After the discovery about Ben’s car, Helen and Charlie had re-interviewed Amy, Peter and their families, searching for any evidence of stalking. Amy and Sam were easy-going types, not watchful in the slightest, who lived on a busy student campus. Nothing – or nobody – had stood out as odd. Peter Brightston said he would have noticed an attractive woman following him, but it sounded like empty bluster – he had had no reason to be suspicious or on his guard. Ben was a different kettle of fish; he had been by nature cautious and careful, but he was not around to ask any more and his fiancée insisted he hadn’t expressed any fears to her in the run-up to his abduction.
The one small break they did have came as a result of Ben’s car. The killer had had a very narrow window in which to punch a hole in Ben’s fuel tank. A matter of three to four hours at the most, as the group meeting at the Bournemouth office was shorter than usual that day. Ben usually parked in the office car park, but that was full because of a client lunch on site, so he’d parked in the NCP round the corner. Instinct told Helen that anything out of Ben’s normal routine could have posed his killer a problem and so was worth investigating. CCTV showed Ben and Peter parking on the fourth floor, not far from the lifts. They left and five minutes later a female figure in a lime-green puffa and white Kappa cap had walked past. Was she scouting the scene? Probably, because moments later a gloved hand suddenly appeared in front of the security camera, spray-painting out its view on the world. Helen had asked for the footage to be analysed, enhanced if possible, and had set Sanderson the task of checking CCTV footage from the vicinity of the NCP to work out the suspect’s route into the building, but for now they had to work with what they’d got. It wasn’t much, but it was a fleeting view of their killer and it seemed to confirm everything Amy and Peter had told them about her. Not least the fact that she was a she. There had been some in her team – Grounds and Bridges particularly – who’d questioned whether a woman was really behind all this. But they had their answer now.
Helen shut down HOLMES2 and headed out and round the corner to the Parrot and Two Chairmen pub. It was the station’s Christmas do today and despite the fact that Helen viewed the event as wholly inappropriate in the circumstances, she had to go. It wasn’t done for senior officers to duck it – crazy really as the last thing rank-and-file want when they’re letting their hair down is their bosses hanging around.