Ryan finished his drink with one final gulp. Jessica had barely had two sips from hers and slid it across the table towards him. ‘You sure?’ he asked, nodding towards the glass.

‘Yeah, you only have to stagger next door, I have to get all the way back to Salford.’

‘Anything else?’ he asked.

‘When I spoke to Molly about you, she . . . well, she wasn’t too willing to talk. The same with Sienna’s other friends. And Lara.’

Ryan shrugged. He seemed to be getting friendlier the more he drank, another parallel Jessica saw with herself. ‘I guess I have that effect on girls,’ he said. ‘Molly hated me because I was a bit of a twat. I’d call her a dyke and all sorts and then Sienna would still hang around with me.’

‘What’s changed?’ Jessica asked, curious about his attitude.

Ryan scratched his head. ‘I guess you just grow up at some point. Especially when you have a kid and your house burns down.’

‘What about the reactions from the other women?’

He shook his head. ‘I dunno the girls you spoke to but, basically, they all hated us lads who would hang around with Si.’

‘What about Lara?’

Ryan snorted. ‘You’ve seen what she’s like. She’s bloody nuts.’

‘So why did you hang around with her?’

He raised his eyebrows again. ‘She does this thing with . . .’

Jessica cut him off. ‘All right, I can imagine.’ She almost added ‘kids today’, before realising how old that would make her sound. She recognised he had good answers for all of her questions. If they did ever need to check his alibis, she thought Lara would be able to provide one. The edginess in the young women’s responses to him seemed understandable in the circumstances.

‘There’s one last thing,’ Jessica said.

By the time they had finished talking, she knew she had all but solved one major part of the puzzle.

30

Jessica knocked on the front door and stepped backwards. She could hear the television being muted from inside before the locks were noisily unbolted. The man who stood at the door in his dressing gown eyed her suspiciously through a small crack before opening it fully.

‘I’m sorry, I know it’s late,’ Jessica said.

‘Why are you here?’ he asked.

A woman appeared in the background and Jessica acknowledged her with a smile before turning to the man. ‘I was just hoping I could come in for a short while. I promise I won’t be long.’

‘Do you have any news about . . . ?’

Jessica shook her head. ‘I wish I did.’

The woman walked over to stand next to her husband. ‘You can come in,’ she said, pulling the door wider and stepping aside.

Jessica wiped her feet, desperate not to make a bad impression before asking the one question she had.

‘Are you all right?’ Nicola North asked. ‘We saw you on the news because of the fire and everything. It looked bad.’

‘I’m okay,’ Jessica said. ‘I was wondering if you might allow me to look around Molly’s room?’

She saw Peter exchange a slightly panicked glance with his wife. ‘I . . . don’t . . . why?’ he said.

Jessica made sure she looked them both in the eye as she spoke. ‘It sounds stupid but, when I was in her room before, it reminded me a little of my own from when I was that age. I just wonder if something was missed.’

Nicola replied. ‘There was a group of your people in there for almost a day . . .’

‘I know, it’s not that. I’m looking for something different. Have you changed much around since . . . ?’

Nicola shook her head. ‘We tidied up after the police left. It’s as it was.’ She looked at her husband, who turned to Jessica.

‘What are you looking for?’

‘I’d rather not say – just in case I don’t find anything.’

Nicola spoke before her husband had a chance. ‘It’s fine. Let us know when you’re finished. Take as long as you want.’

Jessica couldn’t read Peter’s face but he didn’t object. She turned and walked up the stairs, remembering how she had felt when she had made the opposite journey what seemed like such a long time ago.

Molly’s room appeared almost exactly as she remembered it, except that the light fixture had been repaired and the blood stain on the carpet was now only visible if you knew where to look.

The bed seemed pristine, as if it had been made that morning, and the light-coloured linen creaseless. Jessica slid her hand under the mattress, before picking the whole thing up, resting it against the wall so she could see beneath. There were wooden slats running the width of the bed frame but there was nothing on them. Jessica lowered the mattress and re-made the bed, trying to make the corners as sharp as they had been.

She moved to the bookcase and started removing the books one by one, checking inside and then replacing them. Molly’s literary choices were wide-ranging, everything from biographies to romance novels to science fiction. She seemed to read a bit of everything but, after flicking through each one, Jessica couldn’t find what she was looking for.

She looked down the back of the radiator and then, although she suspected the other officers would have already done it, Jessica searched through the chest of drawers and wardrobe.

She tried to stifle a cough but ended up making it worse, sputtering small spots of black and red onto her hand. She took a tissue from the box on the dressing table and wiped her palm and then pocketed it. She didn’t want to admit to anyone that her throat was constantly sore but she had been coughing up blood and bits of black ever since the fire. She knew everyone would tell her to go to the doctor, but she couldn’t face talking about it any more. The truth was, through her dreams and daytime flashes, Jessica had remembered more than enough and wasn’t sure if she could cope with reliving everything that happened.

She scanned around the room, looking for any other hiding place and partly wishing she hadn’t come. When the idea had struck her after the conversation with Ryan, she knew it was a long shot. She had seen the hope in Nicola’s eyes that she might have visited to bring them news, or offer the longed-for closure.

At a slight loss for what to do, Jessica crouched and crawled around the room, feeling into the corners of the carpet to see if there were any areas raised higher than they should be.

She ended up sitting in the centre of the room peering at the ceiling, although she couldn’t see a loft or anything similar. As she stood, she felt her back twinge and instinctively reached around to hold it. She cursed under her breath and sat on the edge of the bed, sinking into the same spot she had on the previous occasion.

Jessica put her palms on either side and pressed down into areas of the mattress which felt firmer. She moved back onto the floor, ignoring the pain in her back, and untucked the sheet, running her hand along the edge of the mattress before finding a small hole. Jessica could just about squeeze her hand in, rummaging between springs and soft sponge-like material before her fingers touched the edge of something solid.

Jessica withdrew her hand, re-adjusted the way she was sitting and then tried reaching in again. This time her arm slid in more comfortably and her fingers closed around the object. As Jessica withdrew the book, small dots of fluff followed it out of the hole, dropping onto the floor.

In her teens, Jessica had kept her diary underneath the carpet which sat under her bed. As far as she knew, no one had ever found it and she burned the contents shortly before turning eighteen. Back then she had found her writings embarrassing and childlike but now she suspected they would be funny.

Jessica wasn’t expecting a humorous read from Molly’s diary but, as she scanned from the most recent entry backwards, she did find the solution to at least one of the cases she wasn’t supposed to be working on.