Charlie sniggered. “Don’t look. My place is the same but I refuse to feel either ashamed or guilty. We put in a lot of hours, Katy, I think we have a good excuse for not having the time to decorate.”
“Thanks, that’s made me feel a whole lot better.”
A young man with greased back hair, wearing a suit, approached them five minutes later. “You wanted to see me? I’m David Evans, how can I help?”
Katy glanced around and leaned in, “Would it be possible to speak to you in private, sir? Perhaps in your office?”
His brow furrowed. He turned on his heel and called over his shoulder, “Come with me.”
He marched off ahead of them, forcing Katy and Charlie to jog a little to keep up with him. “Bloody speedy Gonzales needs to effing slow down a little.” Katy mumbled the complaint.
Charlie sniggered. “Tell him.”
“Umm… Mr Evans, where’s the fire?”
“Sorry?”
“Why the rush?” Katy asked. Her breathing rate escalated more than she had expected.
“Oh dear, having a problem keeping up, are you?”
“You could say that.”
He threw them a smile and slowed down a touch until he reached the manager’s office fifty yards ahead of him. “Take a seat. Excuse the mess, I have the big bosses descending on me in a few days.”
“Ah, that explains a lot. We’ll try not to keep you too long.”
“Thanks. What’s this all about?”
“Bobby Simmonds.”
He leaned back in his chair and stared at Katy. “Go on. He’s not here today, I’ve tried contacting him on his phone and at the house, but received zilch from both.”
“I have to inform you that Bobby lost his life last night.”
Evans bolted upright. “What?” he shouted.
“It’s true. We’re trying to figure out what his final movements would have been.”
“I’m not with you. Why would you need to do that?”
“Mr Simmonds lost his life in an incident.”
“An incident or an accident? I’m not sure I heard you correctly.”
“An incident. He was cycling home last night and we believe he was knocked off his bike and killed.”
“So it was an accident then?” Evans corrected her, seemingly confused.
“No. I can’t really go into details, not because I don’t want to, but because we don’t really know what actually occurred until the pathologist has managed to piece things together during her post-mortem.”
“Damn. I don’t know what else to say. He was a good man. Very thorough in his job, the utter professional.”
“What role did he have here?”
“He was my warehouse manager. He was pivotal in ensuring this place ran like a well-oiled machine. I’m going to miss him. He had a wicked sense of humour as well.” A soft reflective smile developed.
“Maybe you can give us an insight into what his role consisted of and the hours he used to work?”
“He was in charge of stock levels in the warehouse, organising the stock once it had been delivered, that sort of thing. He locked up on a rota basis, together with the evening supervisor and myself on the odd occasion. It was his turn to secure the place last night, as it happens.”
Charlie whipped out her notebook and started scribbling. “What time do you close?” she asked.
“We’re open to the public until eight p.m. He would have left between eight-ten and eight-fifteen, I suppose. There were no notes left to suggest he stayed longer than necessary. Sometimes, he’ll be delayed because a problem has arisen during his shift; he was professional enough to stay behind to sort anything out before heading home.”
“I take it you have CCTV on site.”
“We do. We also have an alarm system. I can verify the time he left by either means. Do you want me to do that?”
“If you could. Pinpointing the actual time would be a great start to our investigation.”
“Give me a few minutes.” He bounced out of his chair and left the room.
“It’ll be interesting to see what shows up,” Katy mumbled.
“Very,” Charlie agreed. “It’s not like we’ve got that much to go on so far, is it?”
“Sadly not. I detest cases like this, those that make us use our heads more than necessary, it’s so damn draining.”
They both laughed.
Evans returned to the room and requested they join him. He led the way down the corridor and into a small office which held several monitors. “I’ve checked back on the cameras. I’ll hit the play button and you can see for yourself what happens next.”
Katy frowned. “Are you saying you’ve found something of interest?”
“I’ll let you be the judge of that.” He ran the disc, it showed a few members of staff leaving at around five-past-eight and then Bobby Simmonds appeared, dressed all in Lycra. He locked the back door and set the alarm, then jumped on his bike. The cameras followed him to the front of the building. “Here’s what I found.”
Katy shuffled closer to the grainy screen. A car left its parking space and followed Simmonds. “Wait, can you tinker with the image? Home in on either the driver or the registration number?”
He tried his best, but the image, instead of becoming clearer, got progressively worse. “Sorry, no can do. You think he was being followed or could that have been just a coincidence?”
“I’m not sure. Do you recognise the car? Perhaps it belongs to a member of your staff?”
“No, sorry, I can’t help you. All the staff are told to park in a designated area at the rear of the car park. This person, in my opinion, seemed to be waiting for him. Or is that my suspicious mind working overtime?”
“No, I believe you could be right. Would you mind creating a copy for us? We’ll get it analysed and see if we can improve the image.”
“Of course, I’ll do it now. It shouldn’t take me long, if I can remember how to do it. I think I’ll need to refer to the manual.” He searched in a nearby drawer, extracted a small booklet and flicked through it from back to front and the other way again. “Damn, I can’t find it.”
“Less
