Madness on the Island by Stewart Giles

Author:Stewart Giles [Giles, Stewart]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: STILLBooks
Published: 2024-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

The first thing on the agenda at the morning briefing was the break-in at Jacob Hunt’s warehouse. DI Peters was convinced it was an inside job – someone who had a key to the outer door had tried to make it look like a break-in and they hadn’t done a very good job of it, and this is what O’Reilly decided to discuss first.

“If Jim Peters suspects this was designed to look like someone had broken in,” he said. “I’m inclined to take his word for it. The metal door was damaged, but the locking system was in the open position. Someone used a key to get inside that warehouse.”

“Do we know who has a key for that door?” DS Skinner said.

“According to Melissa Paul, only she, Billy Foot and Jacob Hunt are in possession of the keys. Melissa is the manager, so it’s logical that she’ll have a key. Ditto with Jacob – it’s his warehouse, but I can’t understand why the stinky forklift truck driver would have a key.”

“Stinky forklift driver?” DC Stone repeated.

“You’ll understand when you meet him, Andy. We’ll be bringing in Mr Foot and Mrs Paul during the course of the morning.”

“Shouldn’t we be focusing on the murder investigation?” DS Skinner said.

“This is part of that investigation,” O’Reilly told him. “Someone went to a lot of trouble to make sure we didn’t get hold of the CCTV footage from the warehouse, and that makes me wonder if there is something on it that they really didn’t want us to see.”

“The footage from the cameras isn’t backed up onto a Cloud,” DC Owen said.

“I thought all CCTV was sent directly to Cloud storage these days,” DS Skinner said.

“Only if you pay a subscription,” DC Owen said. “And apparently Jacob Hunt didn’t. Everything those cameras caught disappeared with the computer equipment stolen from the office.”

“How much was taken?” DS Skinner said.

“All the electronic devices were missing,” O’Reilly said.

“Including the external hard drives and all the peripherals,” DC Owen said.

“That means they were probably in a vehicle,” DS Skinner said.

“It’s safe to assume they were,” O’Reilly said.

“What about CCTV in nearby businesses? The warehouse that distributes the wine is in a part of the island where there are other similar buildings close by. We might get lucky with the cameras from one of those.”

“It’s worth a try.” O’Reilly didn’t sound very convinced. “I’ll put some uniforms on it. Andy.”

“Sir?” DC Stone said.

“You wanted to discuss a theory you’d come up with.”

“This might sound a bit farfetched,” DC Stone began.

“Farfetched is better than nothing,” DS Skinner said.

“I thought hard about the murders last night,” DC Stone said. “I did come up with a theory about it being about money, but that doesn’t apply to half of them. But there was something that jumped out at me. None of the people who carried out the murders claim to have any memory of it. I don’t buy that. We have four separate murders carried out by four people who don’t know each other, and all four of them can’t remember doing what they did.

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