Jessica was wearing a thick jacket but felt a chill go through her as the breeze picked up. ‘I think I lost it for a while somewhere along the line. I was seeing things that weren’t there and acting without thinking things through. I look at it now and it doesn’t even seem like me, it’s as if I was watching someone else doing those things.’

She tried to suppress a shiver as she continued talking gently to the stone. ‘I spoke to Denise Millar a few days ago. She’s keeping everything together for Jamie and says he’s got a job now. I think catching the person that killed her other son has helped her come to terms with it all.’

She stood and wiped as much of the dampness from her trousers as she could, peering back at the stone. ‘I’m just here to say goodbye and thanks for being a mate when I needed one.’

Jessica turned and walked briskly away back to the cemetery’s entrance. There was a wide wooden gate which she unclasped and moved through before shunting it back into position. She leant back onto it and took out her phone, skimming through the first couple of contacts. She highlighted Adam Compton’s name and typed out a simple text message.

‘I’m sorry. J’

She pressed the button to send and walked quickly out towards the waiting taxi on the main road before getting into the back seat. ‘You all right, love?’ the driver asked.

‘Yeah, can you take me to the train station now?’

The driver pulled away as Jessica leant back into the seat and closed her eyes. She felt her mind beginning to drift but was snapped back to the present as her phone beeped to say she had a new message.

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1

Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel swept the strand of long dark blonde hair away from her face and looked down at the object in front of her before saying the only thing that came to mind. ‘Well, it’s definitely a hand.’

The man standing next to her nodded in agreement. ‘Blimey, nothing gets past you, does it?’

Jessica laughed. ‘Oi. It’s just you never know what you’re going to get, do you? When I was in uniform I got sent out because there were reports of a dead animal blocking a road and it was only someone’s coat. For all we knew, this “severed hand” could have been part of a kid’s doll.’

Detective Inspector Jason Reynolds looked at the scene in front of them, nodding. ‘You’re right but this ain’t a kid’s toy.’

The appendage was greying in colour and blended with the patch of concrete it had been left on. Jessica thought it looked fairly hardened, as if the fingers would be stiff and awkward to move, even though the digits were splayed and it was flat to the ground. Given the clean-looking cut where it would have once been connected to someone’s wrist, Jessica was surprised there was no blood. She didn’t want to touch it but stepped closer and crouched, peering towards the small stump where the person’s ring finger had been neatly sliced off. It looked as if the area had been burned after the amputation to stop any infection and she wondered if the finger had been removed before or after the rest of the hand.

Jessica stood and stepped backwards out of the small white tent into the heat of the morning sunshine with Reynolds just behind her. The inspector was a tall black officer who had an outwardly friendly demeanour but, when he wanted to be, was as tough as anyone she knew. She walked towards the edge of the police tape surrounding the scene, stopping before she got too close to the nearby uniformed officer who was preventing passers-by from getting too good a look. ‘What do you reckon happened to the missing finger?’ she asked.

‘Who knows? It looks as if it was cut off as cleanly as the hand itself,’ the inspector replied.

‘Do you think the person it’s from is dead?’

Reynolds blew out through his teeth as he squinted into the sun. ‘Probably. We’ll have to check the records to see if there have been any remains found in the past year or two that are missing a hand. There’s nothing to say it would definitely be from a body from our area, so we’ll have a bit of work to do. The way it’s been preserved, it could be an old victim or someone brand new. Whoever left it has been very careful.’

‘Not much to go on, was there?’ Jessica said. ‘No tattoos or anything.’

‘I know. Given its shape with the wider fingers I’d bet it was a man’s hand but that could just be minor decomposition. It looks as if whoever cut it off has kept it carefully. We’re going to have to wait for the forensics team to see if they can find anything.’

‘Yeah, you’ve got to hand it to the lab boys, they do a top job.’

Reynolds looked at Jessica, eyebrows raised. ‘I really don’t think stand-up comedy is the career for you.’

Jessica grinned back. ‘Oh come on. Just because you’ve been promoted, it doesn’t mean you have to stop laughing at my jokes.’

‘I don’t remember ever laughing at your jokes.’

‘All right, fine, be grumpy. What are we going to do next?’

Reynolds looked around at the buildings surrounding them. ‘The thing is, this is the centre of Manchester, the second or third biggest city in the country. Just look at the cameras.’ He pointed out the CCTV units mounted high on the shops, hotels and flats nearby. ‘This is Piccadilly Gardens. You couldn’t have picked a more public spot if you tried. Whoever left this wanted it to be found.’ He paused, as if pondering what he wanted to do. ‘If you take a constable and look through the footage from last night, I’ll start working through any missing persons reports to see if there have been any bodies found without a hand nationwide. By the time we’ve gone through all that, we might have some test results back to give us a gender and age for the victim.’

Jessica looked to the areas the inspector had pointed out. Piccadilly Gardens was one of the main meeting points in the centre of Manchester. The middle part was a mixture of grassy park areas surrounded by benches and fountains, along with concreted and paved sections for people to walk. One side was dominated by a bus and tram station, another lined by a wide walkway and shops. Looming over the top of the area was a hotel and a road with more shops edged along the final side.

Jessica looked back towards the area the hand had been found in, just underneath one of the fountains next to a bench. Unless someone had dropped it, which made some very odd assumptions about the types of thing people carried around with them, it seemed clear the hand had been left purposely.

Jessica could see at least seven security cameras scanning the area, one of which was swivelling high on a pole around fifty feet away from where she was standing. Three other similar cameras were placed around the square. She knew they were linked into a set of other CCTV cameras throughout the city, the images feeding back to a central security point that was manned twenty-four hours a day. Most people thought the cameras were constantly watched by police officers but the operators were a private security firm paid for by the council.