‘Are you both all right to talk?’ Jessica asked. The two parents nodded. They were both somewhere in their early forties but the grief seemed to have aged them, each sporting puffy, swollen eyes. ‘Do you know if your son was out with anyone last night?’

Arthur and Jackie looked at each other but it was Jackie who answered. ‘We never knew really. He struggled to find a job and seemed to spend all his time out drinking. We knew some of his friends’ faces but not names. They weren’t the same mates he had back at school.’

‘Do you have any other children?’

‘No, just Rob. That’s why it was so hard when he started getting into trouble . . .’ Jackie tailed off into tears and Carrie picked up a box of tissues from a coffee table in the centre of the room and went to sit next to her. Arthur was sitting on the other side and put a hand on his wife’s shoulder as she blew her nose.

He picked up the conversation. ‘I know you’ve probably seen the trouble he’s been in but he really is a good kid. It’s just hard around here with the gangs and so on. He gets easily drawn into things and then he’s the one who gets left behind when his mates make a run for it. He’s always been like that. We thought that when he left school he would get a job somewhere and sort himself out but there’s nothing about. If anything it made it worse because he started drinking. Some of the older lads around here would buy those big bottles of cider and stuff like that. We’d given him the odd glass of wine, like you do, but he wasn’t used to it all.’

Jessica nodded along as the man spoke. The story wasn’t entirely dissimilar to the tale Craig Millar’s mother had told her, albeit Robert sounded like much more of a follower than a leader.

Arthur Graves continued. ‘We tried to get him to stop but what can you do? He’s eighteen years old, it’s not as if you can ground him. He’s bigger than both of us anyway. We’ve been looking to move into a better area for a while but we can’t afford somewhere else without selling this one. We’ve done our best to get everything tidy but potential buyers turn up and see the state of the area and aren’t interested. You can’t blame them, I guess.’

Jessica didn’t know what to say. Robert Graves was no angel but he wasn’t a tearaway with an axe to grind against the world because he had a traumatic family life. His parents clearly cared about him.

‘Do you know any of the people he regularly hung around with or if he was in a gang? Did he ever bring people over?’

Arthur shook his head. ‘I wish I could tell you. I know we should have paid more attention but I don’t know. After he took the car, we didn’t want to know.’

Jessica had already read about the incident in general but figured she might as well hear it from them. ‘What happened exactly?’

Jackie gave another light sob and took a tissue from Carrie. Arthur looked at her and started rubbing her back gently before speaking again. ‘We still don’t really know. It was stupid because he’s never been interested in driving. Most kids get their provisional licence when they’re seven teen and can’t wait to start learning. We’d pushed him into getting his first licence because we thought it could help him get a job but he was never really interested in driving itself. Then one day, it was about three in the morning and I woke up because I thought I heard the car starting. I went to the window and saw it disappearing off down the road without the lights on. The engine was roaring and it sounded like it was in the wrong gear. Jackie called the police while I ran out of the house to see if I could find out where it had gone.’

‘Where was it?’

‘It had only gone around the corner at the bottom of the road and then crashed into a hedge. I got there as the police were arriving with their lights going and there was Rob in the driver’s seat with some other kid I didn’t know next to him. They arrested him on the spot.’ He looked at his wife then back at Jessica. ‘They came by the house and asked if we had given him permission to drive the car. Obviously you don’t want to lie to the police but . . .’

Jackie started speaking over her husband. ‘I told them the car was registered to me and that I hadn’t given him permission to take it. I thought the shock might sort him out but he didn’t speak to me for three months.’

Arthur nodded sadly. ‘He wouldn’t even let his mum go with him to the court. He got a fine but it was added on to the amount he already owes. He doesn’t have any money so we’ve been paying the fiver a week for him.’

Jessica breathed out heavily but tried not to make it sound too much like a sigh. ‘Do you know of anyone who might wish to harm your son?’

‘I’m sorry, we hardly know anything,’ Arthur said. ‘If you want to go through his room or anything like that then there might be something but he was out all the time and only slept there. We stayed up last night waiting for him to come in. We were going to phone you to report him missing but I know it’s got to be twenty-four hours or something like that and it wouldn’t have been the first time he didn’t come home all night. Even when I heard the knocking on the door in the early hours of this morning, I thought it was because he’d lost his keys but then it was one of you.’

At that point, Arthur started crying too. Jessica knew there wasn’t too much more she could hope to get from Robert’s parents. Someone would be sent to search their son’s possessions, while the labs already had his mobile phone and could check that for any recent contacts. She offered her thanks for them talking to her and gave them her card.

Arthur led her and Carrie back to the front door. They were about to walk out when he lowered his tone to ensure there was no way he could be heard by anyone other than the two officers. ‘Do you think he was killed by the vigilante? I know he’d been in trouble . . .’

They exchanged a look and Jessica answered. ‘I’m afraid we don’t know that yet, Mr Graves.’ The man nodded, trying to hold back more tears.

As they left, Jessica handed the car keys to her junior. ‘You drive. I’m not in the mood.’

The journey back to the station was fairly sombre. Both of them had clearly been touched by the interview. Carrie did try to lift the mood while they waited at traffic lights. ‘How did you go last night?’

Jessica had almost forgotten about her evening with Adam given everything that had happened since. ‘It was good.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Adam. But don’t tell anyone.’

‘You know I won’t. Is it true he works in the labs?’

‘Yes. He was a bit shy at first but quite fun when you get to know him. How’s your bloke?’

‘He’s all right too. We’re still keeping it low-key for now.’

Jessica wasn’t in the mood for a talk about relationships and was saved by her phone ringing. It was Adam and she hoped he wasn’t calling to talk about the previous night.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi, Jessica, it’s Adam.’

‘I know. Are you okay?’

‘Yes, look, someone will be calling your station soon anyway but I thought I’d let you know first. I take it you know about the body from last night, Robert Graves?’

‘Have you confirmed for sure it’s him?’

‘Yes, but that’s not why I’m calling – we’ve found something else on the body.’

Jessica felt a tingle down her spine. ‘What?’

‘We’ve got a fingerprint.’

16

Jessica could barely get her words out quickly enough. She could feel her heart racing. ‘Whose is it?’

‘We don’t know yet. It’s not a full print, so we’re having to do some work with it. There’s a specialist who works freelance who’s on his way in now. If it belongs to someone on file, we should be able to match it this afternoon.’