The store where Emily Clarke had supposedly used her credit card to buy chocolate, amongst other items, was on a road which lay about two miles north of Wood Hill. We didn’t go straight to the counter and speak with the staff. Instead, Potter and I wandered around the store and looked to see what CCTV they had, if any. The only camera I could see was positioned behind the counter and looked out into the store and down at the cash registers. I looked at Potter, and we didn’t have to speak to one another to know that if Emily had been in the store the previous morning, she would be on camera.
I threw some items into a basket, junk food mainly, and went to the cash register with it. The spotty youth who was working began to process my groceries. Once he had placed everything into a bag, Potter asked for a pack of cigarettes.
The guy working the cash register threw them into the bag and said, “That will be thirteen pounds twenty, mister.”
Potter rummaged through his jeans pockets and pulled out a roll of twenties. At the same time I took my warrant card from my jacket pocket, opened it, and realised that I hadn’t any money. I looked at the cash in Potter’s fist
I looked at the spotty youth behind the counter and I could see that he was eyeing my badge “Sorry, but my boss says I can’t give discounts to the law anymore — not since one of you guys issued him that ticket for running a red.”
“What?” I asked surprised. “I don’t expect any discount.”
“You can’t be from around here, then,” he said back.
“No, we’re not,” Potter cut in.
“No, you can’t,” he said.
“How come?” I asked him.
“Doesn’t work. It’s been broken for months,” The clerk explained. “The boss says it costs too much to get fixed. He’ll be screwed if we ever have a robbery, insurance company will never pay out.”
“Do you have any other cameras in store?” I asked.
“Nope, just that broken one. Why you want to know?” he asked, looking at me, then at Potter.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, picking up the groceries and leaving the store.
I threw the bag onto the backseat of the car and slammed the door shut in frustration. Potter popped one of the cigarettes between his lips, lit it, and inhaled deeply.
“When are we going to get a half-decent break?” I asked him.
Potter looked at me and blew a lungful of smoke into the air.
“We’re running around in circles,” I said, more to myself than him.
“Something will turn up,” he said, leaning against the side of the car and enjoying his smoke.
“And what if it doesn’t?” I snapped, sounding more frustrated than cross. “Kayla is inside that school, werewolves are free to take children at will, we’ve got a young woman who has suddenly vanished or worse, and the local cop couldn’t give a crap because he’s too busy screwing the local Seven-Eleven for a discount!”
Potter didn’t say anything back, he just puffed on the cigarette and squirted jets of smoke out through his nostrils. When he had finished, he flicked the cigarette into the gutter and got into the car. I climbed in next to him, feeling more frustrated than ever. Potter started the engine and it spluttered and wheezed to life.
“We need some petrol. We’re nearly empty,” he said.
On the other side of the road, there was a small petrol station with two pumps on the tiny forecourt. “Over there,” I said, jabbing my finger in the direction of the petrol station.
Potter swung the car out of the car park and crossed the road to the petrol station which stood opposite the Seven-Eleven. He drew level with a pump, got out, and began to fill the tank. I watched him through the car window, and it was then that I saw it. There was a CCTV camera attached to the underside of the petrol station canopy facing out across the forecourt.
While Potter finished filling the tank, I climbed from the car and walked over to where the camera was fixed. I looked up at it and studied the position it was facing. I turned my back to face it and looked out at the view that the camera had. I could see the whole of the forecourt and beyond, where to my delight, across the street was the entrance to the Seven-Eleven.
“I wonder?” I whispered. “I wonder?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
We went into the kiosk and Potter paid for the petrol in full from my savings. I didn’t show my badge before the petrol had been paid for, as I wasn’t sure if this was something else Banner and his merry men expected discount on. The girl behind the counter was chewing obnoxiously on a piece of gum. I showed her my badge. She raised her eyebrows as if to say ‘
“I’m investigating a missing person enquiry and I was wondering if I could view your CCTV footage for yesterday.”
“How’s that?” she mumbled, removing the gum from her front teeth with her tongue.
“How’s what?” Potter glared at her.
“Why do you want to watch the CCTV?” she asked him.
“Because we’ve had information that she may have been in the area yesterday, so we need to check it out,” he said bluntly.
“What, she came in here did she?” the girl asked.
Potter sighed and managed a false smile as if he was fast losing his patience. “I don’t know. That’s why we need to view the CCTV.”
She eyed us momentarily and blew a large pink bubble from between her lips. It popped and she sucked it back into her mouth.
“Sure, it’s all in the back,” and she nodded towards a door that had
“Thank you,” I smiled and headed towards the door.
The backroom was poky and smelt strongly of stale tobacco smoke. There was a table and a rubbish bin that was overflowing with empty cans of Coke and cheeseburger wrappers. The table was littered with crumpled magazines and newspapers. Fixed to the wall was a TV monitor which showed the gas station forecourt. I watched it and could see a car pulling in. In the distance, I could see across the street and customers entering the Seven- Eleven. It wasn’t the clearest picture in the world but it would do. I guessed that if Emily Clarke was in that store yesterday, I would be able to make her out on the footage. After all, she looked just like her sister, Elizabeth. On the wall beside the monitor was a shelf which housed a bunch of discs in plastic CD cases. I ran my fingers along their spines and stopped when I had found the previous day’s disc. I plucked it from the shelf and placed it into the DVD player beneath the TV.
The monitor went blank then flickered into life and once again I was viewing the gas station forecourt from the previous day. It was like going back in time. In the right-hand corner of the screen flashed yesterday’s date and time. It read 07:13 hrs. I held my finger down on the fast-forward button and whizzed through the next few hours of footage. Banner had told me that Emily’s credit card had been used in the Seven-Eleven store at 10:30 am, so I let
