Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
Morgan felt a little guilty making herself a coffee and sitting at her desk in the empty office when the others were still at the crime scene.
It was heaven though; it gave her a chance to think without the constant banter of Cain in the background.
She loved it, but now and again a bit of solitude was nice.
She was struggling with this case, but she closed her eyes and thought back to all of the past cases she’d solved.
All of the killers she had tracked down and put behind bars where they belonged.
You can do this, Morgan, you really can.
Focus on the facts and save the guilt for later, feeling guilty won’t catch whoever this is.
Firing up her computer, she stared at the knackered old whiteboard with pictures of Lydia, Sharon, Jack and Lauren sellotaped to it.
She stood up and peeled off both Jack’s and Sharon’s pictures, moving them to the left side.
Beth Montgomery had confessed to killing her daughter, Sharon, and Lydia and Jack before killing herself, but there was far more to this than they ever could have anticipated.
Beth was mentally unwell, that much was certain, her NHS records had confirmed that she was under the mental health team and on an assortment of meds to help her that she had hidden from everyone in her family.
But someone knew about it, someone knew she was vulnerable, and Morgan thought that whoever it was had played Beth in the cruellest way possible.
Convincing her to kill her own daughter, or to at least pretend that she had to cover up the real killer’s motive of wanting to wipe out the entire Williams family.
Sharon and Jack were red herrings to throw the police off the real purpose of the murders, she could see that clearly now.
So, who had access to Beth, who would know she was struggling?
Morgan began searching through Beth’s intel file, which wasn’t very long because up until that awful morning when she’d attacked Morgan and taken her own life, she hadn’t been in trouble.
Morgan wondered if the housekeeper, Marie, knew any of this; she would be a good person to talk to off the record maybe.
There was nothing in Beth’s file, no previous arrests, no reports, but someone had influenced Beth.
They had to have, so how was she going to discover who it was?
The high-tech unit hadn’t sent a report over yet after Beth’s mobile phone and iPad had been seized for evidence.
She picked up the phone and rang Bev, her old friend, who had transferred to work up at headquarters.
‘Bev Boland.’
‘Hey, Bev, it’s me, Morgan.’
‘Hey back, what can I do for you?’
‘Do you know if the electronics from the Beth Montgomery case have been looked at yet?’
‘Hang on, I think Dave was on with that. Dave.’
She yelled so loud Morgan had to hold the receiver away from her ear.
‘Montgomery’s stuff, did you do the report yet?’
‘Who’s asking?’ A muffled voice replied in the background.
‘What the fuck does that matter? Did you do it or not?’
‘Almost.’
Bev lowered her voice. ‘Honestly, he’s slower than a sloth but thorough.’ She shouted again. ‘What does almost mean, Dave? I need the report ASAP.’
‘Christ, Bev, give me a chance. I’ll get it sent out now. Who wants it?’
‘Morgan Brookes is asking for it.’
‘Well, I’ll get it sent over in ten minutes but don’t get too excited.’
Morgan sighed. ‘I guess he didn’t find anything of interest then?’
‘To him probably not because he has no idea what he’s doing. I mean he’s great with tech and could probably hack into any computer, but he’s not a detective. I’ll make sure he gets it sent across for you, Morgan, good luck.’
‘Thanks, Bev, I appreciate your help.’
The line went dead, and Morgan put the receiver down.
She began to search for the log about the Williams’ car crash.
Even though they lived in Lancaster, the detective there had told her it had happened on Lindale Hill, which was a busy dual carriageway that led to the Lake District.
They had been on their way to spend the weekend in Bowness, so the log would be on their system.
Morgan typed in their surname and began to search for the accident log, and finally it appeared and the first thing she did was check who was the responding officer.
She did a double take – 1053 – Scotty’s collar number was on the log.
To make sure she hadn’t messed up and wasn’t getting it confused with anyone else, she opened her emails and typed the number in, and it brought up his email address: Darren Scott, response officer.
Morgan shuddered; a chill enveloped her.
She pushed herself away from the desk and stood up, walking to the window to stare down onto the car park.
How come he hadn’t mentioned that he’d been the one to attend the fatal car accident that had taken both of their lives?
It had been three years ago, but still it was relevant, wasn’t it?
She began to pace up and down. Scotty was the laziest, most laid-back officer in the station.
Everyone knew that he dodged most of the calls that came in if he could get away with it.
But there was no denying that he had a close connection to the deaths that surrounded the Williams family.
Why? Did he have some involvement or was he very unlucky and just happened to be on shift when they were killed?
Morgan sat down again. She had been on shift and attended a few of her friends’ untimely deaths, being first at their crime scenes.
It happened in a rural area. They didn’t have the number of police officers needed to cover the expanded landscape of the town and surrounding fells, so it had to be a coincidence, didn’t it?
Scotty wasn’t a killer; he didn’t have the get up and go in him to do anything so complicated – unless he had a very good reason.
She picked up the coffee cup and took a huge gulp, wishing it was neat vodka instead.
God, she hoped she was wrong about all of this.
I mean, she thought, it was crazy, wasn’t it?
She was thinking that the laziest guy she knew in the world was hiding a dark secret and he was in fact a clever, manipulative serial killer who had wiped out an entire family.
That also meant he’d killed Jack who, despite his difficult relationship with Amy, was still a colleague, and what was even worse was that he was supposed to be one of the good guys, one of them.