‘How did he get your number?’ McNiven asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Why did you call him?’

‘I wanted to ask who his source was.’ A half-truth.

‘Why did you meet him yesterday?’

‘I wanted to explain why causing a panic was not a good idea. I told Detective Chief Inspector Aylesbury I was going to meet him.’

‘Did you give him any information?’

‘He already had it. That’s why we met.’

‘Did you give it to him?’

‘What? Information about the second killing? No. I’ve not given him any tips at all. I wouldn’t even let him quote me.’

‘Have you ever met or had contact with this journalist before the incidents we have spoken about?’

‘No.’

‘Why do you think it was you he contacted?’

‘I don’t know.’

They went around in circles for another five minutes or so with the two officers asking essentially the same questions in a slightly different way. Jessica didn’t know anything further to tell them, while they seemingly didn’t believe her. They were at a stalemate when Officer McNiven thanked her for her time, said she could leave, and asked if she could send Cole up to meet them.

Jessica stomped her way back past Aylesbury’s empty office and down the stairs. She found Cole in his office and told him the bad news.

‘You’re up. Rosie and Jim want a word.’

She thought about calling Garry to ask what the hell the headline was all about. Considering the conversations she had just had – and the fact the investigators could and probably would check her phone records – she figured it was a bad idea. He would almost certainly say it was his editor who wrote it anyway. Maybe that was true, maybe not.

She would have to wait until Cole came back down before they could go through the morning briefing. A few more test results had come back but nothing very helpful with yesterday’s phone leads chased up and ruled out. She spoke to two of the DCs who were trying to link the two victims. They had come up with nothing of note. Some of the victims’ kids had gone to the same school but, given they lived relatively close to each other, that was to be expected. Other than that, it was yet another brick wall.

She went to the canteen to have some breakfast. Although she hadn’t expected the Internal team to be waiting at the station for her, she had known it was going to at least be a trip to the DCI’s office, so had come straight in that morning. Randall had stayed over for the first time the night before too and she felt a bit awkward after waking up, so left without seeing either him or Caroline. The station’s canteen was on the ground floor along the hall from her office. At best the food could be described as ‘poor’. Reynolds refused to eat there and claimed he had once needed three days off after eating some stew.

‘The tea’s bad enough here,’ he advised her. ‘Don’t risk the food too.’

Jessica wasn’t as passionate about not eating there as her office-mate but she did try to avoid it where she could. She risked beans on toast, thinking no one could really make a mess of that. As it was, it wasn’t too bad. She was sitting on one of the plastic chairs using the Internet on her phone. Word would have flown around the station that the Internal team were interviewing upstairs and it was a good bet everyone would know she was the first person who had been called in. She didn’t want to talk about it too much, so was fiddling with the phone’s front just to look as if she might be busy to hopefully stop anyone coming up to her.

She had wasted around twenty minutes before the first person tried their luck. One of the DCs assigned to try to link the two victims approached her table. DC Carrie Jones had a very strong Welsh accent that Jessica loved but others didn’t. Piss-taking was a given in any work environment. Jessica got it for her car, Rowlands for his hair and girl-chasing, while Carrie Jones got it for her accent.

‘I’ve got some news,’ she said.

Jessica couldn’t help but smile at her. ‘Good news?’

‘Good news and bad news.’

‘What’s the bad news?’

‘Sky News, ITV, the BBC and the local radio stations are now also using the phrase “Houdini Strangler”.’

The smile disappeared from Jessica’s face immediately. She put her hand to her forehead and sighed. ‘You could have sugar-coated that a bit.’

‘Er, sorry. Do you want the good news?’

‘Go on.’

‘The hospital has phoned to say you can go see Sandra Prince.’

14

Jessica returned to her office to make a few notes before heading off to the hospital. Reynolds was sitting at his own desk opposite hers. It was clear their office was occupied by two very different people. On Reynolds’s side closest to the door, everything was in meticulous piles or filed away. On Jessica’s half, papers, notes and files were carefully ordered on the floor, around the bin, under her seat and spilling over from her desk.

Shortly after she had been moved into the same space as him, Reynolds asked why she was so messy.

‘To the untrained eye, this may look like a disordered shambles but to an experienced organiser such as myself, there are levels to this filing system you can’t even begin to imagine. I know exactly where everything is.’

It was more or less true. She knew in the rough area where everything was but ‘exactly’ was probably pushing it.

Although he had been ranked above her before Jessica was promoted, there had never been any issues between the two of them after she was elevated. He had laughed as she explained her ‘filing’, while she had spent most of the day giggling when he had told her about taking three days off thanks to the canteen’s stew. Their work didn’t overlap at the moment and they shared a fun relationship.

As she checked through the papers on her desk for the information they had on Sandra Prince, Cole knocked and entered.

‘You’re up,’ he said to Reynolds.

‘What was it like?’ Reynolds asked.

‘Fine. They didn’t really have much to ask me. I’m pretty sure they think it’s DS Daniel.’ He nodded at her and gave her a wink as if to say he believed her.

Reynolds told them to wish him luck and left the room.

‘Now you’re done, we can go see Sandra Prince,’ Jessica said. ‘The hospital called and said it was okay.’

She didn’t know if the DI would want to go but figured it was best to assume he would, rather than just head off with someone else in tow.

She was fairly surprised when he replied. ‘Let’s go.’

The drive to the hospital had been a bit of a nuisance. Rush hour had come and gone but it was Friday and the traffic patterns always seemed to be inconsistent at the end of the week. As per usual it wasn’t too sunny in Manchester; grey clouds washed over the city, while winter and spring were still fighting over what the temperature should be. Cole had taken them in a marked car. Jessica thought his driving matched his personality, steady and straightforward, nothing too crazy.

Some guy had obviously not noticed the car’s markings as he swerved late across lanes and cut them up. If it were Jessica, she would have unleashed a barrage of ‘coarse language’, as Caroline might say and then pulled them over. At the absolute least, she would have given them the inconvenience of having to report to their local police station with all their documents but Cole carried on as if nothing had happened without even beeping the car’s horn. In some ways, Jessica thought, his calmness was very disconcerting.

At the hospital their presence was queried by the receptionist. She was young and continued hammering away at her computer’s keyboard as she said: ‘I’ve not got a record of you coming.’