Jessica almost always felt confident in an interview room and trusted her instincts but now she felt lost for words. She wanted to say the name ‘Donald McKenna’ and ask if it meant anything but, at the same time, the last thing she wanted to do was give the man information he might not know.

Cole must have sensed her unease and spoke next. ‘What do you think the DNA test results are going to tell us, Mr Hancock?’

‘I know they’ll tell you I’m the man you’ve been looking for.’

‘Why are you so sure we haven’t already matched it to someone else?’ Cole asked.

It was the exact question Jessica should have asked and she didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to her. If the man had any doubts, he didn’t show them. ‘Why are you so sure your results are correct?’

It was a fairly cryptic thing to say. Was he simply feeding from what Cole had said or was he implying that he knew their results had thrown up someone unlikely?

‘What do you mean, Mr Hancock?’ Cole demanded.

‘You tell me.’

The two men stared at each other.

‘What type of knife did you use?’ Jessica asked, breaking the impasse.

‘Just a regular kitchen one. It’s still in my house if you want to get it. I had to wash it because I used it to chop some vegetables up yesterday but it’s still in the kitchen. It has a metal handle and is at the back of the knife rack next to the draining board. It’s not the biggest one, the one next to that. When I came in, they searched me and took everything I brought in. If you go through those things, there’s a door key – just take that and let yourselves in. If there are any problems, my next-door neighbour has a key too. I’ve got his just for emergencies.’

Jessica could feel Cole’s eyes on her and turned to look at him. He gave the merest nod to indicate the interview was over and then spoke the formal words for the recording. The officer was called back inside to escort the man back to the cells below the station.

As soon as he was out of the room, Jessica turned to her superior. ‘What do you think now?’

Cole shook his head. ‘I honestly don’t know. He’s either for real or someone with a perfect memory who just happens to be one of the best liars I’ve ever met.’

It was pretty much the only way Jessica could have described him. Almost all of the details he had given them had been released by the media in some form but remembering them all down to the smallest detail took some doing. He had even filled in small gaps, such as the prison warden smuggling in phones, something which had been alluded to but certainly not reported entirely as fact. If he were a fantasist, he was a first-class one.

‘What are we going to do?’

‘Check with Farraday. Even with this guy’s keys and permission we’ll still need a warrant to make it legal. If we get his mouth swabs straight off to the labs, they can start their tests while we go check his place out.’

‘Have you ever known someone offer you the keys to search their house?’

‘Only after we’ve smashed the door in.’

‘How long do you think we’ve got?’

‘We have the usual twenty-four hours without charge but the super will give us an extra twelve if we have to wait for the lab results. If they’re not back by then for whatever reason, we can always go to the magistrates for a few more days. It’s all going to come down to forensics anyway.’

Cole went to talk with Farraday to make sure a warrant could be quickly put in place as Jessica arranged a team to take to Graham Hancock’s property. She and Cole would be going, along with a couple of uniformed officers and some members from the Scene of Crime squad. They would be in charge of collecting anything that could be needed for evidence. It took a couple of hours but everything was in place by mid-afternoon and Jessica ended up letting everyone into the house after borrowing the door key from the house next door, exactly as their suspect had suggested. Legally, taking the key that had been confiscated from him at the station could cause problems because that property had to be locked away and shouldn’t be tampered with.

Jessica knew instantly their job wasn’t going to be as simple as she’d hoped. As she opened a door, she took a step back because of the smell, exchanging looks with one of the other officers as if to ask, ‘What is that?’

She grimaced but walked across the threshold. The cream wallpaper in the hallway had turned brown at the bottom and was peeling. She couldn’t even tell what colour the carpet was as it was barely visible. A bicycle was leant across a door at the opposite end of the hall and various electrical parts and broken plastic toys were left everywhere she could see. She led the way in, stepping over the various items and trying not to trip.

The hallway led into a living room and Jessica gasped as she entered. The curtains were shut and there was minimal light seeping through. She walked over and swished them open, turning around. To her left were row after row of newspapers stacked from the floor to the ceiling. They ran the full width of the room and halfway down the length too. There were thousands of publications. She moved further into the room, allowing others to enter. On her right was a television that looked older than she was. There were dials on the front and a chunky remote control that was connected to the set via a bundled-up wire on the floor in front of it. There was only one chair in the room, a battered brown armchair with light yellow foam spilling out of the side.

The smell was almost overpowering but Jessica blinked through it and walked over to the nearest pile of papers. She took a set of rubber gloves out of her jacket pocket and put them on, turning over the publication on top. It was a national newspaper from the previous day and sat on top of one from the day before that. Jessica put them back down and reached up high to take a paper from the next stack. It had a date from three years ago and the one directly under it was from the day immediately prior.

It seemed clear Graham Hancock had been storing newspapers each day for a very long time. She put the two papers back where she had got them from and then walked over to the very first stack, standing on the tips of her toes to reach two more from the top of the pile. They were both dated from consecutive days twenty-seven years earlier.

She showed them to Cole, shaking her head. ‘This is unbelievable.’

Jessica again returned the papers to the stack and walked through to the kitchen. The Scene of Crime officers had already put the knives into evidence bags and were looking through the rest of the drawers.

The smell was certainly stronger in the kitchen and Jessica saw why. Resting against the back door was a pile of rotting food, with maggots and small flies on the top. She quickly turned around and walked back into the living room. Cole was crouched down, unwrapping a balled-up piece of paper that had been left on the floor. ‘We’ll never get through all of this,’ Jessica said. ‘This guy hoards everything, be it newspapers or leftover food.’

Cole dropped the paper back on the floor and hunched further over to pick up another ball of paper from the ground. He started to open it out as Jessica continued speaking. ‘Unless there’s some dead body under the bed upstairs I have no idea what we’re going to get from this place. I just hope his DNA comes back as a match for . . . something. God knows how McKenna fits into it all.’

She tailed off as she saw Cole’s expression. ‘What?’ she said. The DI reached back across for the first piece of paper and held both sheets up for her to see. The pages had been torn from a lined notebook and the horizontal guides clashed with the crumples in the paper. On both pages was a beautifully drawn pencil illustration, the likeness terrifyingly perfect.

It was a picture of Jessica.