‘Should we wait . . . ?’ Rowlands began to say but Jessica already had her door open and was making her way around the front of the car. Rowlands looked at the officer in the back seat and shrugged as if to say, ‘I know’.

They found the flat number fairly quickly; it was on the ground floor and they established there was no back door. Jessica sent Rowlands towards the rear of the building anyway, just in case Lapham tried to make a run for it out of the window.

After he gave her the message to say he was in position, Jessica, with the uniformed officer by her side, knocked on the door. The wood felt thin and the colour was hard to distinguish. It had probably been blue at some point but it didn’t look like it had ever been cleaned. There was no answer but they could hear a television on inside. Jessica knocked again, louder the second time. They heard a female voice from behind the door, then it was opened.

The woman standing in front of them had grimy unwashed brown hair tied back into a ponytail, secured with a ludicrously big flowery pink tie that certainly didn’t suit the rest of her appearance. She was wearing a peach-coloured dressing gown with matching slippers, holding a smouldering cigarette in her left hand, with the right one poised on the door.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ the woman said to Jessica, looking her up and down, before noticing the officer in uniform. ‘Oh for—’ she continued.

Jessica talked over her. ‘Nice to meet you too.’ She pulled out her police identification. ‘Is Wayne in? We’d like to have a little chat with him.’

‘Don’t you pigs ever leave him alone? What do you want this time?’

‘Is he in? He does live here, doesn’t he?’

‘He’s not here.’

‘Are you sure? We could just come in to have a look around . . .’ Jessica motioned to put a hand on the front door but the woman pushed it back against her.

‘If you’ve not got a warrant, you ain’t coming through. He’s not here. Now piss off.’

The woman went to close the door but Jessica stopped her. ‘If he’s not here, then where is he?’

‘I don’t know. The pub? The snooker? I don’t know where he gets to.’

‘Which pub?’

‘Don’t take that fuckin’ tone with me,’ the woman started but Jessica was losing patience. She pushed the door fully open and squared up to the woman standing in the doorway. Jessica was a couple of inches taller than her and the woman took a step back.

‘I’ll take whatever tone I want,’ Jessica said, sounding as fierce as she could. ‘Now tell me where he is or, warrant or no warrant, we’ll turn this shithole upside down and see if there’s anything we can arrest you for.’

The woman was clearly fuming. Jessica knew that much of what she had just said was bluster and was gambling that whoever Lapham’s girlfriend was wouldn’t know that.

‘Fine,’ the woman spat. ‘He goes to that Prince of Wales pub just over on the main road.’ She motioned with her hands the direction she meant but Jessica knew where the place was because they had driven past it on the way in. The woman took a step back towards Jessica in a clear effort to show she wasn’t intimidated. ‘Now get out of my house, you posh bitch.’

Jessica did just that, thinking it was the first time she had ever been called ‘posh’. She had the information she needed and, as Cole hadn’t been present, her little bit of grandstanding wouldn’t be an issue. The uniformed officer certainly hadn’t said anything and Jessica had even seen a half-smirk on his face as they walked back to the car, radioing Rowlands on the way to say they had what they needed.

As they got back to her car together, Cole was parking his wagon behind them. If he was annoyed they had got there first and were on their way back from the flat empty-handed, he didn’t mention it. ‘Not in?’ was all he did say after he opened his driver’s-side window with an electric hum.

‘Prince of Wales pub around the corner,’ Jessica said. ‘Let’s walk it, then we’ll get the marked car to park outside when we know he’s there.’

It must have seemed an odd sight as three people in suits and three in uniform walked the few hundred yards to the pub. Jessica showed all of them the mug shot she had printed so they knew who to look for. The pub was on a main road with a concreted car park at the back. Jessica sent two of the three uniformed officers to wait there, leaving Rowlands and the other uniform at the front. She and Cole entered through the heavy wooden door.

The pub looked as if it hadn’t been renovated in Jessica’s lifetime. Despite the smoking ban being in effect for years now, Jessica could still smell stale cigarettes and the ceiling was covered in the brown and black stains that seemed so familiar before the law. On the walls were framed photos and prints of various local football teams. The carpet was thin and completely bare in places with the stone floor visible. It looked as if it had a red flowery pattern at some stage. Jessica thought it was exactly the type of hole Harry would have loved.

The door opened up into what was essentially one large room with the bar to their right. There were a few railings to try to break the space up but you could more or less see everything from the door. Jessica scanned the room and Cole did the same. There were only around half-a-dozen people in the whole place and she couldn’t see Lapham. Cole said ‘no’ quietly to indicate he couldn’t either. He went to check the men’s toilets, which were next to the bar, as Jessica sat on a stool in front of the barman.

The server, who was big and bald, towered over her. He had already been eyeing the two of them suspiciously as they walked in and the fact a potential customer had gone to use the toilets without buying a drink was no doubt causing him concern.

‘Can I get you . . . ?’ he started to say as Jessica took out her identification from her suit pocket. She also removed the printed photo of the suspect from the other pocket and held both items up for the barman to look at.

‘Have you seen this man?’ she asked.

‘Who, Wayne? Yeah, he was in here up until a minute ago. He took some call on his phone then bolted out the back. He left half his pint.’ The server indicated a half-finished glass of bitter on the table a few feet away from Jessica. ‘I didn’t clean it up ’cos I thought he might be coming back.’

Jessica slammed her hand on the bar, startling not only the barman but at least two of the other customers, who looked over towards her. ‘That cow tipped him off.’

16

Jessica could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she had run since moving into plain clothes. As a kid she had been a pretty good athlete, especially when it came to sprinting. Somewhere in a box at her parents’ house would be a certificate or two from her school days. As with most young teenagers, girls especially, the idea of getting sweaty and dirty while at school became less and less appealing as she got older. As she sprinted back to Wayne Lapham’s house, Jessica thought that, if she hadn’t been so girly when she was thirteen, this run might have been a tad easier.

Cole had come out of the toilets shaking his head as Jessica shouted to him about Lapham leaving. She dashed for the front door and was halfway down the road they had just walked along with Cole, Rowlands and three uniformed officers trailing in her wake. To anyone driving past it must have seemed like a bizarre scene being filmed for a sitcom.

She bounded past Cole’s vehicle and her own car, hurdled a hedge and charged towards Lapham’s flat. Rowlands arrived out of breath just after Jessica had finished pounding on the front door. She would have shouted out the woman’s name if she even knew it, continuing to bang on the door as two of the other officers, Cole, and finally the other officer arrived. Jessica was out of breath herself but adrenaline was flooding through her and the only emotion she had was blind fury.