‘Did you always know you had a brother?’

‘You’re making it up.’

‘I’m not. All three of you have the same eyes.’ Jessica opened an envelope that was on the table between them but didn’t take any of the contents out. ‘Can you see the irony, Dennis? I know you’re someone who’s very intelligent. You want to cleanse the streets but at the same time you, your brother and sister are all criminals yourselves.’

The solicitor stood and physically tried to pick his client up by the arm. ‘No chance, you’re not doing this,’ he said angrily. ‘This is over. You can’t blackmail a confession out of someone by holding back knowledge of a relative.’

Dennis rose too and his lawyer started bundling him towards the door but then the prisoner pushed his solicitor back before he could be taken out of the room. The man in the suit looked at his client, weighing up whether he should try moving him again. He clearly didn’t fancy his chances.

The suspect looked at Jessica and his head sank. He started to speak in a quiet, more solemn tone. ‘I was in a bad car accident when I was younger.’ Everyone in the room froze. Dennis’s lawyer looked panicked while Jessica said nothing, giving the prisoner space to talk. ‘That’s why we look different.’ He lifted his cuffed hands to his face and ran them along the length of his scar. ‘That’s how I got this. I didn’t really have much of a face left.’

He slumped to the floor as Jessica rose from her seat, crouching near to him. He spoke in a broken voice. ‘I didn’t know I had a brother, let alone a twin. He’s been in and out over the years and, on the few times we’ve seen each other, there has always been this sort of familiarity. But if you were brought up as an only child, you wouldn’t necessarily assume you had some long-lost brother just because someone looked a little like you, would you?’

He indicated his scar again. ‘Have you ever seen a person on the street or on TV and someone says you look a bit like them? Because of this I didn’t even know if that’s what I should look like anyway. I just kind of saw him and forgot.’

The lawyer sat back at the table, defeated. Cole was opposite him, with Jessica settling cross-legged on the floor across from Dennis.

‘When did you find out?’ she asked.

‘Officially? In the last couple of days with all the questioning and everything. Obviously it got around the prison after you had been to talk to McKenna because you had matched him to the crimes. I suspected then of course. I checked his birthday on our system and saw it was identical to mine. It’s not like I could have just asked him though.’

‘Do you know you have the same mother?’

‘No. Is it true we have a sister?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Mary.’

‘And she’s in prison too?’

‘Yes.’

Dennis sniffed away a tear. ‘I spent all my life thinking I was on my own then it takes all of this to find out I actually have a twin brother and a sister.’

‘Do you know anything about your parents, Dennis, or why you might have been separated?’

‘No. We travelled around a lot when I was a kid then ended up back here. They were getting on a bit in years and said they were to ready to settle. I knew I’d been born here but didn’t know anything specific.’

‘We know you and Donald McKenna have different mothers on your birth certificates but I don’t think we’ll ever be able to tell you who your parent actually was.’

The man shrugged. ‘I don’t think it really matters any more. Whoever it was would probably be ashamed of us.’

‘Why did you kill them, Dennis?’

The man shrugged again. Jessica had been annoyed at herself for beginning to feel a little sympathy but the casual way he moved his shoulders showed he had no real regret. ‘I just got sick of it. The same faces doing the same things over and over and no one does anything about it.’

‘You must have known you’d get caught?’

‘Maybe but I planned carefully and watched everyone so I knew their routines. I knew I wasn’t on any databases or anything because I’d never been arrested. Even if I left some traces at the scene I didn’t see any way you could ever link it back to me.’

Jessica could see he was right. If it wasn’t for the link to McKenna, they would have just had some random DNA without knowing whose it was. ‘What about the police officer?’

‘Your friend?’

‘Yes, my friend.’

‘I didn’t hear her. She had nothing on her feet and was on me before I could think. I didn’t mean to but she was really strong. You were the last people I would have targeted.’

Jessica wasn’t going to push her luck by mentioning the fact he’d gone after Farraday a few nights previously. She asked Dennis if he could sit back at the table and give them the full details they would need. Facially he barely reacted but he did what she asked, resigned to whatever was going to happen to him.

When he had finished speaking, he was taken back to the cells as Jessica passed the details of the man’s sister to his solicitor. She didn’t know if there would be any cooperation between the prisons to allow people to meet and, given everything that had happened, didn’t really care.

37

Jessica walked along the gravel path and listened. The few birds that hadn’t yet flown south were chirping noisily but, aside from that, she couldn’t hear anything other than the scrunching of her own footsteps. She realised the quiet was almost more deafening than the noise she was so used to. Living in a city, even on the outskirts, you grew accustomed to the low hum of traffic and people and it became the norm. She didn’t know if the tranquillity was better or worse. In some ways the constant clamour she was so familiar with was reassuring.

She followed the trail around the church and then moved onto the grass, walking carefully in between the gravestones to find the one she was looking for. There had been dew earlier in the morning and the ground felt soft underfoot. Jessica looked from side to side, taking in the names and wondering how everyone came to be there. Most of the dates on the stones would have meant it was simply old age but, every now and then, there were names of people who died young. She found it humbling, seeing the details of people born after her but who were already buried beneath her feet.

The graveyard was bigger than she remembered but Jessica eventually saw the stone she was looking for. The whole area was a mix of old weathered monuments and new chiselled markers. Carrie Jones’s stood out as the wisps of morning sunlight reflected off its surface. Jessica crossed towards it and placed the flowers she had been carrying next to the fresh ones already there. She stood looking down at the engravings, with Carrie’s name, date of birth and death, and a simple message.

‘Always in our hearts.’

Jessica sat between the plot and the one adjacent to it, leaning gently on the gravestone. For a while she listened to the breeze and the birds and then she smiled. ‘I can see why you left this place,’ she said with a small giggle. ‘Bit quiet, ain’t it?’

The ground was wet underneath her and she could feel the dampness seeping through her jeans but it was already too late to do much about it. ‘Your mum’s a character, I can see where you got the laugh from now. I don’t know how you stayed so thin though, all she wanted to do last night was feed me. She’s doing all right, looking after your dad and shouting at the rugby players on the TV. I’m not sure if she shouts louder when they’re winning or losing.’

She moved her head to the side so it was resting on the stone. ‘Everyone keeps telling me I did a good job for figuring things out and getting Dennis to talk but no one wants to tell me the truth. Maybe if I’d been a better mate we would have been able to talk about your bloke and things would have happened differently? I’ve not told anyone about things but Farraday – your John – quit last week. He called me into his office to tell me first and then announced it officially to everyone else. I think he felt guilty.’