Page 67 of Her Lips Are Sealed

‘I’m not joking, Morgan. I’ll deck the fucker.’

‘Good enough for me. Did they give you his photograph? Have you seen him in the area tonight while you’ve been here?’

‘Yes, I have the picture. It looks like he’s a Jehovah’s Witness or a Mormon to me in that suit and tie, the kind that go door knocking to recruit people and no, he hasn’t been back while I’ve been here.’

Morgan tried to think, was that how she knew his face?

Was he one of the religious guys that sometimes hung around when the Lakes were jam-packed full of tourists, trying to recruit new members into their church?

She didn’t think that was it, but why the hell had he come back to steal the cat? It didn’t make any sense to her whatsoever.

FORTY-ONE

Ben, Lucy and Josh arrived in a matter of minutes.

‘Claire is heading back, are you sure it was him?’ There were dark circles under Ben’s eyes and he looked awful. Morgan could see the stress and exhaustion was getting to him, to them all because even Lucy looked tired.

‘Eric kindly checked the CCTV footage, and he’s emailed it across. He said he’s wearing different clothes but it’s him. When you zoom in there is a tiny mole next to his left nostril. I checked with the other photo and it’s there, just blurry on that one. I thought it was a printing error but it’s not.’

Morgan checked her emails to see if it had arrived and pressed play, holding her phone towards Ben, Lucy, Josh and also Tina, who was peering over Ben’s shoulder. They watched as the guy strolled up the drive, no car in sight, wearing the clothes Morgan suspected he wore when Lisa saw him hanging around. He chatted to Mac, took the book from him, signed himself in then went into the building with an empty cat carrier. Less than five minutes later he was back out with the cat inside the carrier, Mac signed him out and he was off on his way.

‘The audacity, do you think he used his real name too?’ Lucy was open-mouthed, shaking her head in disbelief.

‘Obviously we’re going to check that out, but our inspector goes by Marc Howard. If he’d signed it Mark with a K I’d have said yes, but the chance of it being Marc with a C is very slim,’ Morgan said.

‘Well, it’s further evidence that he has an ego; and quite rightly, he’s right under our noses,’ Lucy offered.

‘This is so messed up, that and the fact that he named me in his note. How does he know all our names?’

‘Technically the whole world knows your name, Morgan. You lot are always in the paper or the subject of conversations on true crime Facebook pages.’ Tina was smiling at her.

‘We are?’

She nodded. ‘Yep, did you not know this?’

‘I had no idea.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news then. All he had to do was search for your names on the Constabulary website or Facebook, it’s not hard.’

Ben closed his eyes and inhaled deeply as if trying to find some piece of inner strength to continue this conversation without losing his cool.

Claire arrived and joined them. ‘What do you need me for?’

Ben pointed to the book in Morgan’s gloved fingers. ‘Can you take that and fingerprint it ASAP?’

‘Yes, you could have bagged it up and brought it back to the station for me. Is there anything else?’

‘The pen. Tina, is that the pen Mac gave you?’

Tina nodded, passing it over to Claire. ‘Yeah, I left mine in the station and my spare ran out.’

Claire deposited both items into an evidence bag. ‘I’ll go see what I can do.’

‘Thanks, Claire, I think we panicked and that’s why we dragged you out.’

Claire smiled at her. ‘Understandable, everything is crazy.’ She winked at her and wandered back to the van.

‘I feel bad we dragged her out for that. Now what?’ Morgan asked.