Jessica skipped around the men, walking to an area on the grassy verge next to the main part of the cathedral. There was a white plastic sheet which she lifted, wincing at what was underneath.

Not only was it another severed hand with its ring finger missing but, given the tattoo that ran the length of the person’s little finger, she knew it belonged to Jacob Chrisp.

14

Jessica had mixed feelings the next day. Technically, she wasn’t quite senior enough to be heading an investigation and everything was supposed to be referred up. In practice, it might as well be her case. With anything like this, the next body or, in this case, hand, was met with dread and regret for the victim along with a twinge of selfish relief you had something new to work with. It was those types of feelings you could never talk about with a civilian. It wasn’t that you looked forward to the next macabre find but sometimes it became the only way to get things moving.

She hadn’t exactly warmed to Jacob Chrisp during their brief meeting but he surely didn’t deserve what had happened to him? Jessica had returned to the station the previous evening and found a contact number and address for the man’s parents. Someone local to them in Lancaster had gone to break the news, then, if that wasn’t bad enough, they’d asked for a mouth swab from one of the parents to confirm for sure the hand definitely belonged to him. Jessica had no doubts what the results would show. Unless someone else had the exact same swirling tattoo along the side of their hand, she knew it would prove to be Jacob’s.

That meant three players from the photo of the rugby team had likely been killed and the priority now was speaking to every person in the picture face-to-face. She had talked to both constables the previous evening. Rowlands hadn’t got anything of note from the other two rugby players he had seen that day. With the three dead players and those two, it left ten people she needed to speak to. There could be other squad members too but none of them were either in the photo or named on the back. Diamond hadn’t come up with much from the previous day either, saying it was hard to draw Vicky Barnes away from blaming everything on January.

Rowlands was again working on contacting every member of the rugby team and getting full address details. Jessica was planning on visiting them all one by one, regardless of where they lived around the country. Diamond was juggling a few jobs. She was trying to see if January had a connection to Jacob while, much to Jessica’s relief, talking to the media too. The discovery of the third hand had seemingly woken up the newspapers and TV stations, who were now coming to them for information.

Officers had been sent around to see if the coach, Michael Wright, had an alibi. Jessica hoped he did because she didn’t believe he was involved and keeping him a part of their investigation would only end up wasting their time and perhaps causing him more hurt.

After directing where everyone should be, Jessica finally made her way to where she should have been first thing – the monitoring area for the city’s CCTV cameras. She would have preferred to have either Dave or Izzy with her but, with everything now moving quickly, she didn’t have that luxury. Instead she was in front of the bank of monitors with one of the members of the private security firm who operated the city’s cameras. Despite not being her first choice, it was always useful to have two pairs of eyes to look over the footage.

The complicated thing was finding out when the hand had been left. It had been found in the early evening but, if it had been left in the daytime, it would have been completely different to the first two drops where the person in the black cape had appeared at sunrise.

There were no cameras pointing directly at the side of the cathedral itself where the hand had been left but there were only three ways to reach it. The first was from Victoria train station, another route was from the Printworks entertainment complex and the final cut-through was just off the main road. All three areas were huge public hubs and very well-monitored. Jessica was working backwards from the time the police had arrived on the scene.

Given she didn’t know the person she was working alongside, she watched the footage at a slower speed than she might usually have done. Jessica began with images from the cameras leading from the train station to the cathedral. The thought occurred to her that, with no cameras directly watching the spot the hand had been left at, assuming the person knew their positions as well as they seemed to, there was every chance the hand could have been left undetected by pretty much anyone. Because of that, she specifically watched for people in dark clothing, especially those on their own. With the hot day, she thought it would rule out a lot of people before realising that a huge majority of people leaving the train station were wearing suits for work. She skimmed through the coverage all the way back until the sun had gone down in reverse without seeing anything untoward.

The second set of angles came from the main road. There was one camera pointing directly at the entrance to the pathway running alongside the cathedral and a second one monitoring the opposite side of the road. It gave her fewer people to watch but, aside from a few dangerous driving manoeuvres, she again saw nothing.

The final set of cameras were mounted around the Printworks complex. In the evenings the place was full of people visiting the various bars and restaurants and the cinema. There was a steady stream of pedestrians throughout the day but Jessica’s eyes were feeling tired. She checked the time on her phone and realised she had been watching the videos for almost three hours.

She had also missed a text message from Garry Ashford: ‘Got ur piece in. Did u see?’

She texted him back: ‘Yes. Given latest find I reckon it wudve gone in anyway. Still deal a deal. X’

Jessica couldn’t help but feel Garry had struck lucky. She had given him information his editor hadn’t initially been bothered about but, following the latest hand being found, the media outlets were suddenly after information again and would have been looking to run a story about January in any case.

Jessica paused the footage and phoned Izzy. She told the constable she hadn’t found anything so far and asked what had been going on.

‘A few things,’ Izzy replied. ‘I’ve not found you anything from January that links her to the other players yet. Dave’s got a list of addresses and phone numbers for you from the rest of the team. People are all over the country but you already knew that. He’s been helping the press office.’

‘What about Michael Wright?’

‘Didn’t anyone call you?’

‘No, what’s happened?’

‘He’s spent the last couple of days in hospital.’

‘What with?’

‘I’m not sure. One of his neighbours said he fainted on his doorstep. I spoke to someone at the hospital who said he’s been on a ward the past two nights. They’re doing tests.’

Jessica wondered if her questions had brought back too many bad memories that caused him enough stress to have some sort of breakdown. She hoped not but could at least take a tiny amount of solace in the fact he had an alibi and she shouldn’t have to bother him any longer. ‘How’s everyone else?’ she asked.

‘Just busy and hot. Don’t worry, I’ve not grassed you up for breaking the air-conditioning.’

‘It wasn’t me, it was dodgy workmanship.’

‘Whatever. How long are you going to be?’

‘No idea. There’s no camera looking directly at the spot where the hand was left but I’m on the final set of angles looking towards it. Do we have the formal ID yet?’