‘Maybe he killed Norris when he found out the truth as well.’

‘So, Beacham just got promoted to suspect number one?’

‘By default, if nothing else,’ Adrian said.

‘So, he’s just gone rogue and is cleaning up?’ Imogen said.

‘Or someone is saying the right things to make him do what he’s doing. We have at least one more major player and one more kid. It could be either one of them. What about if we get Gary to look through university student social media accounts? See if he can find any pictures of Beacham, either in the background or something – even without access to private accounts, there are plenty of public pictures.’

‘That sounds like it would take a ridiculous amount of time.’ Imogen groaned internally.

‘He loves that kind of thing. At the very least, he could round up as many pics as possible and we could look through them. We might be able to find out who Russ Beacham was hanging out with. See if we can see which lecturers he was engaged with the most. It’s got to be worth a try.’

‘Blimey, Miley, do you need to lie down now? Those were a lot of thoughts.’

‘Lying down sounds good.’ He smiled at her.

The heat rose in her cheeks as she realised what he was implying. It was strange; she forgot a lot of the time that things had changed between them, mainly because so little had changed in the day-to-day. So far, he had been completely work-focused when they were on duty, which is why that comment had caught her so unawares.

‘Right then, I’ll let Gary know what we need,’ Imogen said after the briefest moment; the foray into flirtation was short-lived. Back to work.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Adrian stared at the big monitor as Gary put up picture after picture from the university campus. Knowing that Russ Beacham had only started that previous September meant they didn’t have to go back that far, but still, the amount of information was ludicrous. Between Facebook and Instagram alone, Gary had found over five thousand pictures, all public. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. After three hours staring at the screen, Adrian wanted to poke his eyes out. Imogen returned to the room with hot coffee and some bagels.

‘Any luck?’ she said.

‘What do you think?’ Adrian groaned; maybe a bagel would keep him awake. They had to get ahead of this, though. They couldn’t wait until someone else turned up dead and so it was a night of coffee and junk food for them.

‘Well it was a long shot.’ Imogen sighed and sat down, looking at the screen.

‘If I stare at these screens any longer, I’m going to go crazy,’ Adrian said as he massaged his own shoulder. A sharp pain ran across the width of his back and he was trying to get rid of it.

‘Spoiler alert. You already are,’ Imogen said.

‘We’ve got plenty more to go. When I click through to friends and their friends, I just keep finding more,’ Gary offered with a little too much enthusiasm, considering how dull the task was.