The man shook his head a little but Jessica wasn’t convinced by his words. ‘Well, nothing. The accommodation was awful, we ate, we drank, we came home.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Like what?’

Jessica slid the photo back across the table. She pointed to Barry Newcombe. ‘This is your friend Barry, yes? Do you know what happened to him?’

Steven looked confused. ‘He was killed in a car accident years ago.’

‘Did you know him then?’ Jessica asked.

‘Yes, but that was a long time ago too. I don’t know what that has to do with anything now.’

Jessica nodded, pointing to the next face. ‘This is Edward Marks; a few weeks ago we found his severed hand in the centre of Manchester. Even if you didn’t remember the name, you may have read about it or seen it on the news. This man here is Lewis Barnes, while this is Jacob Chrisp and this is Matthew Cooper. We have found hands belonging to each of them. All four of them have been reported missing and we have no idea if they’re alive or dead. That means you’re the one person left out of these six who is definitely still alive.’

Jessica watched Steven closely. As she had revealed each person’s fate she saw his eyes widen ever so slightly. She was clearly telling him something he didn’t know. ‘Can you think of a reason why four people have gone missing, Mr Povey?’

He blinked a few times. ‘It wasn’t anything to do with me.’

‘I never said it was.’

‘No, I know . . . I just . . . I’m sorry, do I need a solicitor?’

Jessica didn’t know if he was involved but his reaction seemed as genuine as she would expect. If he was a formal suspect, they would have taken him to the station for questioning but, at least for now, Jessica didn’t want to take things that far. She chose her words carefully. ‘If you want a solicitor, it’s entirely up to you. We can talk to you here or at a station, I don’t mind. All I’m asking you is if you know of any reason why four people you went on holiday with eleven years ago might have gone missing.’

Steven was clearly nervous. It was warm and he’d seemed edgy throughout but there was sweat on his forehead. He looked quickly from one detective to the other. ‘I’m not sure what you want me to say.’

‘It’s pretty simple,’ Jessica said. ‘I believe something happened when the six of you went away together and that is the reason why the people you were on holiday with aren’t here. From that, I can make two conclusions. The first is that you are somehow involved in what has gone on with the hands being left. The second is that you are also a target. I don’t believe you have kidnapped four people, cut off their hands and driven to Manchester to leave them for us. If you continue to insist nothing happened on that holiday, we won’t have many options other than to start looking into your background. If you want to be honest with me, we might be able to offer you some sort of protection.’

Steven listened to everything she said and then gazed away towards the back of the garden. His tone was lower as he spoke again. ‘It was such a long time ago now. I’ve got a wife, kids . . .’ Jessica nodded but didn’t reply. ‘Have you ever done anything stupid when you were younger?’ he added.

‘Lots of things but nothing that’s ever made anyone want to cut off my hand.’

The man said nothing but when he finally spoke, it didn’t take long for the pieces to start to fall into place.

ELEVEN YEARS AGO

Steven Povey winced as one of the other men slapped him on the shoulder. He had never really burned in the sun before but using sun cream didn’t particularly seem like the masculine thing to do when he was surrounded by a group of lads he barely knew. It had only taken a day for his shoulders and arms to turn bright red and, although the other areas of his skin had gone brown in the five days that had followed, his shoulders were still raw and beginning to peel.

The man spun around to see who had smacked him and wasn’t surprised to see it was Barry. Back in England the pair lived next door to each other and, despite an almost two-year age gap between them, their parents got on well and they started hanging around together as children. It was easy to cross into each other’s garden to kick a ball around and they had grown up together. The trouble Steven had found was that Barry was a completely different person when he had been drinking. At home it didn’t create too much of a problem but, in the week they had been in Faliraki, they had drunk a lot, which meant his friend had spent a lot of time being abusive and aggressive.

That was a problem in itself for Steven but had been compounded by the fact he didn’t really know anyone else. Matthew and Lewis seemed like decent enough guys and kept their heads down in much the way he did. Ed was very quiet and they’d not seen much of him in the past couple of days but it was Barry and Jacob who seemed to be permanently drunk. Steven wasn’t enjoying spending time around either of them but it was hard to walk away considering the six of them were sharing two rooms.

Barry was standing with two empty glasses. ‘You want another one, Stevie?’

The young man hated being called ‘Stevie’, ‘Stevo’, ‘Steffie’, ‘Stig’ or any of the other nicknames which seemed to have appeared on the holiday. He often wondered why it was so hard to simply call him by his name. ‘I’ll skip this round.’

Barry looked on, disgusted. ‘Fellas?’

Of the three other young men sat around the table, only Jacob nodded. ‘Same again.’

Barry stared from one person to the next. ‘Matty? Lew? You guys in?’ The two shook their heads. ‘Lightweights,’ Barry said, stomping off towards the bar.

Steven exchanged knowing looks with Matthew and Lewis but was grateful they were sticking together in not being forced to drink. The holiday had been something of a learning curve. He had come away largely because of Barry’s promise to find him a girl. He wasn’t a virgin but it had been a while and the girls back home never seemed interested in him. Barry’s promise of ‘drunken slags who’ll shag anything’ wasn’t exactly what he had in mind but he thought there would at least be a lot of girls he’d never met before – and perhaps one among them who wouldn’t mind hanging out with him.

As it was, the focus of the holiday had largely been alcohol-related and, although there were large groups of girls around, Steven hadn’t really had the courage to talk to anyone. Barry and Jacob were the two who had confidence, although they were frequently too drunk to do anything other than leer and shout. Steven hadn’t really enjoyed the break at all. He wanted things to do that didn’t involve spending most of the day in bed or on the beach, then all night drinking. For some people that inertia would sound like an ideal day but, for him, it was boring.

He was currently in a bar just off the main through street in Faliraki. It was English-themed and the fact they’d flown for five hours to sit in a bar and eat full English breakfasts at five in the afternoon wasn’t an irony that was lost on him, even if it clearly was on both Barry and Jacob. On the first night, Matthew had suggested trying a Greek restaurant near their hotel but he had been instantly shot down by Jacob saying, ‘I’m not eating that foreign shit’. They’d had either fry-ups, chips or burgers every day since then. The current bar was the one they had started the last three evenings in. St George’s flags were pinned along the wooden frames of the structure and a giant television at the back had British sports channels on continuously. When there was no live sport to show, cheesy pop music blared out of speakers over the bar. It wouldn’t have been Steven’s choice of venue but it was admittedly cheaper than some of the bars in the area.