and corridors. Amber must have read her mind, and she shook her head, mouthing the words, ‘It hasn’t been searched.’
‘Excuse me a moment.’ Morgan ran up the stairs, almost colliding with Wendy who was photographing the hallway.
‘Morgan.’
‘Sorry, stay there, Wendy, don’t go anywhere on your own.’
She dashed down to the room where Ben was whispering to Scotty. She leaned forward and whispered, ‘What if the killer is still here? We need to get Task Force here to search or a couple of taser officers at least.’
Ben nodded and asked, ‘Did you search the building, Scotty?’
He shook his head. ‘No, stayed with Lauren. I can’t believe she’s dead. It’s like some kind of bad dream; her poor sister is going to be devastated. She lost one sister a couple of months ago and now this.’
‘What? Who?’
‘Lydia Williams, the woman in the roof tent at the campsite was her older sister.’
‘Oh crap.’
Morgan’s voice was hoarse; she was so shocked at this revelation. She thought back to the knife in the body.
Ben nodded at the paramedics. ‘Are you guys done? I need to clear the area.’
‘All done, we’ll finish the paperwork in the truck.’
‘Cheers. Scotty, escort them out, please. Morgan, let’s take a moment then we’ll follow them too.’
Ben waited until they were at the stairs, going down them.
‘Do you think the killer would still be here?’ His voice was so close to her ear his breath tickled the tiny hairs inside of it.
‘I don’t think so, but it’s a huge building, we can’t be sure he isn’t.’
‘What about the guy who ran in, do we need to print and swab him?’
‘Yes, he looks upset enough, but he got here pretty quick. Where did he say they are based again?’
‘Kendal. Let’s get him back to the station and processed. If he resists, we can tell him it’s because he entered the scene, so we have his DNA on record.’
Morgan was impressed, that was a little bit of a sneaky way to get him into custody and get his fingerprints and DNA on file, but a necessity. Just because he looked upset, it didn’t mean he couldn’t have done this and killed Lauren, then left to come back and make his entrance.