‘Stan,’ she hissed into his ear.
He didn’t stir and she felt her blood begin to boil. Grabbing her headphones from the laptop, she pushed them into her ears and selected a playlist of nineties dance music to drown him out. Then she set about making herself a bacon sandwich. She didn’t really want to make him breakfast, didn’t want to give him anything, but she had been brought up better than that. Her mum had taught her to be a kind, selfless girl with good manners. So, she made him one, covering it with tin foil.
She wrote ‘Stan’ on a Post-it note. Not ‘Dad’; it was never ‘dad’. Not since her mum’s death. Setting the coffeemaker going, she went into the bathroom, showered then came back in to eat her sandwich. Filling her travel mug with fresh coffee and screwing on the lid, she looked in disgust at the crumpled mess that was still snoring in her chair. She left her bedroom door open while she dried her hair, hoping the noise would wake him. Then she stamped around as she dressed in her uniform, tugging her black Magnum boots on so her footsteps echoed even louder. She was raging by this point; she didn’t want to leave him in her flat. She looked at the clock on the wall: it was now 5.45; she didn’t start work until 7.00. But she couldn’t stay here, she needed to see what was happening with Olivia Potter; she was desperate to know if the family had been found and told the news. Better to go into work early; at least she could sit in peace before the rest of her shift came in, and catch up on the logs. She set about writing him a note.
Stan,
Breakfast is on the kitchen worktop. Do not be here when I come home, there is nothing of value for you to steal. Don’t forget where I work. I’ll report you then hunt you down if you take so much as a hair slide that belongs to me. If you have nowhere to go, then you’d better get yourself to the homeless shelter on Ann Street and see if they can help. If not, go find one of your friends to stop with. This flat is not big enough for the both of us and I’m not risking my tenancy by letting you stay here another night. It’s not your new crash pad, I don’t want you here.
Morgan.
She pushed it into his hand, so he’d find it when he woke up and prayed he’d be long gone by the end of her shift. Just in case he did get any ideas, she grabbed her laptop and stuffed it into a tote bag along with her purse and headphones.
Leaving the flat, she let the door slam but doubted it would have made him stir. She was seething at not being tougher with him. She should never have let him in and now she hadn’t been able to kick him out.
The station was almost empty, aside from a couple of officers from the nightshift in the report writing room. Not wanting to give anyone the excuse to ask why she was in work so early, she headed upstairs to one of the offices she knew would be empty, at least until the start of her shift. She didn’t want to explain to anyone about the insomnia that had plagued the last five years of her life. That was too personal.
There was one empty room next to the large CID office with the door open, so she took her coffee inside. Firing up the computer, she waited for it to let her log on, sipping her coffee while she waited. When her home screen filled the monitor, Morgan quickly brought up the logs to see the latest update on Olivia Potter. In the notes it stated that several visits throughout the night had been made to the address, but it was all in darkness. No contact had been made with her husband by the police. Her mother, Helen Taylor, had been informed late last night, but there was no mention of Olivia’s father. Enquiries were still ongoing to locate husband and daughters. That was it, nothing more. Morgan exhaled while reading the update. Something was definitely wrong, she was sure of it. None of this was normal. Last month a woman had died in a car accident and her daughter had been travelling in Australia. It had taken a few hours, but they’d managed to track her down and break the news to her. She was over the other side of the world; why couldn’t they find Saul Potter when he lived on their doorstep?
‘What are you doing here so early?’
Startled, she looked up to see Ben standing there, holding a paper coffee cup.
‘I couldn’t sleep.’ She didn’t tell him it was an everyday occurrence.
‘Me neither. Put me out of my misery then, have they located her husband yet?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m not trying to tell you what to do, but it’s all wrong. Very wrong.’
‘I never said you were bossy, it was that arse, Dan. Anyway, I woke up early thinking about it and I think you’re right. Do you want to go back to the house and check it again? Take the keys from the sergeant’s office, see if there’s any sign the husband’s been back or if something got missed yesterday.’
‘Yes, I do. Thank you. Should I go now?’
He shook his head. ‘No, it can wait until after morning briefing. I don’t think another forty minutes will hurt; Olivia Potter isn’t going anywhere.’
‘Thanks, Sarge.’
He turned and walked into the office. Morgan checked her emails, then logged off and headed down to speak to the sergeant and get the keys for the Potters’ house. This was her job; she didn’t want Dan coming in and taking over. He could sulk all day if he wanted; she wasn’t working with him and if they got paired up she’d be the first to say it wasn’t an option.
By the time everyone arrived, had made mugs of tea or coffee and all filed into the briefing room, Morgan was itching to go. It would take her a good twenty minutes to get from Rydal Falls to Grasmere, traffic permitting. She could have told Sergeant Madden she needed to leave, but there was no way she was giving Dan any more fuel to add to his already low opinion of her. It still smarted that he’d turned on her like that. She’d wait patiently and offer to be the cover for Grasmere and surrounding areas.
The briefing was over quickly. The main topic of conversation was for observations for the missing white Jag F-Pace. She wouldn’t know what an F-Pace was to look at but Mads, the nickname his team called Sergeant Madden, circulated the registration number, which was much easier to identify. An automated number plate recognition marker had been placed on it, meaning when it passed an ANPR camera it would ping and notify whoever was in the control room, so they could get the car stopped. Mads allocated areas and gave Morgan the same one as yesterday. She couldn’t stop herself from grinning. Dan frowned, but she ignored him. It would be some time before she bothered speaking to him, even if he apologised. Friends didn’t make you look like an absolute idiot, especially in front of the people you worked with, and she was starting to realise that perhaps they had never been friends at all.
She left first, eager to get to the house and give it a thorough search. Not that they hadn’t yesterday, but there was a nagging feeling that they had rushed, that they had missed something.
Eight
Ben read through the notes on the log again. It was odd they hadn’t found Saul Potter; Morgan had been right to be concerned. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but it didn’t make sense that the rest of Olivia’s family seemed to have disappeared. It would be interesting to see what the post-mortem results brought back. Yesterday he had been a hundred per cent sure it was a straightforward suicide. Today, he wouldn’t like to say. Part of him wondered if he should go back and search the house with Morgan.