As she read, Jessica could sense a tense atmosphere in the office, the silence only broken by the tapping of keys on the two women’s respective keyboards, the odd click of a mouse and a faint hum of activity from elsewhere in the station.

Jessica logged out and stood. ‘I’m off to the press office if anyone comes looking for me,’ she said. Cornish nodded, mumbling an acknowledgement as Jessica left the room.

On the station’s basement level was the main incident room, some general-use computer terminals, the cells and a few private rooms for lawyers and others. The ground floor was where the main reception area was, as well as the senior officers’ offices. Jessica and Cornish’s was near the canteen, with Reynolds’s just down the hallway. The interview rooms and other private meeting areas were also on the floor along with the press office, Human Resources department and separate press conference room. Upstairs was Cole’s office as well as rooms visiting officers could use and a vast storage area.

As she made her way along the corridor, Jessica could hear a woman’s raised voice coming from the reception area. It wasn’t necessarily a surprise as most days involved at least one person getting angry in their entrance. Often it was someone with a relative that had been arrested who wanted information or sometimes it was just a person who had been picked up for being drunk and was about to be stuck in a cell for a few hours to sober up. Jessica couldn’t hear anything specific but had to walk through reception to get to the press department.

As she moved, she tried not to catch the desk sergeant’s eye but he called her name out. ‘DS Daniel here might be able to assist you . . .’

Jessica looked at the officer as if to offer a sarcastic ‘thanks’ and then walked across to the woman who was next to the main reception desk. She was red in the face and looked somewhere between upset and angry. She was in her fifties, short with greying shoulder-length brown hair and wearing clothes that were far too tight for her. Jessica offered a thin smile in an effort to partially placate her. ‘Is everything okay?’

‘I’ve been trying to get someone to listen to me,’ she replied with a sigh. ‘I drove straight here after watching the lunchtime news. I know who your woman in black is.’

3

Jessica’s first thought was that the media had only been given a telephone number to pass on, not the address of the station. She guessed the reason the desk sergeant hadn’t immediately contacted either her or Reynolds was because he was trying to figure out if the woman was genuine or another in a long line of attention-seekers.

‘How did you know to come here, rather than call?’ Jessica asked.

‘I didn’t really,’ the woman stammered. ‘This is where I came when my son first went missing. I’ve been in a few times since but there are never any updates. When I saw the news today, I knew what had happened.’

Jessica tried not to appear too puzzled. ‘Okay, right. Do you want to follow me to a more private place?’ She turned and led the woman down a hallway towards one of the station’s meeting rooms. It was where they let witnesses who weren’t suspects sit before they were formally interviewed. Sometimes family members would be allowed to wait in the area. Jessica still wasn’t convinced the woman would have any useful information so wanted to talk to her first before deciding whether they would need to take a full statement.

The room was bright because of the overhead strip light but, despite the heat outside, it felt cold. Jessica opened the door and could hear the air-conditioning unit overhead working noisily. She tried not to shiver and offered the woman a seat. ‘Do you want a cup of tea or something?’ she asked.

‘No, I just want someone to listen to me.’

Jessica nodded, closed the door behind them and sat opposite the woman. ‘What’s your name?’

‘I’m Vicky Barnes, my son is Lewis and I think it’s his girlfriend January who’s your woman in black.’

‘Why do you believe that?’

The woman spoke quickly. ‘Lewis went missing around a month ago. He used to phone or text me every day but I’ve not heard from him. I went around to the flat they shared but January at first told me he was out. Then she changed her mind a few days later and said she hadn’t seen him either. I reported him missing to you lot but no one’s done anything. I always knew that druggie bitch was involved and then I saw her on the news in that cloak thing of hers.’ Jessica saw the woman’s bottom lip start to tremble. The last few words were barely audible. ‘Oh God, does this mean . . . ?’

With the reports talking about a severed hand being found, it was a fair assumption the woman would now be contemplating the fact her son could be dead.

‘Mrs Barnes?’ Jessica put a hand on the woman’s shoulder.

There were a few tears running down her face but she was fighting to stay in control. ‘Yes?’

‘Why do you think the person in the black cloak is your son’s girlfriend?’

Vicky was trying to compose herself. ‘On the news they said the hand belonged to someone between twenty-five and thirty-five. Lewis is exactly thirty. January’s one of these Goth-weirdo types with long black hair and all that. She’s always wearing a hooded top thing that’s exactly like the one that was on the news. When Lewis went missing I just knew it was her.’

Jessica could see the woman was beginning to get angry again. ‘Mrs Barnes, what I’m going to do is ask an officer to come and sit with you for a bit. I’m going to check our files to see what we have on your son Lewis and his partner. Then I’ll come back and we’ll take a formal statement. Is that okay?’

The woman took a tissue out from the bag she was carrying and blew her nose. ‘Yes, thank you.’

‘Can you tell me the full name of your son’s girlfriend?’

‘It’s January Forrester.’

Jessica also took the couple’s address and was about to leave the room when the woman called her back. ‘Sorry, I forgot. Look, I brought this to show you.’ She reached into her bag and took out a photograph, holding it out for Jessica to take. It was a picture of a young woman in heavy make-up clinging to the arm of a man. She was wearing a long black robe with a hood that looked a lot like the one from the footage. It was even the same length, the bottom ending just above the woman’s ankles. Both people were smiling widely and it seemed as if they were in a park of some sorts.

‘Is this Lewis and January?’

‘Yes.’

After arranging for a uniformed officer to sit with the woman, Jessica returned to her office. Cornish was sitting in exactly the same place she had been when Jessica left and didn’t move to acknowledge her colleague’s re-entry. Jessica sat at her desk and logged back into the system, muttering ‘come on’ under her breath as the computer took its time. Eventually she got through to the area she wanted and searched for ‘Lewis Barnes’. Everything his mother had told her was true – she had reported him missing in person four weeks ago to the day. From what Jessica could see, aside from the name being logged, very little else had been done other than someone scanning a photo into the system which had been uploaded onto the force’s website.

She closed the record and searched for ‘January Forrester’. The woman was twenty-six and had a criminal record. Jessica could see there were two thefts when she was still a teenager, a drunk and disorderly from two years previously and then, twice within the past year, charges of domestic violence that had been dropped before getting to court. Both incidents involved her hitting or scratching Lewis. From experience Jessica knew a lot of domestic violence cases never got as far as court whether it was a man hitting a woman, as most people would think, or the other way around.