Jessica shrugged, knowing the constable was right. She wondered what Arthur and Jackie Graves would consider as justice for their son.

‘Have you heard anything from that stalker guy who confessed?’ Rowlands added.

‘Nothing. He’s tagged on a curfew as part of his bail. I didn’t really get the sense he was dangerous anyway, just weird.’

Jessica didn’t read the rest of the crime coverage in the newspaper but turned to the gossip and celebrity section. Usually these would be the pages she immediately skimmed past but something about the inanity of it all was reassuring. No matter who had died and how much of a mess the world was in, there was always some orange-skinned semi-naked nobody whining to the papers about her boyfriend.

In recent days, a few of the papers had started to carry angles about the mystery over the DNA evidence. Given the number of bodies and the people who knew within the station, there was always likely to be a leak at some stage. Ultimately, the media didn’t know how to report it either. There were a few smaller stories about the bodies being linked to the prison but McKenna wasn’t mentioned by name. Another article said there was confusion over the exact nature of the forensic evidence, which was true but not because they didn’t know what it was telling them, simply because they didn’t know what to do about it.

The train finally pulled into Aberystwyth’s train station and they took a taxi to the church. Jessica and Rowlands entered through enormous thick wooden doors at the front and Jessica felt tiny as she peered to either side and saw huge stained-glass windows stretching high towards the ceiling. The roof towered far above them, the soft organ music being played at the front echoing around.

The venue was old and majestic and reminded Jessica of being young when her school would go to the local church once a week. Back then, she was at an age where Jesus was as mystical a figure as Santa Claus and she firmly believed God had created everything around her in seven days. She enjoyed being in the school choir and singing hymns once a week was one of the things she looked forward to most.

Jessica sat next to Rowlands on the hard wooden bench. She was on the end of a row and stretched her ankle out into the aisle, rotating it gently. She wasn’t sure if she had sprained it jumping down from the gate but had strapped it tightly each morning to try to stop herself limping. If DCI Farraday had seen her shadow leaving his house he would have seen her hobbling and she didn’t want to give him any clues by limping around the station too.

The service was far more positive than Jessica would have expected. One of Carrie’s old friends told a story about how she had gone missing for an afternoon when they were still at school. It wasn’t like her to miss lessons and no one knew where she was. When people had realised she wasn’t at home either, there had been a panic over the missing girl. It turned out she had somehow managed to lock herself in a toilet cubicle and, in an age before mobile phones, hadn’t been able to tell anyone. A caretaker found her in tears as the school was being locked up. As the speaker finished the story, there was a mix of tears and laughs, which Jessica felt summed her friend up perfectly.

The woman’s mother spoke movingly about her daughter and, along with some readings and hymns, the ceremony engrossed Jessica more than anything had managed to in the last week or so. She didn’t even feel tired and had a clearness of thought she’d not felt in a while.

The burial was in the graveyard attached to the church. The casket was closed, which Jessica assumed was because of the work the forensics team had had to do to the body. At the smaller ceremony outside, the vicar said the Joneses were a major part of the local community and that Carrie was being buried next to her grandparents. It was heartbreaking for Jessica to watch the two parents say goodbye to their daughter and, while the mother was holding things together, the father was a mess and couldn’t stop himself breaking down.

There was a wake in the church hall a few hundred yards away and Jessica wasn’t surprised to see Carrie’s father hadn’t made it. As soon as they entered the hall, the dead officer’s mother sought them out.

‘You must be Jessica,’ the woman said before turning to Rowlands. ‘And David, yes?’ Her accent was far stronger than her daughter’s but there was a similarity to Carrie’s voice that stretched beyond just the accent.

Jessica introduced herself and DC Rowlands properly and the woman gave them both a hug. ‘I’m so glad it was you two who came down,’ she said. ‘Carrie would talk about you all the time. It was always hard for her being away from home but I know she valued the pair of you.’

Jessica felt embarrassed that, despite their friendship, she had never asked the obvious question about why Carrie lived so far away from home. She always assumed her friend had moved north to go to university or something similar but it seemed very selfish she had not been interested enough to find out for sure.

‘That’s nice of you to say,’ Jessica said.

‘Are you able to tell me anything about . . . what happened?’

It was the question Jessica was dreading. She stumbled over some vague-sounding, ‘We’re doing all we can’ nonsense, which was exactly the kind of police-speak the general public hated. In truth, she didn’t know what else to say. The only other options were either to give the official line, ‘No, the man we think did it is locked in prison and we don’t have a clue,’ or instead tell her, ‘I think our chief inspector did it but I made a mess of hand ling the evidence and have no idea how to fix things’. Neither of those options would be good enough even at the best of times, let alone now.

The woman looked disappointed but nodded sympathetically. ‘It’s okay, dear, I know you’ll be doing all you can.’

Carrie’s mother gave Jessica her phone number and both detectives left her a card just in case she wanted to call them. After that, they found a quiet corner and had a drink, trying not to catch anyone else’s eye. Jessica felt they had to stay for a while out of respect but she didn’t want to get into any further conversations with people.

‘That was awkward,’ Dave said.

Jessica shrugged at him as if to say, ‘What can you do?’

‘How’s Adam by the way?’ he continued. ‘He seemed like a really nice guy at the quiz. I know we didn’t really get a chance to talk afterwards but I thought he was a right laugh. Hugo was asking after him too.’

‘He’s all right.’

Jessica hadn’t seen Adam since the early hours of the morning after that night and he had stopped contacting her two days ago. She hadn’t replied to any of his texts and ignored the messages he had left at the station for her. She couldn’t explain the way she was acting but put him out of her mind, hating herself and Farraday for making her waste evenings watching a house instead of spending them with someone she liked.

‘The service was nice,’ Dave added.

Jessica nodded, not wanting to make small talk and then thought she heard her phone ringing. Because they had drifted off to a corner they had ended up sitting under a speaker and the music drowned out the ringtone. She took the device out of her pocket and realised she had three missed calls from DI Cole. She moved outside, edging into the car park towards the back of the building.

The air was cool and she shivered with the breeze but pressed the buttons to call him back. He answered straight away. ‘Jessica?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you all afternoon. I forgot about the funeral. How did it go?’

‘It was good. Carrie’s mother asked us to pass on her thanks to everyone.’ Cole sounded distracted, which wasn’t like him. ‘Is everything okay?’ Jessica added.

‘Are you back tonight?’