‘What, in his suit?’

‘Yeah, it was mad. I just kind of hung around on the other side of the path not knowing where to look. He gave the guy this brown envelope or something, had a quick word and then walked off again. I asked him what was going on and it turned out this homeless guy had witnessed some incident a few nights previous. People don’t notice him because they think he’s asleep or passed out or whatever. Later on, Harry goes and arrests some other bloke and the case we’re working on is all sorted.’

‘That’s quality.’

‘I know. Things like that happened all the time but most people didn’t get to see him work.’

‘Has he told you what actually happened with . . . y’know?’

‘I’ve not spoken to him in five months. He doesn’t answer his phone and, assuming he hasn’t moved, he doesn’t open his front door either.’

‘People have been saying he didn’t cooperate with the investigation.’

‘Who knows? I think he just feels embarrassed by it all.’

‘Surely it wasn’t his fault he got stabbed?’

Jessica sighed. ‘The thing is, Dave, I just don’t know.’

Eight months ago, Harry had gone to the pub after shift for a late drink. She didn’t know for certain but Jessica assumed it was something he did most nights. In general Harry wouldn’t go near the police pubs; he preferred the ones far more dimly lit where the landlord was happy to let his clientele hang around after closing for a cheeky final drink. Or five.

The drinking never seemed to affect Harry’s work and, other than the job, there wasn’t much they had in common but Jessica had seen him mellow somewhat. After they had been working together for six months, she had even persuaded him to go to the same pub the rest of the crew went to. He had let her buy him a drink: ‘Not that Scotch shite, a proper drink, bourbon,’ is what he had told her to order.

That is exactly what he had been drinking when some boozed-up thug knifed him in a dingy pub at the end of a bright September day. He survived but spent weeks in hospital and never returned to the force. Jessica had visited him but he wasn’t the same person.

Faced with the mandatory counselling sessions before being allowed to return fully, he took early retirement. He didn’t even seem that interested in helping the police’s own investigation. Whether it was the shame of drinking himself into a vulnerable position or simply not being able to defend himself, she didn’t know.

‘From what the papers said, it sounded pretty clear cut,’ Rowlands said. ‘We got the guy’s fingerprints and the knife and everything.’

‘The prosecution are using me as a character witness at some point. I know people were saying Harry hadn’t cooperated properly with them but they didn’t tell me any of that when we met up last week.’

‘But if they’ve got the knife and everything, what else do they need?’

Jessica shrugged. ‘From what the lawyer said, the problem is the CCTV from the pub is more or less unusable. There were plenty of people in there at the time but mysteriously they all seemed to be in the toilets at the same time.’

‘Oh right, like that then.’

‘Exactly, no one wants to say anything.’

Tom Carpenter was someone who couldn’t handle his drink and happened to carry a knife in his back pocket. Regardless of the witness problems, his fingerprints had been all over the knife left sticking out of Harry’s guts. A string of low-level thefts meant they’d had no problems identifying who he was.

At the time Carpenter might not have realised he had stabbed a police officer but, when the papers and news programmes got hold of the story and started flashing his photo around, there weren’t too many places to hide and he handed himself in.

Jessica hadn’t known how to take the news when she found out. She had certainly done plenty of hard graft working with Harry but he had always been fair with her. The years of exams you had to take before getting onto CID could teach you the things you might need to be a detective but Harry had helped her become one. He had introduced her to his sources and shown her how to find her own. He told her which journalists you could trust and which ones you should nip to the public lavatories to avoid, even if they were on fire. It was almost as if he opened her eyes to the city itself.

Cole had been promoted when it was clear Harry wasn’t coming back and it was a sad fact she had almost certainly been promoted to detective sergeant to fill a gap left by him walking away. It had seemed like a quick promotion but a lack of recruitment in the local area meant sergeants were getting younger all the time. In theory it meant she got to supervise the detective constables but in practice, she still took orders and was given only slightly better jobs to do.

Jessica didn’t want to talk about things any longer. ‘You may as well get off, Dave. I’ve got a few things to sort out then I’ll be following you.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah, just sort that bloody hair out when you get home. You look ridiculous.’

Rowlands laughed. ‘You’re one to talk. It still looks as if you only got out of bed twenty minutes ago.’

‘Whatever, see you Monday.’

After the constable had left, Jessica tried phoning Harry to see how he was feeling ahead of the court case. As expected, he didn’t pick up. She had been around to his flat twice in those months too but there had been no answer. Whether he was in or not, she didn’t know. Seemingly he wasn’t in any kind of contact with anyone from the station. She sent him a text message just in case.

With little else to go on, she thought contacting a locksmith would be a good idea, just to ask how easy it could be to break through a double-glazed door or window without a key. She picked a name from the Yellow Pages classifieds and called. His advert claimed he worked ‘24/7’ – but he said he would only be available to talk to her if she had an actual job that needed doing.

In other words, he wanted a few quid.

He did reluctantly agree that he could spare her ‘a few minutes’ on his lunch break on Monday so she arranged to meet him at his house, which was a short drive from the station. Jessica could have kept ploughing through the phone book to find someone who would speak to her today but she just wasn’t in the mood any longer.

6

The next morning Jessica was sitting in her flat’s kitchen eating some toast and reading the Sunday edition of the Herald. She didn’t usually buy a newspaper but, given the phone call from the reporter the previous day, she had been out to the local shop to pick one up.

There was a small article under the main story on the front page that basically rehashed the media release she’d helped the press officer write the evening before. The officer had been ‘working from home’ so it had been a short conversation but at least the paper had played ball. Garry Ashford’s name was nowhere to be seen either and Jessica concluded he was clearly all talk. Some of the national papers had a paragraph or two on their websites but there was no way she was going to buy all the papers just to check what had gone in.

She used her phone to search the Internet for the victim’s name but it hadn’t turned up any news stories of note, certainly nothing that related to the case. At least that meant the department were still on top of things and she wasn’t going to have to explain to the DCI why his television appearance would be upstaged.

As she was reading, her flatmate Caroline came into the kitchen wearing a white dressing gown and fluffy pink slippers that looked like piglets.

‘Morning,’ Jessica said. ‘I didn’t think you’d be up this early. I tried to be quiet, not that it would make much difference.’