‘Dad,’ Ethan said. ‘We need to talk.’

‘About what?’

‘I think you know.’

Yes, Grant thought he knew too.

‘Ok, give me a minute.’

Ethan turned and walked away. Grant looked over at Ed Francis’s house one more time. All remained quiet. Grant was absolutely certain that wouldn’t be the case for much longer.

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Dani was still trying to shake the earlier chill from her failed spying attempts, and was heavily wired on caffeine two hours later back at her apartment. There’d been no call or text or anything from Jason in that time and she was becoming increasingly anxious and angry about what he was up to. She’d called him twice since she’d arrived back but he hadn’t answered and however much she wanted to, she wouldn’t call again and risk arousing his suspicions.

Rather than mope, she’d put her time to good use, scouring back through the HOLMES 2 system to identify any new information on the murder and missing persons cases, hoping that doing so would spark a eureka moment, but also trying to figure out if there was any explanation for what Jason was up to.

So far on her endless and roundabout search she’d found next to nothing and her brain was quickly wearing out.

Although…

She re-opened the notes on the system related to the house-to-house enquiries performed following Natalya’s murder. The last Dani had heard about that, nearly every address they’d targeted had been covered off, except for a few residences where the owners or tenants were away, and a few industrial units that were seemingly empty.

But there was more. Dani delved back into the detail. She read through the notes compiled by various DCs and DSs. She opened up Google Maps on her laptop and plotted the streets, the residences and the industrial estates.

At the last team briefing Dani had given before her suspension she’d told the team to widen the house-to-house, and their review of CCTV, but she’d never seen the results of that until now. The latest notes had only been entered into HOLMES 2 that afternoon. A small retail park in Moseley had several industrial units, but also had a privately operated CCTV which included a camera angled to the street outside. Officers had attended the estate, spoken to the owners of each of the businesses and performed brief searches of the premises. Except for one unit. A unit that didn’t appear to be in use and was owned by the same registered company that was the listed owner of the estate. The same company was also responsible for the CCTV.

The comment at the end of the notes was simply that further investigation was required to identify the directors of the company and contact them in order to secure the CCTV images and access to the unit if that was deemed necessary.