‘That’ll be a conversation over dinner, detective. I’ve had enough today. I’m going to my hotel to get drunk,’ he said. ‘Unless you want to join me?’

Kelly was intrigued. The last thing she should be doing was socialising with a person of interest in a case, but it didn’t need to be like that; she could just listen. And the one thing she wanted, that Fabian could give her, was the whereabouts of George Fellows.

‘I’m on my way,’ she said, and left the ward.

Chapter 54

As Kelly turned out of the Penrith and Lakes, she got a call from Kate back at Eden House.

‘What’s up?’ Kelly asked.

‘The tech department have come back with the results from the electrical equipment seized from Laurie Fell.’

‘And?’ Kelly waited. She drove through town, intending to take the A592 all the way along Ullswater’s north shore to Glenridding, where the climate conference had been held, and where Donald Reilly should have stayed. Now she’d met Fabian Kennedy-Craig, she realised that it was in his character to have chosen the hotel on purpose. She got the impression that everything he did was planned. Maybe he was meeting his private detective there.

‘George Fellows beat up a perp, when he was serving in the Met – pretty badly, as well,’ Kate said.

‘Okay, so he’s a martyr to the cause,’ Kelly said. It was what they called overzealous coppers who liked to take things into their own hands, and deal with criminals in their own way. A lot of the time they got away with it, especially in the huge constabularies in the cities.

‘He was picked up on CCTV at Penrith station accessing an Amazon deposit point yesterday,’ Kate added.

‘Good, we’ll find him. I thought you were calling me about the seized computers?’ Kelly asked. It was as if Kate was avoiding something. She could hear it in her voice.

‘They confirmed that the CCTV from Laurie Fell was wiped off the server on Monday morning. They retrieved all memory from before then and it would appear that Nellie was telling the truth; there’s no footage of the graffiti. However, they did tell me that there was footage from another occasion last week, when there is evidence of a trespasser in the sheds.’

Kelly processed the information and appreciated the gravity of it: somebody snooping around Laurie Fell, especially inside the outhouses, might be pivotal, but she also couldn’t help thinking that Kate was stalling for time.

‘Okay, Kate, what are you really calling me about? I’m on my way to Glenridding, do I have to turn around?’

Kate sucked in her breath. ‘The technical team have found hundreds of child porn images and videos, and some of them are Category A,’ Kate said.