‘We should nick the lot of them and sling ’em downstairs until someone talks.’

Jessica sighed. ‘Don’t think I haven’t thought about it. I’ll call you later, okay?’

‘Am I allowed to say “no”?’

‘Yes, I’ll still call but . . .’ Jessica paused, wondering how best to phrase it. In the end, she settled for the simplest way. ‘. . . thanks for working on your days off.’

Archie didn’t reply for a moment but when he did, he was laughing. ‘Stop being so soft or I’ll have to tell everyone you’re not such a cow after all.’

12

Now they had CCTV footage of Cassie from Thursday night, Jessica, Izzy and DC Dave Rowlands headed into the centre of the city for a poke-around. After a period where the three of them seemed to work together on everything, it was rare that happened nowadays. Part of that was down to Jessica’s promotion, but because of a scandal over policing standards that had been brewing through the summer, and a report that was due early the next year, anything that looked like it could be a clique suddenly seemed a dangerous thing. For once, Jessica thought ‘sod it’ and decided she wanted to surround herself with people she trusted.

Following the usual bickering over who was driving, Dave’s protestations that everyone was calling him Bin Boy, and Izzy’s explanation of how she hadn’t had time to look into non-permanent tattoos, they parked and walked the route Cassie and her friends had taken. After heading along Tib Street, they crossed to the cocktail bar and then made their way onto Great Ancoats Street, where Jade and Cassie had argued close to the taxis. The last image of the murdered girl had been crossing the road next to the comedy club and heading onto Oldham Road. The theory was that, with her Failsworth flat three miles down the road, Cassie had decided to walk.

Jessica tried to take in as much of the surroundings as she could: initially a row of slightly rundown shops and takeaways on the right and an elaborate Chinese on the left, then, a little further down, an elaborate six-storey red-brick building on the right, an Oriental supermarket on the left and roadworks.

In the centre of the road, red and white signs read ‘road ahead closed’, as if the row of knocked-over orange traffic cones, horizontal striped barriers and the hole in the ground stretching across four lanes didn’t give it away. Still, some drivers would likely try to follow their sat navs straight through the makeshift obstruction into the ditch.

On one side, there was a stretch of three boarded-up shops next to a billboard and a covered-over bus-stop sign, with a long red-brick building on the other. Mustard-yellow boards signalled a diversion, with an arrow pointing into one of the side streets. At night, the whole area would have looked particularly bleak, even for Manchester.

With it being a little after ten in the morning, Jessica wasn’t entirely surprised to see a group of workmen in bright jackets standing around chatting, drinking tea, flicking through newspapers and looking at their phones. They must have been working for at least half an hour, so it was time for a break, after all. Give it an hour and they’d be off for lunch.

Jessica left Izzy and Dave taking photographs and approached the one who looked like he was in charge – or, in other words, the fattest one. He was just starting to tuck into a sausage roll fresh from a Greggs paper bag when she interrupted him mid-bite. ‘Are you in charge?’

‘Mmmf,’ he replied, straightening up as flaked pastry tumbled from his lips. She waited as he continued to chew, squidges of pale pink sausage oozing between his teeth and sticking there. ‘Sorry, darling, we’ll be right back on it. Just a quick five-minute rest. Back-breaking stuff, this.’

Jessica held up her identification for him to see. ‘I’m from the police.’

A look of relief flashed across his face. ‘Oh, right, sorry – I thought you were from the council.’

‘How long have these roadworks being going on?’

Before answering, he took another bite of his sausage roll, whirring a hand close to his face as he chewed. Somehow a scrap of pastry had found its way into his nostril and it fluttered distractingly as he spoke. ‘This is the start of week three. We’re resurfacing the entire stretch.’

‘And what sort of hours do you work?’

9 a.m.: Arrive and chat.

9.30 a.m.: Unload equipment from van.

10 a.m.: Morning break.

10.30 a.m.: Start digging as long as it isn’t too rainy, windy, snowy, sunny, warm or cold.

11.30 a.m.: Lunch.

1 p.m.: Continue digging as long as it isn’t too rainy, windy, snowy, sunny, warm or cold.

2.30 p.m.: Afternoon break.

3.30 p.m.: Start packing up.

4 p.m.: Knock-off.

‘We normally start at around seven,’ the foreman claimed.

‘What about finishing?’

‘Six? Sometimes seven?’

‘Is there any night-working at all – say after ten?’

He spluttered: ‘You’re ’avin’ a laugh, luv. Council don’t want to pay for that.’

‘Weekends?’

Another munch of the sausage roll: ‘Nah, you’ve gotta have some time to yourself.’

‘So between six in the evening and seven in the morning, there’s no one here?’

‘Right.’

Jessica suspected that it was more likely between around four in the afternoon and nine in the morning but it didn’t make much difference – the key thing was that this area would have been unoccupied at the time Cassie walked past it late on Thursday. With all the shadows created by the boarded-up shops and surrounding barriers for the roadworks, it would have left multiple places where someone could have hidden before grabbing her. From where she was standing Jessica could see at least half-a-dozen spots. She thanked the man for his time and then returned to Dave and Izzy, who had reached much the same conclusion as she had. Behind and in front of them, there were bright street lights, through traffic, flats and shops; here it was gloomy and shaded.

Although they might never have it confirmed, as the workmen laughed at a joke she hadn’t heard, Jessica knew instinctively that this was the spot from which Cassie had been abducted.

With a narrow width of tarmac, Tib Street was a one-way, third-of-a-mile-long throughway connecting the centre of Manchester with the main road leading in and out. Tall buildings created long shadows and with boarded-up shops, graffiti, small bars, a chippy and a hydroponics shop that definitely didn’t sell wacky baccy, it was the type of place that chain stores didn’t want to be a part of, while entrepreneurs smelled the chance for an opening into a big city. A complex web of small side streets linked it to the Northern Quarter on one side and a shortcut to the Manchester Arena and Printworks cinema and restaurant complex on the other.

Metal-shuttered cubbies and an array of cheap flats provided the perfect haven for artistic types, meaning that as the three officers weaved their way back towards the car, they passed a pair of tattoo shops within a couple of hundred metres. By the time they reached the third, Jessica couldn’t resist the lure any longer, stopping and turning to Izzy. ‘Which one do you want to go in?’

‘What for?’

‘You know why. Pick one – there’s a bunch right here.’

‘What if I didn’t bring the photo of the robber with me?’

‘I know you did. If I had to guess, you’ve got half-a-dozen copies in the car just in case.’

Dave laughed as Izzy admitted that was the exact number.

‘Why don’t we pick a shop each?’ Dave suggested. ‘We can ask about non-permanent tattoos and what someone might have used to create something that can be rubbed off. If they seem like they know what they’re on about, we can show the photo.’