The new flat was in quite a respectable area but there was a distinct lack of decent takeaways. There were a few but they weren’t as downmarket and full of grease as the ones Jessica preferred back near her old flat. Perhaps the best part was that her neighbours were nothing like Carrie’s. If anything, Jessica herself was the blight on the area, given the age and state of the car she owned. Her flat was part of a block of six newly built three-storey town-houses that were all converted into apartments. Jessica lived on the middle floor of one and didn’t really know her immediate neighbours, other than faces to say ‘hi’ to. Everyone pretty much kept themselves to themselves.

Jessica liked the flat itself but it was mornings like this that made her wish she had stayed closer to the station. Technically it was a fifteen-minute drive from where she lived to Longsight. Given the traffic lights and sheer amount of vehicles piling into the city centre, it rarely took her less than half an hour on a weekday.

In the time since Craig Millar’s body had been found they still only had some very basic information back from the forensics team. Essentially, there was confirmation of the victim’s identity and that he had been killed by either the second or third of the three stab wounds.

Jessica stomped into the station through the front entrance in a mood because of the traffic. She started to head down a corridor towards her office but the desk sergeant caught her eye and called her over. ‘I’ve got a phone number for you,’ he said, offering her a Post-it note.

‘Whose?’

‘Someone at Bradford Park.’

The location referred to one of the force’s main bases, where GMP’s forensics team was located.

‘What did they want?’

‘Dunno. To talk to either you or Jack – whoever got in first.’

Jessica took the paper, on which was written a number and the name ‘Adam Compton’. She went through a set of double doors down a hallway the short distance to the office she shared with Reynolds. He wasn’t in and she walked over to her half of the room, sitting down after navigating a few piles of paper she had left on the floor the night before.

She dialled the number and a male voice answered on the third ring. ‘Is that Adam?’

‘Yes, who’s speaking please?’

His accent definitely wasn’t local. It sounded southern but she couldn’t place it. ‘It’s Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel from Longsight. You left me a note to call you.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ came the voice from the other end of the line. From the undercurrent of noise, it sounded as if he were doing something in the background. ‘Did someone tell you we found some blood scrapings under the fingernail of Craig Millar?’

‘I heard yesterday. Did you get a match?’

‘Well, sort of . . .’

‘How do you mean, “sort of”?’

‘According to the National Database, the blood belongs to someone called “Donald McKenna”.’

‘Isn’t that a good thing?’

‘Perhaps. Our records could be out of date but, according to the system, Donald McKenna is currently serving life in Manchester Prison.’

4

Adam Compton told Jessica his boss would be re-checking all samples and everything would be compared for a second time to the main National DNA Database. He did say that they had never had a false match as far as he was aware.

‘Very rarely something can be missed or contaminated but I’ve never known the system simply throw up a wrong name,’ he said.

Jessica gave him her mobile number and told him to call as soon as the second set of results came back. She checked their own files – likely the same one the forensics team would have access to – which also confirmed Donald McKenna was in prison. After that, she went to tell Cole about the phone call. He had arrived a few minutes after her and went to pass on the update to the detective chief inspector, who was based on the floor up from them. Jessica got back on the phone, this time to the prison to ask a question that most times wouldn’t need asking: whether or not an inmate was actually on the premises.

Whoever had answered her call in the first instance had clearly thought she was winding them up but Jessica had eventually managed to be passed through to one of the wardens who worked on the wing McKenna was housed on. He also seemed a little confused by Jessica’s question but took her phone number and called her back five minutes later to assure her he had walked to McKenna’s cell and personally seen him there. With the obvious matter out of the way, Jessica had to arrange going to interview the prisoner.

Talking to inmates in relation to other crimes they hadn’t yet been convicted of wasn’t entirely dissimilar to the process if they weren’t locked up. It was made easier by the fact you didn’t need to go out to find someone but a prisoner would still be entitled to legal representation, would still have to be cautioned and could potentially be tried for a crime in a court like any other person. In instances such as that, the jury wouldn’t necessarily be told the defendant was a current prisoner so they couldn’t risk being prejudiced. Jessica arranged to interview McKenna at lunchtime, with someone from the prison helping to sort out a solicitor.

Her mind was already buzzing. The prison that had been rebuilt on the old Strangeways site was definitely not the type of place you could just walk in and out of. During the years she had been in the force, she had visited there on a couple of occasions for various reasons. It was a Category A, maximum-security establishment for some of the most dangerous prisoners in the region. Without even visiting McKenna or viewing his cell, Jessica was pretty sure there was no real way he could have got out of his room, escaped the wing, found a way off the premises, murdered Craig Millar and then gone back again with no one noticing.

And that was before they could come up with anything approaching a motive.

That said, she never would have guessed her best friend’s boyfriend could have got himself into locked houses and murdered four people either. With those memories constantly in the back of her mind, she wouldn’t be ruling anything out, no matter how improbable.

Jessica went to wait in Cole’s office. She didn’t fancy a conversation with the DCI and was slightly surprised to find Cole already back downstairs.

‘That didn’t take long,’ she said.

‘I think he’s busy with some other stuff. Did you sort out the prison?’

‘Yeah. Surprise, surprise, our man is actually there.’

‘Do you reckon it’s just a forensics mess-up?’

‘Probably but it’s not really like them. Maybe this Adam guy is new or something? Either way, while we’re waiting for them to re-check everything, we may as well go have a word with Mr McKenna. If the results are correct, we’re either going to have to look at him being out of the prison somehow or someone having access to his blood.’

The fact it was blood not hair that had been found under Craig Millar’s nails complicated the issue. It seemed obvious to Jessica that hairs could be obtained easier than blood, so if someone was trying to fix up Donald McKenna they were going about it the hard way.

‘Was it Strangeways Craig Millar was on remand at?’ Cole asked.

‘Yes. He and McKenna would have been in at the same time but it’s a massive place. It doesn’t mean they knew each other.’

‘True but it is a connection.’

Jessica knew he was right but it was circumstantial at best. She printed herself off a hard copy of the prisoner’s criminal record to go over as Cole drove to the prison. She wasn’t a big fan of his careful style of driving and figured a bit of not-so-light reading would keep her occupied.