It was easy for the police to blame the people who lived here for making a mess of their own estate but Jessica knew well enough a cycle of poverty was hard to escape from. Kids would struggle to get jobs, so sat around bored and hung about in gangs. Then when they were mature enough to have children of their own, which wasn’t that old for some of them, the cycle would start over. Even if you wanted to get out, you would be up against it. A place like this would have a reputation, so it was easy to get left behind when it came to funding for things like education or anything else that might aid social mobility.

It didn’t help either if you had to live close to criminal scumbags who cared about no one but themselves.

Jessica and Cole followed the teenagers’ instructions and soon came across the row of flats they were looking for. He pointed out that the ground-floor apartments all seemed to have even numbers, so they took the nearby stairs up to the first floor. The concrete entrance to the stairwell stank and Jessica avoided looking towards the back of the area where the bins were overflowing. The stairs opened out onto a full row of odd-numbered properties on their left and a wooden rail running the full length of the building on their right plus a hard stone floor underneath them. The first thing Jessica noticed was a bank of satellite dishes overhanging the rail. It seemed as if every property had wires running from their front door across the ceiling covering the walkway and back down to their own dish.

They made their way halfway along the row until they reached the door they were looking for. Jessica knocked and waited but it didn’t feel very sturdy. Most modern properties had double-glazed entrances and windows but the whole rank of flats had old-fashioned wooden doors.

Jessica had grown to like working with DI Cole, although his coolness did sometimes unnerve her. When they ended up working together, he was the calm thoughtful one while she went in running her mouth off. She had spent the past year trying to calm those instant reactions but it was a work-in-progress. In most situations, there was a tacit agreement between the two of them that Jessica would take the lead when it came to talking to witnesses or suspects. It wasn’t a tactic they had ever spoken about, more something that had happened.

There was no immediate answer so Jessica knocked again, louder the second time. This time, she heard a voice from inside but couldn’t make out what was being said. It didn’t sound too friendly. The door was wrenched open and a woman stood there in a light pink dressing gown. She had greying brown hair and was scowling before Jessica had even bothered to get her identification out.

The flat’s occupant rolled her eyes. ‘What’s he bloody done this time?’

2

It seemed a pretty fair assumption the woman was Craig’s mum but Jessica asked the obvious question to make sure. ‘Are you Craig Millar’s mother?’

‘Yes, come on. It’s too early for all this. What’s he done now?’

The woman didn’t seem in a very good mood and had clearly only recently climbed out of bed. Jessica guessed this wasn’t the first time Craig’s mother had been woken up because her son had been up to no good. Usually officers would make an effort to make sure people were at ease before giving bad news. At the absolute least, they would get the person to sit down. Quite often someone from uniform would be specially trained and drafted in to do it. The ‘training’ actually entailed an afternoon of role-plays with someone paid a lot more than they were. Ultimately, all officers knew there was never a good way to deliver bad news. Not acting like an idiot was rule number one – it was mainly about common sense.

‘I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you, Mrs Millar.’

The woman rolled her eyes and swore. ‘I don’t know how many times I’ve got to keep telling him. He’s out on his arse this time. I’ve had enough. I don’t want his brother getting involved in all this shite.’ The woman nodded behind her as if to indicate towards another son, who was presumably in a different room. He certainly wasn’t visible in the hallway.

‘I’m afraid your son is dead, Mrs Millar.’

Someone would have to formally identify the body but, given the wallet with his name in it and the fact Jessica recognised him, there was little point in making the poor woman suffer any longer.

She shook her head, taking half a step back. ‘He’s what?’

Jessica put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m afraid he’s dead.’

Craig Millar’s mother took the news surprisingly well. Jessica sensed it was something she had probably had in the back of her mind for a long time given the lengthy list of her son’s crimes. She introduced herself as Denise Millar and invited them into her kitchen, offering Jessica and Cole seats at a round dining table. The inside of the house was well maintained. The hallway was clean and decorated with school photographs of Craig and another boy. The kitchen was small but as tidy as the hallway. The table was at the centre of it, with worktops running the length of the room’s sides. Apart from the door they had come through, there was another leading towards what looked like the living room.

Denise explained that her other son Jamie was still asleep. He had finished his GCSEs a few months ago but didn’t want to stay on at school and hadn’t managed to find a job. ‘I just didn’t want him going the same way as Craig,’ his mother said.

The woman carried on as if nothing had happened, making the three of them a cup of tea. Neither Jessica nor Cole had said they wanted one but Denise had made one for them in any case. As she sat sipping from her mug, she asked the officers how it happened. Jessica replied that they wouldn’t be sure for a few days but it looked as if her son had been attacked.

Denise nodded as if it was the most natural thing in the world. ‘He wasn’t always bad,’ she insisted. ‘He got in with the wrong people at the wrong time. I knew some of the things he got up to but he was my son. I couldn’t just kick him out. There was nowhere for him to go. He promised me he wouldn’t bring any of it home with him but I don’t know what he got up to outside of here.’

Jessica realised the ‘it’ could mean anything but didn’t think it was worth pushing the point at that exact time. ‘Do you know anyone who might want to hurt him?’ she asked.

The woman snorted and put the mug down on the table. ‘Christ. You tell me. He’d only been back out of prison for a few weeks. I didn’t want to get involved with anything he did. I stopped asking for rent because I didn’t want to be associated with wherever he got his money from.’

Jessica didn’t know he had been in prison quite so recently. She wasn’t surprised but there was a wide range of community punishments people like Craig Millar seemed to end up on that kept them out of jail.

‘What was he in for?’

‘Some assault or something, he was on remand. It didn’t go to court in the end so they let him out. He told me he didn’t do it but then he always said that.’

‘Do you know who he was out with last night?’

‘No, I’d never remember the names anyway. I’ve got two kids with one always in trouble and a father that pissed off years ago. It all blurs into one in the end.’

Jessica nodded as Mrs Millar picked up her mug and took it over to the sink, washing it up. Jessica made a token gesture to sip some of the three-quarters of a mug she had left. ‘Would Jamie know any of the names?’ she asked.

Mrs Millar had her back to them but Jessica saw her freeze momentarily before turning around. ‘He better not.’

‘Could you ask him anyway?’

She met Jessica’s eyes. The look told her that Jamie probably did know who his older brother had been out with but that his mother still hoped he was innocent and unaffected by the trouble Craig had consistently been in.