She fell silent at a call from upstairs.
‘Sarge? You need to see this.’
Carys stepped to one side as Kay hurried by her and took the stairs two at a time.
‘What is it?’
Norris appeared from a bedroom at the back of the house, his gloved hands clutching a small collection of photographs.
‘Found these on top of the wardrobe.’
Kay took the photographs from him and began to flick through the images as Barnes and Carys reached the top of the stairs.
Two of the photographs had been taken in a woodland, the woman relaxed and smiling at the camera as she’d posed beside a large fallen log. In others, the camera had been held aloft and captured the driver and the woman smiling up at the lens.
‘Why hide them on top of the wardrobe?’ said Barnes, taking the photographs from Kay and holding them so Carys could see at the same time.
‘More to the point, those have been taken on an instant camera,’ said Kay. ‘Why not use his phone?’
‘Maybe she’s not his wife,’ said Norris. ‘They could have been having an affair.’
‘Good point,’ said Kay. ‘That’d certainly make sense. Especially with the neighbours telling us how furtive the woman was when she arrived or left the house.’
‘If they were having an affair, that also explains why there’s nothing here to suggest a woman was living here,’ said Carys. ‘Maybe he killed her because she was threatening to expose the affair to someone.’
Kay frowned. ‘Hang on. Give those back to me a minute.’
She flipped through the images until she found one that included the man and held it up to them. ‘I recognise him. I’ve seen this face before.’
‘Where?’ said Barnes.
‘When the case against Jozef Demiri fell apart and we had to let him go. He arranged for a car to collect him. This guy was his driver.’
Chapter Eight
Kay paced the room and rubbed at her right eye.
Despite the discovery at the house in Tonbridge, she couldn’t abandon the search process and had to wait until Harriet and her team had turned up so she could brief them.
Instead, she had sent Barnes and Carys back to the incident room to report their findings to the rest of the team and start the process of checking tenancy records for the property and find any other online photographs that matched the image of the man they’d discovered at the house.
On her return to Maidstone, she’d been disappointed to discover that they had found nothing, and that Sharp had been called to a meeting at headquarters on the other side of the town and wouldn’t be back until the afternoon briefing.
She wanted to talk through her theory with him, determined to prove there was a connection between the driver and Jozef Demiri, an Albanian who was known to run one of the more lucrative organised crime syndicates in the south-east, but who had managed to avoid any criminal charges – despite their best efforts.
Undeterred by Sharp’s absence, she had tasked the team to spend the rest of the day making phone calls and checking the information they had to date to try to get a breakthrough.
Three hours later, and she was wondering if Demiri would evade them once more when a loud whoop reached her ears.
Gavin tossed his mobile phone onto his desk and spun his chair round to face her.
‘That was Charlie – he’s helping Harriet with the forensics of the vehicle in the accident.’
‘Yeah, I remember him from the other night,’ said Kay. ‘What’s he got?’
Gavin grinned and held up his notebook. ‘Partial Vehicle Identification Number off the chassis. He says most of it had been filed off, but once they’d removed all the mud and grime, they managed to get something for us. And – get this – it’s different to the one on the registration certificate linked to the licence plate.’
‘Put it in the system,’ said Kay, and scooted her chair across to Gavin’s desk.
He turned and opened up a new window on his computer, typed in the details and pressed “Enter”.
Kay sipped from a mug of tepid tea while they waited.
Once, soon after passing his exams, Gavin had mentioned to her that he’d been surprised at how ponderous murder investigations could be.
Kay had smiled, and explained it was often the smallest details that led to the biggest breakthroughs, and she’d noticed since then that the recently qualified detective had been one of the few content to spend hours trawling through minute information in the hope of a breakthrough. It often worked, or at least provided the team with solid data they could follow up on with great effect.
‘Here you go,’ he said, and pointed at the screen. His brow creased. ‘Hang on. It’s registered to a business.’
‘Which one?’ Kay bent over and scanned the lines of text displayed across the screen.
‘Delight Investments.’
‘What?’ Kay straightened and twisted round to summon Barnes, but he’d already pushed himself out of his chair and was moving towards them.
‘Delight Investments,’ repeated Gavin. His eyes shifted between Kay and Barnes. ‘Why? Is there a problem? Who owns the company?’
Kay swallowed, fighting to keep her excitement in check.
‘Jozef Demiri,’ she said. ‘Josef bloody Demiri. I knew it.’
She straightened as Sharp pushed through the door and strode across the room to where she stood, and their eyes locked.
‘Why am I hearing Demiri’s name?’
Kay quickly updated him about the search at the property, and then pointed at Gavin’s computer.
‘He’s connected, guv. I recognised the driver, and the car’s registered to Demiri’s business. We’re onto something here.’
In reply, he held up his hand. ‘All right, you’ve got me convinced. I’ll make some phone calls – DCI Larch will have to be brought up to speed, so I’ll need you to put together a summary report for me about this investigation to date before you leave today in order that we can get extra resources. You know what to do.’
‘Guv.’
‘Carys – while that’s happening, can you
