‘What about the night Damon died?’ she added.

This time, Holden looked at her directly, holding his arms out to the side. ‘I really don’t know anything about that. After hell week, that’s it – we get on with the rest of the year. We hold elections for the new student president in March or April and I would have been graduating. I don’t know anything about his death. Everything I told you is true – I didn’t see him after around an hour of the party. I think he left.’

‘There were drink and drugs in his system. What if we’ve been speaking to someone who’s told us they came from you?’

Finally, Holden’s solicitor cut in: ‘You don’t have to answer that.’

His client responded anyway: ‘They’d be lying because I didn’t. I don’t know what happened to him. It was just a party and I had things to organise on the night.’

‘I want the names of the other people involved in the assaults.’

Holden shook his head in a show of baffling loyalty.

Jessica waited for a moment, wondering what to say. It wasn’t often she was lost for words but eventually they came: ‘Why have you told us all of this?’

‘It’s the truth.’

‘Okay, say it is. We’ve heard these sorts of allegations from at least one other club member and I’m pretty sure we’d have got evidence soon enough about everything that went on behind closed doors at your club. Chances are, we’d have ended up in this room anyway and I would’ve been putting all these allegations to you. But it wouldn’t have happened today, perhaps not even tomorrow. So why admit to everything now?’

Holden’s eyes flickered to his solicitor and Jessica knew that this was a question the legal representative had asked himself. When Holden peered back, he held Jessica’s gaze. ‘Because I know how it looks but it wasn’t me who killed him, dumped him, or did anything else. James Jefferies called me, asking if I knew anything about Damon. He said that if I did, then I should step forward.’

‘Why did he tell you that?’

‘He’s probably seen things on the news and wants to protect the club. I might’ve done a few silly things but I didn’t do that.’

‘Do you know who did?’

‘No.’

‘Could it have been any of the other members who didn’t realise the hazing was over?’

‘No.’

With that, there was little else to say. Jessica called for one of the officers to take him back to the cells downstairs while they decided what to do with him.

Jessica led Archie back to her office while she tried to clarify her thoughts. By the time they sat down, he beat her to it: ‘What do you think?’

It was the kind of thing she would have asked a supervising officer when she was a gobby young pup. ‘How about you tell me what you think?’ she responded.

‘He might be a snooty, toffee-nosed tosser but I think he’s telling the truth. The job would be a lot easier if everyone took responsibility for the things they did. It sort of makes sense – I spoke to a few people, so someone would’ve told him. Plus he looks up to that Jefferies Olympic guy. There’s no way he would have been able to keep everyone quiet, and the minute one breaks, they all would. We’d have had him strung up by the bollocks sooner or later.’

Quite.

‘What else?’ Jessica asked.

‘He’s not an idiot. If he killed Damon, even accidentally, why would he have dumped the body in the bin outside the place where he’d get asked about it? He could’ve lumped it in the river and it would have floated down stream. Or buried it somewhere else in the park. Or taken it anywhere.’

‘Perhaps because he knew the bins were supposed to be emptied the next day? The only reason they weren’t was because of the strike.’

‘Pfft. He also knew the cleaners would come the next day. He might have done all those other things but I don’t think he knew anything about our lad ending up in that bin.’

Archie raised an eyebrow, wondering what Jessica thought, but her tight smile said it all: she agreed with him completely.

15

Before they decided whether to charge Holden with anything now, or bail him to return to the station in a few days, Jessica knew she needed to get some advice. She also had nine local scroats apparently on their way in to the station to deal with too, plus a colleague who’d been with her all afternoon who wasn’t actually on duty.

Out in reception, the desk sergeant, Patrick – or Fat Pat to everyone who knew him – was two-thirds of the way through a family-sized packet of steak-flavoured crisps, barely concealed under the counter.

‘Let’s have one then,’ Jessica said.

Frowning, Pat reluctantly pulled the bag out and offered it to her, gripping the bottom half tightly so she couldn’t go delving. As soon as her hand was withdrawn with a broken crisp, he snatched the bag away again, returning it to the hiding place.

‘What are you doing in?’ he asked, nodding at Archie. ‘He’s helping me,’ Jessica interrupted with her mouth full. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll sort the overtime. Now there should be nine scumbags hanging around here somewhere. Where are they?’

Pat’s eyebrows curved downwards into one long caterpillar. ‘Haven’t you heard?’

‘Heard what?’

He grinned in the way he always did when he knew things others didn’t. ‘Loads of officers have been moved away from investigating the Cassie Edmonds death so we’ve got enough people to interview the rowing-club members.’

Pat reached for another crisp, eyebrows leaping into two separate entities again, apparently in surprise that she didn’t know.

‘We’ve already spoken to the rowing lot once.’

He shrugged and munched at the same time. ‘Dnt sk mmf.’

‘What?’

He finished chomping his way through the crisp. ‘New priorities – don’t ask me.’

‘Who authorised it?’

Pat raised his index finger skywards, indicating DCI Jack Cole. ‘Who do you think?’

After telling Archie to wait for her, Jessica headed for the stairs, trying not to make it seem so obvious that she hadn’t known anything about it. The chief inspector had every right to make such a decision – but it would be rare for that to happen without a discussion involving her, or a word in her ear at the very least.

Through the glass front of his office, Jessica could see Cole sitting behind his desk talking to someone on the phone. She knocked gently but he held a hand up, indicating for her to wait. It wasn’t necessarily untoward – there was every chance he was on a private or confidential phone call – but it left Jessica standing by herself in the corridor, leaning on the wall opposite staring at a mixture of her own reflection and Cole’s silent conversation. As he spoke, he glanced up towards her, catching her eye for the merest fraction of a second and then quickly looking away again. He had aged dramatically over the past couple of years, with the break-up of his marriage, shared custody of the children and pressures of his role taking their toll.

Then there was their own relationship.

Izzy had been right: Cole had seemed to have some sort of problem with her over recent months but had never told her specifically what it was. He was the reason she had returned to the force when she wasn’t sure if that was what she wanted to do with her life. It was he who was instrumental in her promotion, and in getting Izzy the detective sergeant’s job on a trial basis. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know the way she worked – he’d been out on jobs with her enough – so why now?

Jessica watched him spin in his chair until he was facing the wall away from her, the light catching the bald spot on his head.

Check phone, put it away again. Run fingers through hair – why is it always knotty in that same area at the back? Straighten trousers. Trace the line of bricks in the wall – is there meant to be a crack there? Wonder what might be for tea tonight. Has it always been so quiet up here? You can’t even hear the bustle of everyone downstairs; perhaps this isn’t such a bad spot to work after all—