‘I was just leaving,’ he said. ‘They’re taking the body back to the labs to do the tests.’

‘So was she alive in the ambulance?’

‘I guess so; she wouldn’t have been brought here otherwise.’

‘Sorry, of course. I’m not thinking clearly this morning.’

‘I’m going to go home for a bit and then I’ll be back at the station in an hour or so. You should go home too.’

‘Maybe.’

Jessica had no intention of going anywhere except for the station.

The sun was beginning to come up as Jessica drove along the nearly deserted roads from the hospital to Longsight. She kept to the speed limits for the second journey and felt guilty about her selfishness earlier on. Given her state of mind and the speed she had driven at, she could have ended up causing harm not only to herself but someone else through her recklessness. Her mind was still in overdrive, not knowing if her suspicions of Farraday were irrational and down to shock, or if Carrie’s death had instead given her the jolt needed to put the pieces together.

Finding out what had happened the night before would be crucial. DC Jones had been found on John Mills’s property so was he the target and the officer had been killed accidentally, or was something else going on? Until Mills woke up, she was unlikely to know.

Although it was early and most officers would still be at home, Jessica could sense the atmosphere of sadness and anger as she walked into the station’s reception. The overnight desk sergeant asked if she had any updates on what exactly happened but Jessica shook her head. ‘Do you know if we’ve had a list of things recovered from the scene yet?’ she asked.

‘No idea. I know Bradford Park have called some of their staff in to start working straight away because they phoned here to check some details. It’s still a bit early but it could be on the system.’

Jessica knew the procedure anyway and had only said it to stop the sergeant asking how she was. She nodded and walked towards her office but instead found Rowlands in the corridor. He looked as if he were still in shock. The skin around his eyes was red and, while he was usually smartly groomed, his hair hadn’t been spiked and his clothes were creased. ‘Jess . . .’ he said when he saw her.

‘Dave, I should have called you.’

‘Do you know what happened? I read the first report through the system but there’s pretty much no detail and no one here knows anything other than the fact she’s . . .’

Jessica wanted to put an arm around him. She had long known his outward confidence was the side he showed to everyone else and he was a different type of person when you got to know him. ‘No one’s really sure yet. I’ve come from the hospital. Her body has been taken to the labs while her neighbour is unconscious. Both of them had been stabbed.’

‘I saw the stuff about John Mills, she was always talking about him. Do you think it’s our vigilante?’

‘I don’t know.’ Jessica didn’t want to expand on what she had actually been thinking through the morning.

‘What’s going on now then?’ Rowlands asked.

‘Jack will be here soon. We need to get people out knocking on the other neighbours’ doors to see if they heard anything. I think she took a taxi home last night so we’ve got to find out who the driver was. The labs are doing their thing and someone’s going to have to talk to the media this morning too.’

Rowlands was nodding, clearly wondering what he could do. ‘Hey, are you okay?’ Jessica added.

‘Yeah, I . . .’

‘Did you say you’d read the initial reports?’

‘There’s not much in them, just the emergency call log and a few other bits.’

‘Was there a list of evidence recovered?’

‘There was something, I don’t remember completely.’

‘Show me.’

Rowlands and Jessica walked through the hallways to the main floor and his area of the room. He was already logged in to the force’s computer system and clicked to bring up the file that had been created just a few hours ago. Jessica asked if she could sit and the constable stood behind her watching as she read the screen. First she scanned through the emergency call details and then looked for the attached information.

Something John Mills’s girlfriend said had stuck with Jessica.

Because of the seriousness of the incident, the Scene of Crime officers had taken the evidence from the location. Once they had analysed everything, most, if not all, of the items would be released back to the investigating force to be kept in evidence storage, in the anticipation of a trial. Items could be kept locked away for a long time in case a suspect was found many years down the line. The first thing the SOCO team would do was list everything they had taken and pass it back to the police force – that way officers could start to work on certain aspects of the case even while items were still being examined by forensics.

Jessica wondered if Adam was one of the staff members who had been called in. Someone had already filed a list of evidence recovered and Jessica skimmed through it. As the girlfriend had said, Carrie’s abandoned shoes were on the list, as was her bag and a few other objects. They had been picked up from her own pathway, while her body had been found on Mills’s driveway half-a-dozen doors down. There was no knife or other type of murder weapon listed and Jessica closed the file.

‘She wasn’t wearing shoes?’ Rowlands said.

‘Seems not.’

A new thought entered Jessica’s head though and she quickly reopened the file, checking through the list of items again. ‘No phone,’ she said.

‘Sorry?’

‘Her phone isn’t on this list. She definitely had it in the pub.’

‘Yeah, she was texting all the time.’

‘She obviously didn’t go into her house else she wouldn’t have left her bag and shoes on her pathway. You saw her dress, it’s not as if it could be hidden away in a pocket, so if it wasn’t found in her bag then where is it?’

Rowlands stepped away from the chair to let Jessica push it back and stand up. ‘I’ll phone the officers left at the scene to see if they can see it anywhere, then get on to the taxi company to make sure she didn’t drop it,’ he said.

‘Okay, good. I’ll be in my office, come let me know.’

Jessica didn’t know if it would be significant or not but Carrie had certainly been agitated leaving the quiz the previous evening. She said she was feeling a bit ill but had her phone in her hand as she departed and Jessica felt at the time there was something she wasn’t letting on. If someone had called her, the phone’s logs could be crucial. Without the device, they could apply to the phone company to release certain records but she couldn’t do that without permission from Farraday and probably even the superintendent.

She walked back through the halls of the station towards her office. All of the day-shift workers were now in and the news about Carrie’s death had spread, the atmosphere of defiance and anger rising. Jessica had those feelings herself but was trying to bury them and focus on seeing it as a death she should be investigating, not the death of a close friend and colleague.

She walked into her office and Reynolds spun around in his seat. ‘Jess,’ he said sadly. ‘I only heard a few minutes ago. I didn’t know if you were in or at the hospital or the scene. I was going to call but didn’t want to interrupt anything.’

Jessica hadn’t heard what he was saying, staring towards the opposite half of the room where her desk was. ‘What’s happened in here?’ she said, trying not to sound angry but with a clear edge to her voice.

Reynolds was clearly confused. ‘Sorry?’

‘My things have been moved around.’ She walked over towards her side of the room and started picking up papers from the floor, before flicking through a separate pile on her desk.

‘Um, I don’t know. I mean you’re always a bit messy, it looks the same to me.’