Page 61 of Her Lips Are Sealed

‘We need to speak to her and get a clearer picture.’ Lucy was studying the ground looking for evidence.

‘Hopefully she’ll be up to it soon. I still don’t know how she managed to phone me and why she didn’t dial nine, nine, nine.’

Lucy’s gaze fell on Morgan. ‘She trusted you, she’d spoken to Marc and he’d let her down. She probably thought that you were the safer bet than the police.’

‘And that breaks my heart. What if I hadn’t answered? If my phone had been on silent, if I’d still been in the post-mortem and didn’t get the message until hours later.’

‘Then this would have had a different ending. You wouldn’t have been to blame because none of this is your fault. She was very lucky you did answer.’

A guy in a white pickup truck pulled up near to them and got out. He had paint-stained jeans and a black polo shirt with a Jackson’s Lettings logo above his chest. ‘Are you cops?’

For a second Morgan had the urge to say no, just members of the public, because she was scared of what he was about to say to them.

Lucy nodded. ‘We are, I’m DI Harwin and this is DC Brookes. Can we help you?’

‘I’m the landlord. I’ve downloaded the door camera footage and thought you might want to view it. I have my iPad with me.’

Morgan didn’t know whether she wanted to whoop for joy or cry with relief. She opted for grinning at him. ‘Yes, we most certainly do. Thank you so much for coming here with it so fast.’

He looked a little embarrassed. ‘I don’t know Lisa very well, but she’s always so polite and kind, never late with her rent and from what I do know, a lovely woman. I hate that someone had the audacity to come into her home and attack her like this. I’ve already been on to a security firm to see what we can do to upgrade everything to make it safer for the tenants. I won’t have this happen to anyone else on my watch.’

Lucy spoke for them both. ‘Well, we appreciate that, mister?’

‘Jackson, Eric Jackson.’

‘Well, Eric, that’s very refreshing, a lot of landlords would take a different view.’

‘I know, but I’m not like them. I care about the people I rent my flats to. Do you want to get in the cab, and I’ll play it for you.’

Both Morgan and Lucy jumped in. He got into the driver’s side and for a fleeting moment Morgan thought how easy it would be for him to drive away with them and nobody would even know where they were. Then he logged in to the iPad resting on the dashboard and held it up, quelling all those worries.

‘I can tell you every single person that walks in through those communal doors except for one. He enters at ten seventeen and leaves again by eleven zero nine, running out of the door and sprinting down the drive. Cops in plain clothes arrive by eleven sixteen.’

‘That was me and my colleague.’

‘You just missed him by seven minutes,’ Lucy said.

‘I’ll let you watch it and see what you think.’

Eric pressed play and both Morgan and Lucy watched holding their breath as a guy dressed in a suit walked through the front door that someone hadn’t bothered to close properly behind them. Lucy gave Morgan a description so she could write it down.

‘White male, aged mid to late thirties. Brown hair, tanned skin, sunglasses. I think they’re Ray-Bans. He looks about Ben’s height and weight. Wearing a blue pinstriped suit, white shirt. He’s confident, oh he’s done this before, he’s not nervous at all. He’s not hesitating; he’s walking in as if he lives here.’ She turned to Eric. ‘You’re sure he doesn’t?’

‘Yes, I’m sure, I interviewed and showed each one of my tenants. I’d remember him, he’s good-looking.’

‘Good.’

Morgan was leaning as close to the screen as she could get. ‘He looks kind of familiar, but I can’t place him.’

Lucy was staring at her. ‘He does?’

‘Maybe it’s wishful thinking, we never get such good CCTV of suspects. He’s not dressed the way Lisa described him though.’ Then she stopped talking, not wanting to say too much in front of Eric. But she remembered exactly what Lisa had described: a hooded sweatshirt and baseball cap, not a suit.

‘Eric, could you email this to me, please.’ Lucy rhymed off her email address, and Eric shook his head.

‘You do it.’ He opened his email app, downloaded the footage and let Lucy type her address in. She typed Morgan’s and Ben’s for good measure too then pressed send.

Morgan logged in to her handheld device and waited for the email to arrive. Checking the junk folder, she whooped. ‘Got it, you little beauty.’