‘So you gave the job up together?’

‘It was never one of those “hand your notice in” things, we just never went back. We moved to a different flat as well. If he had wanted to find us, he would have done – but neither of us owed him money and we hadn’t done anything other than not go to work. Although he had all the loan stuff going on, he was still a proper businessman on the surface. Neither of us thought he’d come after us and he didn’t.’

‘Did you ever hear from him at all?’

‘Not once. I saw his name every now and then in the paper or on the news but it was never for what you wanted.’

‘Who’s the Leviticus guy you talked about?’

Eleanor shook her head, shrugging, and it was clear she had said all she had to. The name was distinctive enough to track him down anyway.

Jessica asked if she wanted to add anything else, then made sure the woman was all right.

‘Cameron doesn’t know,’ Eleanor whispered.

Nodding a silent guarantee, Jessica left her contact details, closing the front door gently and thundering down the steps onto the pavement. She walked so quickly that she was practically running, fury raging through her that she couldn’t remember experiencing before. She had managed to contain herself in front of Eleanor but the story of the way Nicholas treated other people, women in particular, was almost too much to take. He’d had things his own way for his entire life, bullying and blackmailing people to do what he wanted them to. She didn’t want to think about the things Kayleigh might have gone through all those years ago and it was no surprise the two women had been too scared previously to tell the police about the monster from their past. Now Kayleigh was dead and even though there was nothing to link Nicholas to the killing itself, he was still the person who connected the two women.

It wasn’t until Jessica reached an area with no street lights that she realised she had been heading in the wrong direction away from her bus stop.

Her hands were aching and she looked at them in the light of the moon to see thin lines of blood across her palm from where she had balled her fists tightly, digging her nails in, so angry that she hadn’t noticed. As she turned to go back in the correct direction, Jessica resolved that one way or the other, she was going to take Nicholas Long down once and for all.

17

Jessica was finding the weight of her silent promise to Eleanor hard to live with. Already her sleeping patterns were a mess, thanks to a mixture of mistrust towards the man next to her and a legacy that stretched back a lot further than when she had woken up in a house that was on fire. She could barely bring herself to think of what might have happened to Kayleigh and the other women who owed Nicholas Long money but that only made it harder to push out of her mind. She thought of the man’s alcohol breath and his temper, plus the way she had put herself in harm’s way.

Again.

After another mainly sleepless night, Jessica spent large parts of the following morning scowling at colleagues to dissuade them from asking if she was all right.

Typically, it was Izzy who saw through the act first as Jessica picked at a sausage sandwich in the canteen.

The constable slid in across the table from Jessica and stole one of the sausages off the plate. ‘You look like you should be in bed.’

‘I was eating that.’

‘No you weren’t.’

Jessica looked up at her friend, her eyes widening in surprise. ‘What on earth is that?’

Izzy laughed. ‘What does it look like?’

‘It looks like your hair is now purple.’

‘Yep.’

‘Actual purple.’

‘That type of observation is why you should be up for Jason’s old job.’ The constable was grinning while she ate the remainder of the sausage.

‘When did you have that done?’

‘Well, you saw me two days ago . . .’

Jessica couldn’t stop herself from yawning. ‘Sorry, I’m not quite with it.’

‘Dave says you’ve been locked in your office all morning.’

Jessica put down her fork and picked up a sausage with her finger. ‘I wasn’t locked in there.’

‘Do you need a hand?’

Jessica shook her head, not wanting to say that she had spent the morning looking into Leviticus Bryan. Because she did not want to take Eleanor’s secret to anyone else unless she had to, she was determined to find something, or someone, who would give her another angle on Nicholas.

‘I’m fine,’ Jessica said, a little too sharply.

‘Did you read the autopsy report on Kayleigh?’

Although Jessica wasn’t particularly hungry, she was eating for the sake of it and finished chewing before replying. ‘Exactly what we thought – killer taller than the victim, possible knee mark in her back, pretty much identical circumstance to Oliver.’

‘No sexual assault.’

Jessica nodded. ‘Can you cover for me this afternoon if Jack or anyone else asks where I am? I don’t think he’d mind anyway but I don’t want to go through him.’

‘You’re not going back to . . .’

‘No.’

‘Promise?’

Jessica looked up to catch Izzy’s eye and laughed. ‘How old are we?’

Izzy smiled too but her eyes didn’t. ‘He’s dangerous.’

‘I know.’

‘Some things we should leave to Serious Crime . . .’

‘I know!’ Jessica spoke far more loudly than she intended, instantly silencing her friend. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,’ she added.

‘I don’t want you doing anything stupid.’

‘That’s what I specialise in.’ Jessica meant it as a joke but Izzy didn’t laugh. ‘Anyway, it’s a bit rich to be told off about doing silly things by the woman with long purple hair.’

The constable did at least smile second time around. ‘I fancied a change.’

‘Then why not have your nails done, or go away for a weekend? There’s change and there’s change.’

‘Do you like it, though?’

Jessica smiled. ‘I wish I had either the time, patience or guts to do something like it myself. What did Jack say?’

‘Not much, if it was going to be an issue then it would have been when I had bright red hair.’

‘True. What about Mal?’

The constable’s face lit up as she grinned widely. ‘Oh, he really likes it . . .’

Jessica rolled her eyes. ‘All right, let’s leave it there.’

Izzy smirked. ‘How’s married life?’

Jessica picked up the final sausage and bit the top off, chewing slowly and deliberately.

‘You didn’t do it, did you?’ Izzy added.

Jessica held up her ring finger, waggling it to show her wedding band before taking another bite as the constable squinted at her, trying to work out what was going on. ‘You can tell me.’

Jessica took a moment to swallow her food before replying. ‘Tell me what’s going on with Dave and I’ll tell you what’s going on with me.’

Izzy met Jessica’s gaze but didn’t waver. ‘So how’s Adam?’

‘He’s being a man.’

Izzy nodded knowingly. ‘That’s the problem with blokes, they’re all so . . . male.’

Jessica put the rest of the sausage in her mouth and wiped her fingers on a napkin, before dropping it on the plate. The constable reached forwards and touched her hand. ‘Seriously, you’re not off to do something stupid, are you?’

‘No.’

‘Promise?’

‘On Adam’s life.’

Sat nav or no sat nav, Jessica didn’t have a clue where she was. After she’d been directed into a cul de sac and then instructed to take a right turn into a field, Jessica told it exactly what she thought of it, before turning it off. Its final words had been ‘after three hundred yards, take the second exit’, even though she was facing a wide metal gate with half-a-dozen cows on the other side.

She decided to do things the old-fashioned way and reached into the pocket behind her seat, pulling out a map and opening it on the passenger’s seat, trying to figure out where she needed to go.