Bronte Potter almost dying in a cellar next to the bodies of her family. He should have been more thorough and now he would have to shoulder the burden of that for the rest of his life: another thing to add to his list of things he’d well and truly fucked up. There might be an internal investigation into the mistakes made at accepting her death as a suicide, but until that happened and he got kicked off the job he was going to do his best to bring the killer in and get justice for the Potter family. Amy could accompany him to the post-mortems of Saul and Beatrix; he would send Morgan to the hospital for an update on Bronte. He’d noticed that she’d been desperate to go and visit yesterday.
He wondered what Claire Williams would think when he rang her with an update on the latest news. Hopefully she’d be happy with Morgan continuing to work on researching the early murders. If not he’d be willing to put up a fight to keep her; he felt as if he owed her something now that her life had gone so spectacularly to shit.
By the time the office began to fill up Ben was raring to go. Morgan was nowhere to be seen and he assumed she’d gone on the hunt for the old case files. He didn’t know anything about that case or who had worked it. Once she had some information to go on he might be able to put her in contact with the original detectives, although they’d have been retired a long time. Fingers crossed they were still alive. He decided that now was as good a time as any for a briefing. Claire and Abigail were both here; he could update them all at the same time and save repeating himself.
‘Right then, should we go to the blue room for an update?’
He led the way.
The blue room was in a strange place tucked away on the first floor down a tiny corridor. There was a staircase before the corridor which led up to the attic; Kenny was coming down it.
‘Morning, Kenny, is Morgan up there?’
‘If you mean that young lass, then yep. Who did she upset to get that job? Have you been up there lately? It’s a shithole with boxes strewn everywhere not to mention pigeon crap. Rather her than me.’
Ben wondered if he should get someone to help her try and locate the files, but he didn’t have anyone to spare. She was on her own for now, though he doubted she’d care.
He sat down at the oval table and waited for everyone else to join him so he could give them the latest updates.
Twenty-Five
Morgan stared at the haphazard stacks of cardboard boxes strewn around the attic space and groaned. She could hear the gentle cooing in the eaves from the pigeons and there were feathers and droppings everywhere. Not exactly the most hygienic place she could spend her morning. A shiver wracked her entire body; there were large holes in the roof where the wind was blowing through and it was freezing. She closed her eyes. You can do this. Isn’t it what you want? How many rookies get this kind of chance, Morgan? Woman up, all you have to do is find a stack of boxes with the right year on.
Her eyes opened. Dan hadn’t spoken to her properly since she’d been given the chance to work alongside Ben. Considering he’d been her tutor, he was such a child at times; he had the mentality of a seventeen-year-old. She wasn’t going to give up this opportunity for anyone, let alone him. Ben had said they needed extra bodies, and she knew if she said she couldn’t cope he’d replace her in a heartbeat, and there was no way she was giving him a chance to make her look as if she couldn’t do the job. She’d show them all he had made the right decision by giving her this opportunity.
An hour later, she found a box labelled ‘O’Brien Murders Unsolved’. A whoop of delight escaped her lips. It didn’t matter that it was right at the bottom of the biggest stack of boxes in there. She began to lift each box off and restack them into a pile, wondering how many cold cases there were up here. Maybe if she did a good job on the O’Briens, Ben would let her work them. It would be fascinating and a good