‘It wasn’t her main phone,’ Hannah said. ‘She was using it for something else.’

‘A burner.’

‘What?’197

‘It’s what drug dealers call it,’ Kyle said, looking uncomfortable. ‘Like on Breaking Bad. A pay-as-you-go phone you change or ditch regularly to avoid getting traced.’

‘That’s not what Mel was doing.’

Kyle’s eyes widened. ‘I didn’t mean that.’

‘She was my friend and she’s dead.’

Kyle shuffled his feet. ‘Let me see her picture again?’

Hannah held out her phone and Kyle examined it, running his fingers along his tiny beard.

‘She’s pretty,’ he said eventually. ‘I remember her.’

‘Really?’

‘Sure. She wasn’t dressed like this.’ His finger smudged the screen on Mel’s tight red dress.

‘Of course not,’ Hannah said. ‘Was she alone?’

Kyle sighed. ‘It was a long time ago.’

‘With a guy?’

Kyle screwed up his face. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

Hannah took her phone back and Googled. ‘This guy?’

She held up a picture of Peter Longhorn from his Edinburgh Uni page, sensible smile, blue shirt.

Kyle shook his head. ‘I couldn’t honestly say.’

‘What about CCTV?’

Kyle nodded at a camera in a corner of the shop. ‘It only gets kept for two weeks then we write over it.’

‘Can you check?’

‘There’s no point.’

Hannah let out a loud sigh. ‘What about your database, the sale must be in your system.’

‘Sure, but it’ll just be the same information as on the receipt.’

‘If she was with someone else, maybe they paid.’

Kyle looked around the shop. It was busy, people waiting to get served, to walk away with shiny new handheld dreams. ‘OK.’

He went to one of the screens behind the desk and typed in the transaction number from the receipt. He typed some more info, 198whatever the system needed, then flattened his lips together as he turned the screen to show her. ‘It was paid for by Melanie Cheng, was that your friend?’

Hannah nodded as she scanned the screen.

‘What about the number, can you give me that?’

Kyle turned the screen back towards himself. ‘It’s against policy to give out that information.’

Hannah balled her fist around her phone. ‘This is a murder investigation.’

‘You’re not the police.’

Hannah breathed deeply. ‘No, but I was her best friend and I’m a private investigator.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘Do you have a licence or something?’

Hannah shook her head. ‘It doesn’t work like that.’

‘So how do you get to be a private detective?’

‘Investigator.’ Hannah shrugged. ‘You just become one. Now can I have that number?’

Kyle looked around, unsure.

Hannah moved in and lowered her voice. ‘The alternative is that I get the police to ask you, would you like that?’

‘I don’t know.’