‘Did Mills do it?’

‘Her neighbour? He’s been stabbed too but he’s alive in intensive care. It was his girlfriend who called us.’

Jessica stared at the inspector, unable to understand what he was saying. ‘So they’ve both been stabbed?’

‘Yes.’

‘But why would someone hurt Carrie?’

‘I don’t know.’

A slow realisation came across Jessica and she sank backwards onto a plastic seat, looking down at the floor. ‘You don’t think . . . this vigilante guy was going after Mills?’

Cole looked back at her. The thought had obviously crossed his mind but he didn’t want to say anything. Jessica stood straight back up again. ‘Where’s Farraday?’

‘Pacing around outside of John Mills’s intensive care ward at the moment. The last thing I saw he was shouting at the nurse because the victim was in a coma and unable to talk to us.’

‘He’s already here?’

‘Yes, one of the paramedics said he had arrived at the scene as they were leaving and then followed them here. He called me.’

‘He was at the scene?’

‘Jessica, I don’t know. You have to slow down.’

She wasn’t listening to him though. ‘Which direction is intensive care?’

Cole looked at her with obvious concern. ‘I think you should go home. I shouldn’t have called you.’

Jessica wasn’t ready to listen. She spun around, banged back through the double doors and started reading a sign on the wall opposite. With an arrow giving her a vague direction, Jessica walked as quickly as she could down the corridor. The signs led her up some stairs and down more corridors. Given the time of the morning, there weren’t too many other people around the passageways and she quickened her pace.

Farraday’s behaviour had been troubling her for a while and Carrie’s death had brought everything colliding together. She knew she was feeling emotional but a very clear picture was emerging in her head. Everything that had hindered the case came down to her boss. She was as certain as she could be that it was him who leaked details about the prison warden to the media claiming he was corrupt.

It was him who wrongly put Robert Graves on the list of the vigilante’s victims – and allowed the e-fit of Daniel Wilkin to be associated with it. It was even him who let the branding ‘vigilante’ stick.

He was the one who wanted more ‘shits’ off the streets, he took Cole off the case, even though he was her superior, and he had been seen arguing with Carrie the afternoon before she had been killed.

Jessica didn’t know how he had done it or why. She had no idea what his connection was to Donald McKenna but it was as clear as it could be to her that Farraday was somehow involved in what had been going on. She knew it sounded utterly irrational on the surface but it explained so much. Was the reason he was so desperate to see John Mills because the man in a coma could identify him?

After a few minutes of walking, she pushed her way through another set of double doors into a waiting room. Straight ahead of her was Farraday, pacing the area himself. He stopped and looked at her as the doors banged against their frames. ‘Daniel?’

Jessica immediately realised she had no idea what she was doing. She couldn’t jump in and accuse him of being a part of what had gone on in recent weeks. She stumbled over what to say. ‘Sir . . . I . . .’

His eyes were fuelled with anger but she didn’t know who it was aimed at. ‘He’s still unconscious,’ he said.

‘Who? Mills?’

‘Yes. The doctor says he’s stable but they don’t know if he’ll wake up.’

‘Do you know what happened?’

The man was gazing through her. ‘How would I know?’

‘I don’t . . . Jack said you were there?’

Jessica saw his eyes bring her properly into focus. ‘Who told . . . ?’ He moved quickly from standing on one foot to the other, grunting in frustration before quickly striding past her. As he neared the door, he turned around and shouted over his shoulder. ‘I want to know the second he wakes up. No one speaks to him before me.’

His reaction confused Jessica even more but, before she could begin to think about things further, she noticed a woman sitting in the corner of the room. Despite the way Farraday had raised his voice the woman seemingly hadn’t moved and was sat on a bolted-down chair holding her knees up to her chest, gazing at the floor.

‘Hello?’ Jessica said, walking towards her.

The woman said nothing. She looked in her early twenties with long shiny black hair tied into a ponytail and would have been very attractive if it hadn’t been for the tear-stained black eye she was sporting. ‘Are you all right?’ Jessica asked.

The woman spoke without looking up from the ground. ‘Just leave me alone.’

‘Are you John Mills’s girlfriend?’

‘Are you deaf? I said leave me alone.’

‘I’m Jessica.’

‘You’re a pig is what you are.’

Jessica sat opposite the woman, wriggling into the chair to get comfortable. The row of hardened seats were screwed onto thick metal bars that were bolted into the ground and offered little relief except for thin pads underneath and behind her.

‘Whoever stabbed your boyfriend killed my friend.’

The woman said nothing for almost a minute before finally spitting her words out. ‘I already spoke to someone at the house and told them everything. I’m not talking to you too.’

Jessica knew she could read the statement when she got back to the station but there was one thing she wanted to ask which definitely wouldn’t have been brought up by the officers at the scene. ‘Perhaps I’ve got better questions?’

The woman snorted with mock laughter and finally looked across at Jessica, putting her feet down onto the floor. ‘Fine, here you go. No, I didn’t see anything. No, I didn’t hear anything until the girl screamed and, by the time I got out there, it was just them. No, I don’t know who might want to harm John. No, I don’t know why your girl was on our drive and no, I don’t know why she had no shoes on. Yes, I called you straight away and, finally, yes, I walked into a door. Now piss off.’

It sounded pathetic but Jessica could only think of one thing.

‘She wasn’t wearing shoes . . . ?’

Whether it was the tone of her voice, she wasn’t sure but Jessica glanced up to see the woman staring directly at her.

She was running her fingers through her long hair and letting it fall back over and over. Her manner had changed again by the time she spoke next. ‘I know she was one of yours but I’ll always remember the red of the blood and the blue of her dress.’ The woman sighed loudly and looked back at the floor. ‘Her shoes were on her own pathway with her bag or something like that. I only know because I heard one of them talking. It was dark and then they took me inside to talk.’

Jessica took a deep breath. ‘The man who just stormed out of here, was he there?’

‘What, afterwards? He was the one directing people.’

‘But before that, did you see him?’

The woman looked back at the floor. ‘I’m not doing your job for you.’

Jessica could tell straight away the moment was lost. She wasn’t sure what she had expected. Cole had told her Farraday was at the incident. It was the first time she had known him go to a crime scene but it was likely he would have been the first call when the dead body’s identity was discovered by the paramedics or responding officers.

She wondered if he was already there somewhere, watching and waiting for his phone to ring. Jessica stood and stepped closer to the woman. As she was leaving her flat, her business cards had been next to her identification and she had picked them up just in case. She took one out of her pocket and put it on the seat next to the woman. ‘Just in case you do want to talk.’

She turned around and walked back out of the waiting room, heading downstairs towards the room Cole had been outside of. As she approached the double doors, she was almost hit by Cole pushing them out towards her. She stepped backwards quickly to avoid them and he did the exact same thing.