‘But she didn’t stay in the room for long,’ Abbott said, and played yet another clip that showed Rachel reappearing before heading for the Garden Room. Now she was wearing a white cardigan and carrying her purse.

‘Looks like she planned to go outside the hotel, maybe in search of Carlo.’

‘But I think she went to the bar first. I was just about to check and see.’

James told her to go for it and minutes later they spotted Rachel and her sister at the bar, but the camera was too far away to see their faces and zooming in didn’t help.

But they did see Rachel wander off in the direction of the terrace after a while.

‘That’s as much as we’ve got so far,’ Abbott said. ‘It’s a shame about the terrace camera, but at least we know she went outside about twenty minutes before the staff guy saw her having words with Libby and Ethan.’

‘But we don’t know if she made her way down to the jetty where her boyfriend was waiting.’

‘Or if someone other than him followed her.’

‘And that’s what we need to find out,’ James said. ‘But anyway, you’ve done a cracking job here. I can’t believe you’ve got through so much footage in such a short time.’

‘It makes a big difference if you’re searching through hours of video rather than days, guv.’

‘True. Well, keep at it. I’m going to get the team together for a debrief after I’ve paid another visit to the jetty. I need to check what progress they’re making down there and see if the pathologist has arrived yet,’ he said.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The temperature outside had dropped dramatically and the cold wind lashed at James’s face as he made his way across the garden towards the lake.

It was darker too, thanks to the dense clouds that had been blown across the fells, blocking out the glow from the moon and stars.

In a few more hours it’d be daylight and James was hoping that by then they’d have interviewed most of the guests and staff and would have more of a handle on what had happened to Rachel Elliott.

The poor woman had been savagely beaten only a short distance from where her family and friends were celebrating, though it was precisely because the hotel had been buzzing with music and laughter that the murder had gone unnoticed.

They were lucky in the sense that the killer had been careless, leaving behind Rachel’s purse and broken glasses. It suggested that the killing hadn’t been premeditated, as the police often found more evidence when a crime was committed in the heat of the moment, the perpetrators often too shocked to think straight and so would flee in a panic without checking to see if they’d left anything behind.

That said, James wasn’t expecting much in the way of fingerprints and incriminating fibres to turn up on Rachel’s belongings or on the jetty itself. And if the weapon had been lobbed into the water, which was a strong possibility, then any evidence on it would probably have been washed away.