He hurried across the car park, reaching the bus stop before the woman, and leaning on the shelter as he watched her stagger along the pavement with two shopping bags. He could sense the excitement building as he got on the bus, this time sitting on the very back set of seats, a few rows behind her. Each stop seemed to take an age as his mouth filled with anticipation.

Finally, the vehicle stopped close to Kayleigh’s house and he filed into the queue to exit directly behind her. He allowed her to get a lead as he trailed her back through the estate, keeping a careful eye out for any potential bystanders. He knew it wasn’t quite time for parents to start picking their children up from school and felt his heart soar as they turned the corner onto Kayleigh’s road, which was empty apart from a handful of parked cars. He had been planning to wait but he might never get a better time than now to act.

He quickened his pace, ensuring he was close enough and then, as Kayleigh put her shopping bags down next to the front door, he took his hands out of his pocket and stepped onto her driveway.

14

Jessica lay in bed staring into the darkness, wondering why she couldn’t bring herself to ask the simple question about why Adam was being so secretive. Given his parents had died when he was young, and his grandmother a couple of years ago, he didn’t have any other family to be communicating with. Other than the people he worked with, he had never really had much in the way of friends, certainly not since they had been seeing each other, so Jessica had no clue. She hadn’t challenged his ‘no one’ responses and was not used to being in such a position.

Usually, she would speak or act first and worry about the consequences later. If a suspect or witness had lied to her so blatantly, she never would have held back – and yet she could not bring herself to question Adam. She lay awake wondering why but could not come up with anything better than the fact she didn’t really want to know the answer.

As she rubbed her tired eyes, Jessica heard her phone begin to vibrate on the floor. She let it ring for one extra time, hoping it would wake Adam, then pressed the button to answer. She was only half-surprised by the caller’s information that something had happened at Kayleigh Pritchard’s house and that she should get there quickly.

Jessica could never remember feeling as physically sick at a crime scene as she did after getting to Kayleigh’s house. It wasn’t anything she specifically saw, it was the reality of it all. In part it was because she had been sitting in the woman’s living room a week or so before but also, although she tried to tell herself differently, she knew it was largely due to what was going on with Adam.

She had a quick glance around the hallway, then turned and dashed across the road into a small garden area where she hunched behind a hedge and threw up on the ground. She felt close to tears as she rose and walked back to the door, asking one of the officers who was smoking nearby if she could have some chewing gum.

The hallway was littered with items of shopping. Jessica could see a tin of beans that had rolled towards the stairs at the far end and a bottle of washing-up liquid on its side in the doorway that led into the living room. There was a box of cereal, two bottles of water lying in the middle of the hall and a packet of biscuits had crashed to the floor at some point, leaving crumbs across the carpet.

Jessica couldn’t stop the thought going through her mind that it would be really difficult to clear up the broken bits.

‘Wait there,’ a voice said, as Jessica looked up to see a Scene of Crime officer walking carefully towards her. She recognised the woman’s face from various scenes over the past few months but didn’t know her name. Quite often, team members would move on to other roles, the late nights and short-notice calls taking their toll on people who were usually civilians anyway. Someone threw Jessica protective covers to go over her shoes and she steadily walked around the food until she was next to the other woman.

‘Is the body gone?’ Jessica asked, realising it was an obvious question, considering the lack of one in the hallway.

As it was, the answer was one she didn’t expect. ‘She was found in the bath upstairs. They took her about fifteen minutes ago but we’ve still got people up there.’

‘Shite . . .’

Jessica couldn’t think of anything more constructive to say. She looked around the hallway, realising she had missed a half-full carrier bag hidden behind the front door on her first look around. Something in the bottom was weighing it down but a bottle of shampoo had split and congealed into a blue pool.

Although she had her own ideas about what had happened, Jessica wanted to hear it from someone else, so asked what the woman thought. Seemingly grateful to be asked for her opinion, she pointed towards the objects on the floor. ‘I’d say she was attacked from behind, presumably after opening the front door.’ She indicated the positions of the carrier bags. ‘Although the objects are spread across the floor, the bags themselves are directly below where she would have been standing, so it probably happened as soon as she stepped inside.’

‘How did she die?’

Jessica could have guessed the reply before it came.

‘Probably asphyxiation, she has all the signs, although it’ll need to be confirmed.’

If how Oliver had died was anything to go by, then Jessica guessed the killer had surprised Kayleigh from behind, smothering her with a bag or something similar.

The woman turned towards the broken biscuits. ‘It looks like she fell forwards, crushing those and possibly knocking these bottles as well.’

It sounded like a horrible way to die, face-down as someone pressed a knee into your back, pulling something tight around your mouth to stop you breathing.

‘What happened then?’ Jessica asked.

Pointing towards the stairs, the woman continued her theory. ‘Somehow, she ended up in the bath upstairs. You’re going to have to leave it with us for a day or two to find out if she was dragged or carried. We haven’t found anything on the stairs yet, but we’re going to rip the whole of this carpet out to test for shoe prints, hairs or blood.’

‘What else have you found?’

The woman turned and crept back towards the front door, crouching and pointing to a spot on the wall. Jessica looked on from a distance, not wanting to accidentally interfere. ‘It looks like a partial shoe print here,’ she said. ‘It’s probably too small to be a man’s, so may well be the victim’s.’

‘Was there . . . anything else?’ Jessica didn’t want to say the words but the woman took the hint.

‘You’ll have to wait for the autopsy but her clothing wasn’t torn. She could have been re-dressed, of course . . .’

She nodded over Jessica’s shoulder towards the man now standing in the doorway. Cole was wearing a large coat far too big for him and looked as tired as Jessica felt. ‘I forgot how close you lived,’ he said, as Jessica carefully made her way across the hallway.

She thanked the woman for her help and then walked with her supervisor to the end of the driveway. As they talked, she tried to keep a distance, hoping the gum was covering the smell of her breath.

‘Did you go upstairs?’ Cole asked.

‘No, they reckon Kayleigh was killed by her front door and then taken to the bathroom where she was found. They’re trying to keep it all clear.’ Jessica blew into her hands and then pushed them deeply into the pockets of her coat. ‘How did we know?’

For a few moments, Cole did not reply. Jessica thought he hadn’t heard but when she turned to face him, she could see his eyes were fixed on the front door. He sighed and started walking backwards, then turned and headed towards the garden area where she had vomited. Luckily, he walked in the opposite direction and sat on a bench just inside the gate.