He stopped tapping his fingers and sat up from his slouch position. ‘Still nothing that will help with the case. We’re struggling to get any useful CCTV. Most cameras point at cars and drives. All I’ve seen are a few kids dotted around, knocking on doors in costume, but that’s it.’
‘Keep at it. We spoke to the vicar, Sally Stevens. She said she saw someone loitering in her graveyard wearing a long hooded black coat. On any of the CCTV, did you see anyone matching this description?’
He shook his head. ‘No. Sorry, guv. Most of the kids were dressed in shop-bought costumes. A lot were accompanied by parents who were wearing the usual garb, coats, hats and scarves. There are so many, but I didn’t see any long black coats with hoods.’
‘Great work. Keep searching. We can’t afford to miss anything.’ Gina popped another pin in the map. ‘This pin represents where Nicola Swinton claims to have seen our victim on Monday night, at six thirty. As mentioned, she drove past and saw him turn off by this row of houses.’ Gina pointed to George Street, this time a little further up. ‘Somewhere around here, she says she saw someone ducking behind a car when Mr Swinton turned. This suggests he was being followed. Mrs Swinton is also quite sure it was a woman but I think that’s a long shot, given that it was dark and it happened quickly.’
‘What’s down that cut through?’ O’Connor asked.
‘As far as I’m aware, some land where kids play football, a park and another housing estate. PC Smith, I’ll task you with researching this area a little better. We need to know where he went. Was he sleeping rough around there? Maybe he was hiding in someone’s garage or shed. It’s been wet and cold lately, he’d have definitely been seeking shelter. He smelled of smoke, look for evidence of bonfires.’
Smith smiled and jotted down a note. ‘That’ll be fun this close to bonfire night, but we can but do our best. I’ll get on to it. I just saw PC Kapoor go past. Shall I fill her in?’
‘That would be great, thank you.’ Gina glanced back at Wyre. ‘Did you find anything about the gravestone I gave you to research?’
‘I’m still looking, it was a long time ago.’
Gina pulled out a note from her wad of pages. ‘I know why Eveline was giving me such a sense of déjà vu. It was right under my nose all the time. Whether there’s a connection, that’s another matter completely.’ She smiled as she shared her thoughts, leaving Wyre with a new lead to follow as she headed along the corridor to see Logan Jones.
Chapter Thirty
‘I’m sorry. I was a prick. Can I just apologise to the woman and maybe offer to wash her car? It’ll clean up okay.’ Logan Jones laid his scream mask on the table and ran his finger through his brushed-up fringe. Gina could only imagine how much hairspray it took to have kept it that way under a mask and hat. His Dracula-style cape was tied in a neat bow that skimmed his Adam’s apple. Jacob cleared his throat as he headed up a witness sheet with all the boy’s details.
‘PC Smith will be here to discuss that offence with you after I’ve asked a few questions.’ She wasn’t letting him off the hook without so much as a ticking off and she also needed to tackle him about the incident on Monday night. ‘As you may be aware, the body of a man was found on Thursday and I’d like to ask you a few questions.’
‘What?’ The boy stood, knocking the chair into the wall behind. ‘I didn’t kill anyone. I want a solicitor.’
‘I’m not suggesting that you killed anyone. I’m hoping that you can help us with our enquiries, but it is your prerogative to have a solicitor present if you want one.’
The boy glared at her and shook his head twice, his brows furrowed before sitting back down. ‘I don’t know anything. I only know what Tilly told me.’
‘Tilly Holden?’ Gina flicked back to her note on the girls who found the body.
‘Yeah, her and her mate found the coffin. It really freaked her out.’
Gina linked her fingers on the table and leaned in a little. ‘I need you to go back to Monday, the twenty-sixth of October, around five thirty in the evening. My DCI and I saw you and several others physically assaulting a boy.’
‘We were messin’. That’s all. We all do it to each other all the time. It wasn’t how it looked. He trod on my phone and thought it was funny. I wasn’t layin’ the boot in, I was just tryin’ to scare him. That was all. We’ve made up since. You can ask him. Been best friends again since Tuesday morning.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Spencer Burrows. I don’t know his address. It’s all sorted, like I told you.’
Gina made a note with the intention of coming back to that incident after. ‘You ran away when we came over and spoke to you.’
The boy shrugged. ‘I panicked. You didn’t see the build-up and I knew you’d jus’ jump to your own answers and Spence was pissed off at the time. I didn’t need the hassle.’
‘I chased you down George Street. Where did you go after that?’
His shoulders slumped. ‘Just walkin’ around. We all met up at the park, even Spence turned up. If it was that bad, he’d have gone ’ome, wouldn’t he?’
‘Did you see this man on the corner of George Street or while you were at the park?’
The boy stared at the photo with his mouth open. ‘Yeah, and I remembered seeing him. Tilly messaged me the photo the papers had printed and said he was the man they found in the coffin and it clicked.’
‘What clicked, Logan?’ Gina felt her feet urging to tap under the table as the tension of what he might say got real.
‘Am I in trouble for not callin’ in when I saw his picture on Facebook? I didn’t call because we ran away from you and I didn’t want to get into trouble.’
‘We just want to know what you saw. This man was murdered and whoever did this is dangerous. We need your help, that’s all.’
He leaned back and smirked. ‘You’re not trying to trick me or nothin’?’
‘No, this isn’t a trick. What clicked?’
‘Flamin’ hell. I’m not normally such a dick but the others were calling him names when he ran past so I joined in. It’s not cool to stand out but I don’t expect you to understand. We’ve seen him a few times. We call him baldy and tramp, normally. We badgered him until he gave us a few cigarettes. I just think he wanted us to do one.’ Gina felt the tension forming in her neck. Logan was a regular bully, but at the moment she needed him to keep talking. ‘I’ve been an idiot.’
‘It’s not too late to make amends for the things you’ve done and grow up a little.’
His cheeks were rosier now and he had more of a boyish look about him. He looked more like fifteen, not his eighteen years. ‘I can’t make amends with him, he’s dead.’
‘That one, no, but anyone else you’ve hurt, there’s no time like the present to start being nicer.’
He nodded. Maybe some people could change. She genuinely hoped that Logan could. He was still so young and she didn’t want him to become a regular face at the station. She didn’t want him to turn into a Terry. She could see that there was still hope.