or Greg that Harrison had told her about. He was definitely someone she wanted to talk to. Typing his name into the intelligence system, she waited to see if there were any hits. He was on there but only as a victim of a burglary. Scribbling down his address, she decided to catch him early.
Grabbing her coffee and bag, she headed out of the door.
‘Morgan, are you busy?’
Turning, she saw Ben and Amy walking out of the CID office, both wearing coats.
‘Just off out to do some enquiries.’
‘Can they wait? They’ve found a body at the Cumbrian News offices.’
She nodded and followed them out to the car park, getting in the back seat of the unmarked car.
Amy got into the driver’s seat.
‘How many bodies can we have in a week, boss? This is getting out of hand.’
Ben was staring out of the window. ‘The world’s gone mad. At this rate we’re going to put tourists off coming here for life.’
Morgan didn’t speak. She wasn’t sure if she had quite expected to be exposed to so many dead people in one go. In some ways it was what she’d always dreamed of, yet it was quite unsettling. Seeing people who’d been murdered in reality was a lot more shocking than it ever looked on the Netflix documentaries she binge-watched on her days off.
They reached the main street, which had been cordoned off at each end with police tape, a PCSO guarding the entrance. Amy parked up and they got out. When they were suited and ready to assess the scene, they signed themselves into the scene guard book the PCSO was holding. Morgan hadn’t known whether she was to go in or not and had hung back. Ben, who’d been talking on his phone the whole time, ducked under the tape. Realising she wasn’t with them, he pointed to the boot of the car and she realised he was telling her to put protective clothing on.
As she dressed, she could hear loud sobs coming from the post office doorway. Turning to look, she saw a woman watching them and crying into a tissue. Dan was standing next to her, but she realised that he wasn’t paying the sobbing woman any attention because he was too busy glaring at her. Trying not to, but unable to control it, her cheeks flushed red. How had they gone from colleagues to him hating her this much? As much as she disliked him, she didn’t hate him, but there was no mistaking the anger etched across his face.
Turning away from him, she signed herself into the scene and followed Ben’s footsteps. The whole street was eerily quiet considering it was mid-morning and usually a bustling hive of activity. There were plenty of people pretending not to be watching from shop doorways and windows when in reality they were.
Ben and Amy were already at the entrance to the building which housed the Cumbrian News. The door was ajar. Parked outside, on the double-yellow lines, was the blue BMW that had been parked outside the Potters’ drive the other day. Morgan crossed towards it, looking inside to see if the keys were still in the ignition. She didn’t think that the three of them needed to go in there. For some strange reason her pulse was racing, yet she had no idea why and wondered if it was the fear of the unknown. Of not knowing what she was going to find behind that door. Neither Ben nor Amy stepped through the door, just peered into the gap in turn.
She heard a whistle and turned to see Ben waving her over. Her feet betraying her feelings, she trudged towards the steps where he was waiting for her at a snail’s pace. If he noticed her reluctance he didn’t comment.
‘Did you just whistle at me like I was a dog?’
‘No, sorry. Absolutely not, I was trying to catch your attention.’
She smiled at him and his shoulders relaxed, making her feel mean and wonder if he always felt this tense around her. Maybe she needed to give him a break and not be so feisty around him. He was really a nice guy and had enough of his own problems without her adding to them.
‘Take a look, but don’t step inside because CSI will have our backsides if we go in before they do.’
She paused before forcing herself to squeeze in the gap between him and Amy. Her eyes locked on the bloodied mess on the tiled floor in