‘It was almost like it was someone else, like a movie or something. I don’t know what happened,’ he said.

He told them about the nightmares he’d had since and how, because of the e-fit, his mates had joked he was the vigilante. They knew he wasn’t of course because he had been out with them on the dates the other victims had been killed. He felt guilty he had got away with it but had kept quiet. Then he had got home from a student bar the previous night and saw his face again on an Internet news site but this time they knew what he had done.

‘I wanted to hand myself in,’ he added. ‘I even went to call the number you put up but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I . . . I’ve never been in trouble before. I’d not even been in a fight until then.’

Jessica found it hard not to feel sorry for him. He had initially been a victim but had completely overreacted. Jessica thought he would probably end up on a manslaughter charge as opposed to murder but two lives had been ended that night.

He was led back to the cells and would be in front of magistrates in the morning. Jessica was applauded as she walked back onto the main office floor but didn’t feel like taking people’s praise. Cole told her he would deal with Farraday and that she should enjoy the night. Tomorrow they would both get to work on figuring out who killed Craig Millar, Benjamin Webb, Desmond Hughes and Lee Morgan.

Back in their office, Reynolds gave her a hug and told her he was determined to push on with his case, if only to get a justice of sorts for Robert Graves’s parents. ‘I’ll let you off that tenner too,’ he added.

Jessica went back through to the canteen to find DCs Row lands and Jones. ‘Hey, are you two still off to the quiz later?’

‘Yep, are you gonna come embarrass yourself?’ Rowlands said.

‘Yes and I’m going to bring my boyfriend too.’ Jessica didn’t even wait for any witty comebacks, turning and walking towards her car. She had three phone calls to make.

The first was to Adam to make sure he was interested in going to the pub quiz. Then she phoned Garry and talked him through the day’s events. She felt she owed him one if only for listening to her in the supermarket car park and gave him a full exclusive. Other publications would get the standard lines from the press office but he would end up looking the most impressive.

The final call was simply to check if the people she wanted to visit were in. They were and invited her round so she drove the few miles to their house. It was the one job she promised herself she would do without any help.

Arthur Graves answered his front door and invited her in. Jessica knew they would be upset with what she had to tell them but it would be as much closure as they could hope to get.

21

The killer hadn’t enjoyed the previous week or so. His project had been going well and then they had started accusing him of murdering someone he didn’t know. It was an insult to what he was trying to achieve. Three druggie scumbags and a bent prison warden had been removed from the streets and then they started saying he had taken out some kid who hadn’t done any real harm.

Until the newsreader had given the boy’s name, the killer hadn’t even known who he was. It was a complete disgrace to his legacy and he had stopped working his way through the list in protest. But then, last night, finally the police retracted their accusations, admitting somebody else had killed the boy and leaving him with the credit he deserved.

He didn’t know if it was a deliberate game but he had spent the day smiling and trying not to let on to those around him.

That night he could get back to work.

The killer had enjoyed the news bulletins and papers over the past couple of weeks. There were a few people that couldn’t get their heads around what he was trying to achieve but a decent amount were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. They knew there were people who could only act like animals and had to be put down as such.

He looked through the list of names he had made. Three people at the top and one three-quarters of the way down had been crossed out. At first he had thought he would work his way through them in order, from the easiest to the hardest.

Millar had been no problem whatsoever. He was just a big mouth who stayed safe through the number of people he kept around him. Without them, he was always going to be the first to go.

Webb and Hughes had been part-impulse, part-necessity. He had been planning to deal with them one at a time but had then seen them swaying their way down the road and simply acted. If sober they would have been near the bottom of the list given their brutality but, from what he had seen, they were both keen drinkers.

The warden had been a special case. Originally he would have been near the bottom of the list, not because he would be physically hard to despatch, simply because of the attention it would have brought to the mission. Unfortunately certain police officers were getting a little too close for comfort and at least with the warden out of the picture it showed he was willing to go to any lengths.

There were five names left on the killer’s list. All of them deserved exactly what was coming to them: drug dealers, rapists, those who were a little too handy with their fists and others who put money above anything else.

The next name would be interesting, although a bit of a challenge. The next victim truly was a wolf in sheep’s clothing who couldn’t keep his hands to himself.

22

She wouldn’t have predicted it beforehand but Jessica was actually looking forward to a night out at the pub quiz Rowlands had invited her to. He lived near the edge of the student area of the city and the pub contained a mix of young professionals like them, students and the locals.

Jessica was always fascinated by the regulars who went to the same pub day after day regardless of who owned it. She would often look for them, either sitting at the bar with a pint of cheap bitter or occasionally feeding pound coins into the fruit machines. She couldn’t get her head around how some people’s lives literally revolved around getting up, going to the pub, then going home.

The place itself was what she would have expected. The ceilings were low and parts of the floor were sticky from either spilled drinks that hadn’t been cleaned up or something she would rather not know about. It reminded Jessica of her younger days when she and Caroline were more interested in the price of a drink than the fancy decor.

Dave was at the pub on his own when Jessica arrived with Adam. After visiting the Graveses, she had gone home to clear her head. She couldn’t switch from something so serious into either going back to the station or meeting up with friends. She changed into a clean pair of jeans and one of her favourite going-out tops, which hadn’t been worn in well over a year. Adam had caught the train to the station closest to her flat and they had both taken a taxi together to the pub.

When they arrived, Jessica had quickly spotted Rowlands sitting in a booth off to the side, guarding it by stretching himself across the seat in case anyone else tried to sit down. ‘Thank God you’re here,’ he said. ‘I’ve been dying for the toilet but didn’t want to lose the seats.’

He stood and offered his hand for Adam to shake. ‘You must be Adam. I’m Dave. Apart from your name, which someone else told me, I’ve heard absolutely nothing about you.’

All three of them laughed together and Dave disappeared towards the back of the pub. Jessica and Adam sat in the booth.