Page 68 of Carbon

“I spoke to her earlier, but she changed her story ten times in half an hour. The only consistent part was where a brown-eyed stranger showed up and they had sex. First he had blonde hair, then brown hair, and the location changed from the lounge to the bedroom to the back of his car. When I questioned that, she admitted they might have done it more than once in the course of the night. Gut feeling? She’s a troubled young woman who’s attention seeking.”

“Okay, so we’ll leave that one to the police,” Black decided. “It doesn’t sound like it impacts our investigation, and from what we’ve found, Beau Davies doesn’t have a car.”

“His phone records don’t show a lot either,” Luke said. “He called the pizza place every Friday, Mrs. Fordham on occasion, a DIY store in the next town, the local garage—”

“The garage?” Nye and Black said at the same time, as Luke put the list up on the screen.

“Yes, Sandlebury Motors.”

Nye smiled, and it made me nervous. “Reckon he took his bike in for repair?”

“Let’s hope so,” Dev said, tapping away on a tablet in front of him. “I’ll get someone to take a trip out there.”

“I’ll go,” Emmy offered.

“You?”

“Why not?”

Meanwhile, Black had been staring at the phone records. “You know what’s missing from there?”

“Calls to his family?” Luke suggested.

“The police report said Davies texted Angelica to meet him in the pool house at eleven. Where’s that message?”

All heads swivelled to the screen. Sure enough, it was conspicuous by its absence. And what’s more, his texts to me weren’t on there either, which meant Beau had a second phone.

“Did it get sent from that number?” the man with the beard asked, nodding at the screen.

“Hang on...” Luke began flicking through documents on the screen until an image of a phone display appeared. One message, no preamble, no reply.If you want a good time, meet me in the pool house at eleven. Beau.“Yes, same number.”

“But Davies didn’t send it?”

Silence fell for a few seconds before Luke spoke up again. “Somebody could have spoofed it.”

“How convincing is that?”

Luke typed away, and the phone on the table next to bearded guy buzzed. He picked it up, read the message, and burst into laughter.

“Sorry, Xav, you’re not my type,” he said to the man sitting next to him.

Xav held his hand out for the phone, then chuckled too. “Is that even possible? You’d have to be a contortionist.”

Luke cut in. “Logan, if you received that message, what would you have thought?”

“That Xav needed therapy.”

“I meant about its origins.”

“Well, yeah, it’s from Xav, isn’t it?”

Black looked thoughtful. “So, we’ve established that it’s straightforward to spoof a message, and if all the other clues are screaming that a man’s guilty, the police aren’t going to look for evidence to the contrary.”

The dark-haired girl spoke for only the second time. “You think there’s a chance he might not be guilty?”

“I think not everything about this case is as it seems. But our primary objective remains the same: find Beau Davies.”

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