‘I was wondering if you saw or heard anything strange in the village recently? Anything. If you think of anything, please give me a call. You know, a stranger acting nervously or loitering, that kind of thing.’
Tommy shrugged his shoulders. ‘We have tourists from all over the place; they’re all a bit weird.’
She laughed. ‘I believe you.’
‘But I guess there was one thing. There was a bloke who was walking Potter at the weekend, Saturday I think.’
‘Potter? Is he a local chap?’
‘He’s a dog.’
‘A dog?’
‘The post office dog.’
Kelly was puzzled.
‘On Saturday, I saw him with a bloke I’d never seen before. I shouted out, because Potter wanted to come over here, I could tell.’
‘And that was strange?’
‘Yes, because when I went over to the post office on Monday, I asked Bill, and he said Potter had gone missing for most of the day on Saturday and they’d never heard of the bloke I described.’
‘And who was he?’
‘No idea. Big bloke. It was difficult to see his face because he was wearing a baseball cap.’
Chapter 20
The mortuary at the Penrith and Lakes hospital was characteristically chilly not simply because it was effectively situated underground, like a morbid cave, but also due to the industrial-grade steel which never heated up, along with the fridges and freezers which stored body parts. But Kelly looked forward to it as she parked in the central carpark of the hospital, which got more expensive by the week; she’d left Fin at the Old Man Guesthouse, evidence gathering, and he’d agreed to hitch a ride back with the SOCO.
Kate was at Angelina’s property in Chapel Stile. So far there was nothing to report. It was a typical abode of a tidy and organised woman with an art studio, full cupboards of organic food, and no evidence of foul play.
The café in the hospital foyer was bustling like always but recently she’d also noticed that the corridors were filling up with people waiting on wheelchairs, trolleys and mobile gurneys. The hospital was at breaking point, but doctors and nurses walked around the place as though it was normal now. The whole affair was depressing.
Ted had once told her that the unhealthiest places on earth were hospitals, and fit people should avoid them like the plagues they spread. She held her breath until she got past a man who was coughing loudly and headed to the lift which took her down two levels to the bowels of the building.
She greeted several of her father’s assistants who she’d seen only yesterday. Cadavers generally arrived here because of unexplained fatalities, and it was the coroner’s job to give the families an answer. Too many people were dying of flu,especially for summer. She knew it bothered her father, who wasn’t getting any younger. But today was different.
She kept her jacket on and had brought a thin sweater from the car which she’d slipped on underneath it. Too many times, she’d been caught inside the mortuary freezing her nuts off. In summer it was an escape from the furnace-like heat above ground when a flash heatwave took hold. Britain wasn’t built for heat and the mortuary provided a welcome blast of refrigeration.
She’d spent the journey to the hospital listening to a podcast from the young Londoner who called himself the DiggerMan. She felt behind the power curve after discovering the young podcaster’s fame and status and it spurred her to do some catching up.
Joe Folly, originally from Clapham, had dropped out of college to travel the world, then he’d got into conspiracy theories and interviewed big names about clinical negligence, political corruption, globalist elites and official scandals.
He rubbed lots of important people up the wrong way.
Kelly liked him.
Dan had singled one episode out and sent it to her, telling her it was a must-listen. It featured several guests talking about Hampton-Dent and they’d mentioned the new thrusting executive, Jamie Robbins, and how they thought he was selling out. They had to be careful with their language because of slander laws but she got the impression from the guests that they’d been told (and this was where it became simply hearsay) that Jamie was known for possessing more respectable ethics than the ones held by Hampton-Dent. Kelly thought about it and wondered if Jamie had listened to what was said about him. Had he felt ashamed?
Did his work for the supplement industry jar his moral code?
She’d also learnt that Jamie was on record questioning the safety of mRNA vaccines (short for messenger ribonucleic acid).Apparently, this was highly controversial because conspiracy theorists said it manipulated DNA and caused cancer. But that wasn’t all. Joe and his guests discussed other less well-known technology that was hidden in the injection that was made up of nanoparticles of plastic that could assemble inside the body. From there, it could be remotely controlled from outside the human body with a 5G network.
It was sci-fi worthy stuff, and Kelly was highly sceptical. It was the kind of theory you’d find in a dystopian novel, but she was also open to persuasion, and nothing was off the table now, given she had two bodies in her father’s mortuary. These were very clever people and the DiggerMan had gone to ground for a good reason. If the police found it impossible to trace him then he must have hit some raw nerves. In her experience, investigative journalists didn’t put themselves in danger for the fun of it; they knew something.
Secret technology was a motive for murder, that much was for sure, but the story was fantastical. A professional hit was a consideration she must bear in mind. But in front of so many people? In Kelly’s mind, it would be so much easier to take out somebody like Jamie in a back street in Miami, than in a hotel full of adoring guests in a tiny little village in Cumbria. It didn’t make sense. She also must consider if Angelina’s murder was connected to her brother because of what he did, and what he was hiding. Joe Folly might be able to tell her.
