Cole pointed at the helicopter overhead. ‘Bit hard to keep it from him. He’s in London but someone’s gone to see him.’

‘Do we have anything on him?’

The chief inspector stopped looking at the closed garage doors, peering towards Jessica. He lowered his voice. ‘Some of his emails showed he was certainly friendly with his PA and there were the regular cash withdrawals but nothing really. All we can do is ask him but we’ve been delaying bringing him in to see if we can connect any more dots. He’s clean though; he’ll be able to say the emails were harmless flirting and I’m sure he’ll have a reason for the cash. Our best hope is finding the garage owner. If he was acting alone then we’ll have our man, if not then hopefully he’ll be willing to tell us.’

‘Why are you here?’

‘The super’s on his way so I’m waiting for that. I suspect he’ll say something to the cameras. We’ve got to try to get the garage owner’s photo distributed as far and wide as possible so it’s going to be one of those days.’

‘You wait all year for a manhunt to come along then two pop up at once.’

Jessica hoped Cole would smile but he was unmoving. He looked as if he was about to say something but his phone rang. Overhead the helicopter moved swiftly away from the area, flying towards the city centre. Because of the noise, Jessica missed the first part of the conversation but the second was clear enough and, if she was in any doubt, it evaporated when the chief inspector handed her his phone.

Another hand had been found.

Jessica leant back into her office chair, closing her eyes. She couldn’t remember a busier day than the previous one at Longsight. A hand she assumed belonged to Steven Povey had been left not far from Piccadilly train station. Jessica arrived there to find the news helicopter overhead and a handful of officers trying to keep the scene fresh while bemused and annoyed commuters hurried past, oblivious to what was going on.

The appendage had been recovered but tests were going to take a while to confirm the identity because the forensics team were tied up with what everyone assumed was Christine Johnson’s body. Jessica had managed to contact Steven’s wife, who said she hadn’t seen her husband since the previous morning. She had reported it to her local force but not much had happened because it was only a little over a day since he disappeared. Jessica didn’t reveal anything specific that she knew but did feel bad about the whole affair. Though Steven had refused protection because he didn’t want to talk to his partner. Jessica wondered if she could have forced him to accept protective custody but it was unlikely, especially with their lack of resources.

The hunt for Sam hadn’t got much further than where it had been the previous morning, largely because the discovery of Christine Johnson’s body had overtaken everything, both at the station and in the media. A few phone calls were coming in relating to the woman in their photograph but nothing that seemed to match their criteria for age and appearance.

If everything happening at the station wasn’t already enough, the company had finally arrived to fix the station’s air-conditioning unit and had been clattering in and out of reception as confused journalists stood at the front gates wondering what was going on.

Jessica breathed in deeply enjoying the relative quiet and, for the first time in a while, not feeling sweaty in her own office.

‘Jess? You awake?’

She jumped, wondering if she actually had dozed off for a few moments. She certainly hadn’t heard her office door go. Opening her eyes, she saw Izzy standing in between her desk and DS Cornish’s.

‘I’m just having a rest after a long few days.’

The constable clearly thought Jessica had been asleep for some time. ‘I just wanted to make sure I was fine to get off?’

Jessica looked at the clock above the door and realised she had been sleeping for almost an hour. On most days, it wouldn’t have been possible but with everyone dashing around to find the garage owner, people hadn’t been bothering her. ‘Of course. I take it nothing came in on the phones to match our Sam?’ she asked.

‘No, but I guess it’s going to be over now, isn’t it?’ Jessica must have had a confused look on her face because the constable followed it up. ‘I mean, that’s six men from the photo and all of them are either dead or missing.’

It seemed an obvious point but, for whatever reason, Jessica had missed the significance of the find. She was feeling tired after working through the weekend but Izzy was right. Unless they had missed something major, the six men involved in the assault Steven Povey had described were all accounted for in one way or the other. Barry Newcombe had been killed in a car accident but Jessica wondered if the other five men’s bodies would ever be found, assuming they were dead.

‘I don’t know what we’re going to do if we can’t find Sam,’ Jessica said. It was an honest statement but not something she would have revealed to many of her colleagues.

‘She’s bound to show up somewhere.’

‘Maybe, but we’ve only got a picture that’s eleven years old and we can’t get too much attention for that at the moment.’

‘She won’t be able to hide forever though.’

Jessica sighed. ‘Don’t you think it’s a really rough way of doing things? The only thing we’ve got to connect her to the six men in the photo is the say-so of Steven Povey and he’s disappeared. What if it’s nothing to do with her at all? What if we’re going after someone who’s spent eleven years trying to forget everything and we’re punishing her for it?’

Izzy paused, thinking it over. ‘Do you think Steven was lying?’

‘No, you saw him; he was genuinely frightened but I wonder if we’ve missed something else.’

‘Like what?’

Jessica shrugged. The truth was she didn’t know. It wasn’t as if they had any other suspects or leads but she felt very uneasy with making assumptions about the woman whose face she had been responsible for getting in the papers and on the news. ‘I have no idea.’

She had spent the morning going through more CCTV footage. The hand had been left in very similar circumstances to the others. A figure wearing a black hooded gown had dropped it near the train station in the early hours of the morning. With so many people hurrying past, it had somehow been ignored for almost six hours. Jessica wondered how people could be so oblivious but, as she watched the footage, it was clear everyone leaving or arriving at the station was in a rush. As before it seemed clear the person knew where the cameras were and, from what Jessica had seen, they had no clear views of the person. She wondered if it was the sheer amount of time staring at monitors over the past few weeks that was making her feel so tired.

Izzy scratched her chin. ‘What about the woman in black?’

Jessica weighed up the question. ‘Who knows? It could be Sam. Whoever she is knows the area well. Her photo has been in the local papers so you’d assume she would be recognised but we’ve not had anything so far. Honestly? I just don’t know.’

Another package arrived for Jessica the next day but, once again, she didn’t get to see it before it was taken away by the science team. The previous ones had bothered her but Jessica had pretty much expected another finger to arrive. If it was Sam, she wondered if the woman knew who she was because of the media reports.

The biggest development of the day again didn’t relate to her case. The garage owner was found hiding in a caravan in a field north of the city. His photo had been everywhere and a member of the public had called the police after spotting him. He had spent the first twenty-four hours no-commenting but there were hints from his solicitor that he might have information to reveal. Jessica thought he might have been more willing to speak given the fact he was likely to be charged with murder but people could do strange things when they were either frightened or felt they could be battling for their life. What had perhaps been telling was that George Johnson hadn’t said anything to the media since his wife’s body had been found. For someone who had been only too keen to speak beforehand, it really was a turnaround and, from what Jessica could tell, had convinced Cole and Reynolds even further that he was somehow involved.