Chapter 96

96

Working his way through Laura Nolan's bank statements, McKeown didn't discover anything to alarm him. The only inward payments were her pay cheques. No maintenance from Aaron's mystery dad. Her outgoings were mainly for food and clothing. No big mystery uncovered.

‘Waste of time,' he mumbled as he put the statements to one side. He eyed his workload and decided to spend some time on John Morgan. He'd start by checking the footage from the Pine Grove doorbell cameras which he'd neglected.

As he loaded the first file, McKeown saw that they had only downloaded the day of Morgan's murder and the day before. It would have to do for now. He began with Friday, the day of the murder.

Some of the doorbells had their lenses focused out onto the footpath in front of their houses. He quickly became bored with people walking dogs and a few kids running to and from school. He then watched the feed from the house situated next door to the show home.

John Morgan walked by, hands in the pockets of his yellow hi-vis work jacket, and disappeared. McKeown immediately pulled up the images from the house straight across the road, only to find the zoom didn't stretch further than their gate.

‘Damn.' He had no way of knowing if Morgan had entered the show home, which was the first at the entrance to the estate, or kept on walking.

Returning to the feed where he'd seen Morgan, he restarted the footage. The images only appeared when someone triggered the camera. He watched, waited, watched. John Morgan did not reappear. McKeown reached the conclusion that he had either entered the show home at ten a.m. Friday morning, or he'd gone on somewhere on foot and not returned to the estate via that road. There was another entrance direct to the working site, but his body had been found in the house later in the day. Was it logical to assume he went in and never came out?

He fast-forwarded to the same afternoon and saw the boss and Boyd arriving at Pine Grove. He watched them exit their vehicle. The show home was out of range, but he knew they'd entered it.

He did not see the estate agent arrive. It was feasible she had parked her car either across the road or on the main road before going into the house. Maybe that was why Boyd had parked where he did. He still expected to see her arrive. She'd have to be asked, if it became relevant.

He went back to the day before Morgan's murder and started the footage from another house across the road. As he watched, shortly after eleven a.m., he found himself staring at a woman he recognised.

‘Holy shit!' He jumped up to go tell the boss, but discovering that Lottie was out at the scene of a fire at Gordon Collins's house, he returned to his desk and studied the stilled image on the screen. With his heart beating too fast, he clicked start and watched the images unfold.

Diana Nolan was looking all around her before walking towards the show home.

Was she meeting someone? If so, he didn't see anyone else in the area.

He ran every piece of doorbell footage, then started checking and rechecking all the CCTV footage. He came across something from a back garden camera trained on the alley that ran behind the houses. Shit, why hadn't he checked this already?

He watched as Gordon Collins entered the lane and disappeared directly at the back gate to the show home. Had he been meeting Diana Nolan? The times matched.

He checked the same camera for the day of the murder, knowing now that he'd fucked up. He hadn't run this footage at all as he'd been concentrating on Laura Nolan. There was nothing he could do about it now. He held his breath as the camera was activated by movement.

The woman walked decisively along the lined-up bins and disappeared at the back gate.

He exhaled in a loud whistle.