He yanked the young woman fully onto the bed by only her wrist. She started shouting but Jacob put a hand across her mouth and pushed her hard into the mattress. Steven would never forget his next words. ‘Bazza, she’s all yours.’

29

As Steven finished talking, he was in tears. Jessica felt a sickness in her stomach that she’d only had on a few occasions and she was furious. ‘Did you just stand and watch?’ she said, barely trying to control her anger. Izzy looked close to tears next to her.

The man shrugged. ‘I tried not to watch.’

‘Well, that’s all right then. Some innocent girl was attacked by two men while you did nothing but because you were staring at the ground, everything’s just fine.’

Jessica rarely lost her temper when interviewing but she couldn’t control it. She hadn’t thought throughout speaking to Steven that he was involved in cutting off people’s hands but they now had someone who had a motive as good as any. There couldn’t be many better ways to tell people to keep their hands to themselves than by cutting them off. It was also now obvious why they had been left so publicly – the poor woman wanted the police to know what the men had done.

Jessica realised she was jumping to conclusions but wondered if ‘Sam’ was the person responsible or if it was someone she knew. An enormous part of her wished the woman luck but there was still a part of her thinking rationally as a police officer, trying to calm herself. Steven hadn’t said anything and was still crying gently to himself.

‘Do you know her last name?’

‘Sam’s?’

‘Who else?’

‘Sorry, I don’t remember. I’ve tried to forget.’

‘Do you have any photos or anything from the holiday?’

Steven was snivelling. ‘I think I might have a copy of the one you’ve got somewhere but that would be all. When we got back no one ever talked about it. It was as if it never happened. I didn’t really see them after that, only Barry.’

‘Could you describe Sam?’

Jacob gave them a vague description of a girl with blonde hair and brown eyes. Jessica said she would arrange for him to see someone who could digitally create an image from his description but she doubted it would do much good.

‘Do you think I’m in danger?’ he asked.

Jessica forced herself not to say what she was thinking, ‘You should be’, but instead answered professionally. ‘I don’t know, possibly. We might be able to arrange someone to come around and be with you.’

‘What about my wife and children?’

‘What about them? We would protect them too.’

‘I’d have to tell them why there was someone here.’ Steven seemed frightened, his eyes wide and teary.

‘That would be up to you,’ Jessica said.

‘Couldn’t you put someone . . . I don’t know, like a secret plain-clothes officer or someone across the road or something?’

‘It doesn’t work like that,’ Jessica said. ‘Besides, they would have to follow you wherever you went. If you want protection, I can ask and see what we can arrange. It’s up to you if you want to explain that to your wife.’

The man nodded dejectedly. ‘Am I going to be in trouble?’

Jessica stood and Izzy followed. ‘I don’t know, we’ll come back to you. We’ve got to get back to Manchester but I’ll leave you my card. If you want me to ask someone about sending an officer here, you’ll have to let me know.’

The drive back to Longsight was a lot shorter as the motorway had been cleared but the two women sat in near silence. Although Jessica had said she would get back to Steven about whether he’d be in trouble, she knew he most likely wouldn’t be. She would check the records but unless a crime had been reported in Faliraki itself, there would be no record of the attack. Not only that but, without a victim or formal complaint, all they actually had was his confession to watching an assault happen. She didn’t want to tell him that straight away though. Jessica also doubted he would contact them for any sort of protection because he would want to keep things from his wife and children. If she thought for a moment his family could be in danger, she would have gone out of her way to arrange it regardless but, so far, no one else had been harmed except for the four men.

Jessica thought back to her own meeting with Jacob and the cocky way he had eyed her and Izzy. At the time she had ignored it but she could see it in a different light now and was a little unnerved.

Back at the station she went straight to see Cole, taking Izzy with her and passing on everything Steven had told them. It was tough to know where to go from there because they had so little information on Sam. At some point Steven could be brought in for a formal interview but Jessica doubted he would have much more to add than what he’d told them. If anything, he’d offer less because he’d be more nervous with a tape running.

Izzy left to see if she could find anything from the police in Faliraki. None of them had ever liaised with the Greek police in the past but there were interpreters available if the language proved too much of a barrier. If the crime had been reported, the woman’s full name would have been recorded. Meanwhile, Jessica and Cole talked through the few options they had. Steven insisted the girl had an English accent but, because the attack had happened overseas, they had no idea what part of the country she might come from. They couldn’t exactly launch a national ‘Were you assaulted eleven years ago in Faliraki’ media campaign and they had nothing else other than a first name to work with.

Jessica decided she was going to revisit the victims’ families to see if any of them had come up with any further photos from the trip. Given the nature of what had happened, she doubted many of the young men involved would have kept too many mementoes but Vicky Barnes was her best bet simply because she seemed to keep a record of everything relating to her son. From what Steven had said, Lewis had been an onlooker in the same way he had but Jessica doubted he had told his mother anything about what had happened. If that was true and he brought home photos from the trip, Vicky might have kept them for herself.

She went back to the main floor of the station where Diamond and Rowlands were both working. Usually Jessica would have a bit of a joke with them but it was clear Izzy had told her colleague everything and they were both working quietly and determinedly.

‘How are you doing?’ Jessica asked.

Izzy seemed annoyed. ‘I’ve had to jump through all sorts of hoops to get through to the right person but the head of police on Rhodes actually speaks really good English. He checked the records of crimes reported from eleven years back but there was nothing that suits our case. There were a few sexual assaults and all sorts of violent crimes but the ones caught were fined and deported and a huge majority are unsolved because the people would have gone home. He looked at the sexual crimes but there was nothing reported by anyone called “Sam” and nothing matched the circumstances Steven described.’

Jessica sat on the edge of their desk. ‘Bollocks.’

Rowlands looked up at her. ‘I’ve checked outstanding warrants passed from their police to ours but there’s nothing on there either. As far as we can tell, the attack was never reported. We don’t have a clue what her last name was.’

Jessica stood back up. ‘I checked with the holiday companies before and they didn’t have records going back that far.’

‘What are we going to do then?’ Rowlands asked.

‘You come with me and we’ll visit Vicky Barnes again,’ Jessica said. ‘Maybe Lewis brought back some photos or he kept a diary? If she doesn’t have anything we’ll go to Charlie Marks’s house to look.’ Jessica looked across to Izzy. ‘Can you do something else for me?’