If Jessica could have summed him up in one word, it would be ‘floppy’. He had light brown hair with a blonde tint, which Jessica guessed was artificial, that was parted along the centre and then drooped bouncily on either side. His face was slightly shiny, as if he had spent his lunch-break moisturising, and he wore a suit which was probably more expensive than any single piece of equipment in the room.

Jessica rolled her eyes and accepted his handshake, refusing to grimace as he deliberately squeezed tightly and smiled. ‘You must be Ian,’ she said, sitting back in the chair.

The man perched on the edge of Garry’s desk, so that he was peering down at her. Garry said he would leave them to it, suppressing a smile as he left the room and closing the door behind him.

‘I am, what’s your name?’

‘Detective Sergeant Daniel.’

‘Do you have a first name?’

Ian was smiling in what Jessica guessed he thought was an appealing way. In reality, it made his face seem crooked, his pointed nose angled to the side and his too-thin lips slanted into what was closer to a sneer.

‘Do you want to take a seat?’ Jessica said, ignoring his request and indicating Garry’s chair.

Ian slid off the desk, walking around it before sitting down with his legs splayed wide.

Jessica could feel her patience being pushed. He had that smug look about him, like he’d eaten the last of the biscuits and didn’t care that anyone knew. ‘I understand it was you who took the phone call for the death announcement relating to Oliver Gordon?’

‘Indeed.’

The fact he couldn’t even answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a yes or no question was infuriating. She asked him to elaborate on exactly what the job entailed although, from the way he described it, working on the births, deaths and marriages page was somehow equivalent to an undercover journalistic operation that was exposing corruption at the heart of government. Seemingly, without him, the paper would come crashing down.

Jessica eventually steered the conversation around to the information she needed. She wondered if Garry had told her not to shout at Ian specifically because he knew she would be desperate to after spending five minutes alone with him.

‘Tell me about the caller,’ Jessica asked.

‘It was male,’ Ian said.

‘Older, younger?’

The man ran his hand through his hair. ‘I don’t remember completely but he definitely sounded like an adult.’

Jessica had taken one of the notepads from the top of the filing cabinet and was making notes. ‘So over thirty?’

‘Perhaps a bit younger.’

‘So are you saying it was a young adult, between eighteen and thirty?’

‘Maybe. He could have been older.’

Jessica realised she was pushing the pen into the pad with increasing pressure. ‘How much older?’

‘I’m not sure. Maybe between eighteen and fifty?’

Jessica bit into the skin on the inside of her mouth to stop herself swearing. ‘That’s a broad age range.’

Ian had leant back in the chair, resting his foot on the opposite knee. ‘I didn’t realise it would be relevant at the time. I only remembered the name because I had to ask the guy to spell it out.’

‘You had to ask him how to spell Oliver?’

‘It might have had a double “L”.’

Jessica tried to suppress a sigh. ‘Fine, anyway, you asked the man how to spell it. And what did he sound like? Was he unhappy? Frustrated? In a hurry?’

Ian looked back blankly at her and Jessica realised she wasn’t going to get anything of use. Aside from the actual notice in the paper, the trip had been a waste of time. Although they would be able to get the phone records through at some point, it didn’t necessarily mean it would give them any answers. Pre-pay mobile phones could be used without credit cards, so they could be put in anyone’s name, while phone boxes, although rarer now, could still offer anonymity. Assuming whoever had called in the notice knew what they were doing, there wouldn’t be an easy way to track it. Ian’s description had narrowed the person down to one gender but, given his lack of awareness of the age of the person involved, she wouldn’t be certain he had got the sex right either.

Jessica tried again. ‘Do you remember anything other than the fact that it was a male who sounded somewhere between the ages of eighteen and fifty? Did you write the name down?’

Ian brushed his eyebrow with his finger, smoothing it. He clearly wasn’t interested in the rest of the conversation. ‘Sorry, I can’t recall.’

Jessica ripped the top page from the pad, although her notes consisted of little other than ‘18–50’, then ‘knob-head’ written in capital letters. She folded it over and put it in her jacket pocket, then stood. She had been going to hand him a business card before thinking better of it. ‘If you remember anything else, ask Garry to give me a call.’

Ian got out of the chair and put his hands in his pockets, standing with his hips thrust forward. ‘Are you not going to leave me your number?’

‘I’m not sure there’s anything more you can tell me.’

‘Maybe I could take it for non-professional reasons?’ Jessica couldn’t be sure but she thought Ian winked.

‘I’m all right, thanks.’

‘If you’re sure.’

Jessica opened the door and walked out before Ian could add anything else. Garry was standing a few desks away talking to one of the staff but she managed to catch his eye as she headed towards the lift. He caught up with her as she pressed the button to go down. ‘You’ll need my pass to get out,’ he said.

‘How do you put up with that guy?’ Jessica replied.

The lift pinged into place and they both stepped inside. ‘I don’t really. I put him in a corner and let other people give him work. He’s only here because of his dad.’

‘He’ll probably be running the place in eighteen months.’

‘Don’t even joke. Still, it was him who noticed the name match-up.’

‘At least he’s an observant idiot and not just an idiot.’

As the lift opened onto the ground floor, Jessica and Garry stepped outside. He used his card to swipe her through the security check and then waited by the door with her. ‘If he thinks of anything else, I’ll drop you a line.’ After a short pause, he added: ‘What’s going on with this kid? Is he missing? Dead?’

‘Who are you asking as? Journalist or interested bystander?’

Garry grinned sheepishly. ‘A bit of both.’

‘I guess it doesn’t matter seeing as his parents have been on to you. Either way, he’s missing. We don’t know any more than that yet.’

‘What do you think?’

‘I think that if someone was calling your paper predicting his death a few days ago, then we have a pretty serious problem.’

5

Kayleigh Pritchard picked up the carrier bags from the foot well on the passenger’s side of her car. The handles strained as she lifted, the thin plastic vulnerable against the weight of the groceries inside. She wondered what the point was of having ‘bags for life’ if she never remembered to take them out of her car boot. Instead, she was building up an ever-larger collection of plastic bags in the cupboard underneath her sink, and the ones in her car certainly would last for life, seeing as she never used them. She carried the shopping to her front door and put it on the doorstep while fumbling with her keys thinking, not for the first time, that she really should clear it out.

Because it rarely seemed to stop raining, her wooden front door was permanently swollen and always needed a hard shove.

Kayleigh practically fell over the threshold as she shouldered the door inwards and, after retrieving her bags, fought the door back into place before pausing for breath. The daily battle with the door had been going on for a few years and wasn’t getting any easier.