The woman nods.
‘I wonder if you remember seeing this chap, came through the station mid-December?’ Manon says, reaching into her handbag for the photograph of Jon-Oliver Ross that is always with her. Such a long shot. There is every chance Jon-Oliver did not sample the delights of the station buffet.
‘Middle of December, you say? We get loads of people coming through here.’ She takes the picture from Manon, peering at it. ‘I do remember him as it goes. He came in and bought a Twix or something like that. Only because I clocked him, y’know? Bit of a looker!’ She winks at Manon, who notices a gold tooth.
‘Can I look at the film on that?’ Manon asks, pointing at the camera. ‘Will it show December the fourteenth?’
The woman nods. ‘Twenty-eight-day turnaround on that one, so yes, you’ll still be all right for December. I’ll have to get my husband to burn it onto a CD for you. Is that all right?’
‘I’ll wait,’ says Manon.
When she lets herself in, Mark is already at the kitchen table, under a cone of light from the pendant, scrutinising his laptop, his back to her. Ellie must’ve let him in. She can hear water running upstairs. Solly’s bath.
At the sound of her clattering her keys on the side, and without turning round, Mark says, ‘Car park CCTV.’
She sees dead coffee cups, the surface of their liquid clouded with cold milk. A side plate with crumbs from demolished toast. Pens with their lids off.
‘And,’ she says, dropping her bag to the floor, ‘I’ve got CCTV from the station buffet. Turns out Jon-Oliver bought a Twix when he got off the train.’
‘Great, that’ll be fascinating to watch,’ says Mark, still without looking up at her. He is jabbing the arrow button to inch forwards on the CCTV timeline. ‘What we need to see,’ he says, pausing his words as he presses the key, ‘is who came up or down those station steps leaving those blood drips. Not that your Twix footage isn’t riveting, obviously.’
‘Yes, all right,’ says Manon. ‘Your CCTV is better than mine. Think it might be wine o’clock. Want one?’
He doesn’t reply as she opens the fridge, looks at the wine, realises sadly that she doesn’t feel like it, then closes the fridge again. She pulls a chair next to his, looking at his screen: 4.19 p.m. on the timeline. As Mark leans back to stretch out his arms above his head, she says, ‘Woah, there! There. Look at that.’
A figure in a long woollen coat, weaving across the car park towards the station steps. He appears steady at first, but then his course becomes more haphazard and on the steps he stumbles.
Mark straightens, squints at the screen, then rewinds the footage by a minute. The figure weaves up the steps unsteadily once again.
Mark is at such close proximity to Manon that they are touching, thigh to thigh. She can feel him breathing, the woody smell of cigarettes surrounding him. He presses pause on the CCTV, then looks at her. They are silent, frowning.
‘Play it again,’ she says.
They watch Jon-Oliver Ross walk across the station car park then climb the steps towards the underpass.
‘Why is he weaving?’ she asks.
‘Is he drunk?’ Mark says.
‘No, the PM said coke but not alcohol.’
They watch Ross grab the handrail at the side of the steps and stop, head down, for a moment. Then he climbs again.
Manon and Mark look at one another again. She rewinds the footage and they watch him again.
‘Wait, go back,’ says Mark. ‘There, on the steps, that’s exactly where I found the blood drips – exactly in the path he’s weaving. There was a drip on one side of a step, and then right over the other side on the next.’
‘So what if the blood is coming from him?’ she says. ‘What if he has already been stabbed at this point? Did we get a result on the blood analysis?’
Mark nods. ‘It’s Ross’s blood. So – what? – he’s just walking up the stairs with a stab wound to the heart? Come off it.’
‘I know,’ Manon says, ‘And the pathology report says he couldn’t walk anywhere, I know. And if he’d been stabbed in the station there would be about a zillion witnesses. We need something where we can see the expression on his face, get a sense of why he’s unsteady.’
‘Get your Twix footage out then, smarty pants.’ And he smiles at her in a way that makes her light up inside.
This time they are at Manon’s laptop, Mark beside her.
She watches and watches. Jon-Oliver approaches the counter of the station buffet. The camera is angled on the till and she can see Jon-Oliver’s face. He puts a Twix on the counter, rummages in his trouser pocket and hands the woman what looks like a two-pound coin, takes his change, puts it in his trouser pocket. Something in his movements is odd but she can’t work out what it is. His face seems impassive.
He isn’t brisk. That’s what it is.
‘It’s an absence of briskness,’ she says.
‘That’s a bit subtle,’ says Mark. ‘Try slowing it down.’
‘How do I do that?’
‘Here,’ he says, nudging her so that she moves aside. He sits at her laptop and clacks about too quickly for her to discern the keystrokes. They watch, together.
‘I can’t see anything on him. No marks. On his body, I mean,’ Manon says.
‘You mean there isn’t a knife sticking out of him anywhere?’
‘No, I mean, there isn’t a wound. Face looks fairly normal too.’
‘Yes but his coat—’
‘Wait,’ she says, ‘look at his chest – there.’ They watch him pick up the Twix again, from the trays of chocolate in front of him, place it on the counter silently. Jon-Oliver and the woman behind the counter do not exchange a word. His chest is rising and falling, his breathing is laboured. ‘He’s panting,’ says Manon. ‘He’s fucking panting. We need to get this to an expert,’ she says, but her phone is skittering across the kitchen table. The screen says Bryony.
‘What is it?’ Manon says irritably. ‘I can’t talk right now – can I call you back?’
‘You need to see something,’ Bryony says. ‘And I’m putting my arse on the line even telling you about it, let alone letting you see it. But something’s come into Fly’s case file which is a bit of a game changer.’
‘What?’
‘Open your email. But delete the bloody email as soon as you’ve downloaded the statement, OK? Otherwise I’ll be on traffic for the rest of my life.’
Day 24
7 January
Davy