Jessica couldn’t argue, having seen the man’s ego close up.

‘I need to visit Nicky,’ she said.

‘I know.’

‘Are Serious Crime going to mind?’

‘Probably, but what they don’t know and all that . . .’ Jessica couldn’t be sure but she thought he had winked at her. ‘We’re going to have to be careful,’ he added.

He was already on his feet before Jessica realised that meant he was coming too.

26

Despite the length of time they had worked together, Jessica had never been in Cole’s vehicle. He had a 4x4 that was under a year old and drove like Jessica’s mum, which was the worst insult she could think of. Actually, sod that, he drove like her grandmother, who’d been dead for years.

When she was younger, Jessica had always liked going in a car alone with her father but every journey would be prefaced with the words ‘don’t tell your mother’. While her dad would zip around the local country roads and speed up over the humpback bridges, her mum would stick rigidly to the speed limit and obey every road sign. She often wondered if it was this which led to her driving having a bad reputation around the station.

Their journey south into Didsbury was conducted mainly in silence, the tick-tocking of the indicator and the dull poshness of the person on the radio providing a backdrop to a life Jessica knew she had to avoid.

Jessica used to live in the area herself, although Nicholas’s house was in a far more affluent spot. Her flat had been part of a newly built development of townhouses just off the main road but the property they were heading to was a mile past that at the back of a housing estate with a cul de sac to itself. If you hadn’t known it was there, you wouldn’t have found it, with signs sending you off to the nearby rugby and golf clubs and no indication there were any additional houses.

Cole drove steadily, with the air of someone who knew the area well, skipping along a selection of side streets and avoiding the major commuter routes.

There were no huge gates or enormous walls shielding Nicholas Long’s property from the rest of the road as Cole pulled onto the driveway, which itself was an intricate pattern of yellow and red brickwork. Jessica stepped out of the car, peering behind to find the yellow bricks under her feet spelling out an enormous upside-down ‘NL’ when set against the red. She walked along the length of the letters, which curled into each other, showing an intricacy of design which would have been impressive had it been in calligraphy, let alone created with bricks in a driveway.

The house was in a mock-Tudor style similar to the school she had visited, with vast thick black beams offset against bright white walls. Jessica couldn’t see how far the property went back, but there were three wings, as well as a central block that had a huge wooden door, styled to look like a drawbridge. A separate building off to their left had huge garage doors in the same style at the front, big enough to fit at least three cars side by side.

‘We’re in the wrong business,’ Cole muttered as a joke, but he was only half-wrong. For all these years, Nicholas had somehow found a way to stay out of trouble and this was the house he had built with the proceeds. That came on the back of everything Leviticus had, which, despite his protests of feeling trapped in a prison, she knew full well had also been funded partially through the misery of others.

Wrong business indeed.

How to announce their arrival baffled them both for a few moments before Jessica realised the handle hanging next to the door which she thought was decorative was actually a doorbell. It reminded her of flushing the old-fashioned toilets in her primary school but she pulled the chain and they heard a tinkling tune from inside.

Jessica’s stomach was rumbling uncomfortably in the way she had become used to ignoring but after a minute or so, they heard a heavy bolt being withdrawn before the door swung open. A small woman with dark curly hair and a purple uniform stood looking at them quizzically. Her accent sounded Eastern European, although Jessica couldn’t deny she had a better grasp of English than many of the local youngsters they picked up.

She told them to sit on a sofa just across the threshold, carefully bolting the door back into place and disappearing into an adjacent room.

Leviticus’s property had been impressive but it wasn’t a patch on Nicholas’s. The insides kept the same style as the exterior, large dark beams running along the walls, interspersed with fake candles. Everything they could see, from the sofa they were sitting on, to a large table opposite, to the frames around the doors, was made of the same thick heavy-looking wood. Jessica could see why Nicholas employed a maid; keeping everything tidy would be a fulltime job in itself.

‘How much do you reckon this place cost?’ Cole asked as they both took in the hallway.

‘Seven figures? Eight?’

They were interrupted by the clicking of heels as someone Jessica assumed was Tia Long entered the room. She was wearing a short dark skirt with a matching jacket over a tight white blouse. Her black hair was tied tightly away from her face, which was tanned and made up to perfection. Her legs were a similar colour, which certainly hadn’t been gained from the overcast Manchester skies.

She walked with the confidence of someone who couldn’t believe their luck. ‘I’m on the way to visit my solicitor,’ Tia offered as a way of greeting. She insisted there was nothing she could add that wasn’t in her statement, pointing out that, although she had said it was fine for them to visit, ‘I didn’t actually think you’d turn up’.

Before she could leave, Cole added: ‘Is Nicky still around?’

Tia’s snort of ‘yeah but good luck’ did not bode well as she told them he was somewhere in the house and then unbolted the door, letting herself out.

Alone in the hallway, Jessica didn’t get the opportunity to speak before Cole. ‘Let it go.’

‘Let what go?’

‘You know. Just think what you might be like if you were in a situation living with a man like him. You’d be skipping out of here cock-a-hoop too if you found out he’d died.’

Jessica couldn’t deny that but he then answered her follow-up question before she could ask it.

‘We’ll still look into her, don’t worry.’

With the echo of the door closing still sounding around the house, Cole led the way through the door the maid had entered a few minutes earlier. It led into a long corridor with doorways on either side. Jessica could see daylight, following the chief inspector as he walked to the end, which opened into a kitchen.

The maid from before was nowhere to be seen but there was an older woman wearing the same uniform chopping up potatoes on a large worktop in the centre of the room. Her eyes widened in a panic at the sight of people she didn’t know but Cole held up his identification and asked where Nicky was. Her grasp of English wasn’t as strong as the first maid’s. Instead, she shrieked an accented ‘Mister Nicky’ so loud it made Jessica wince.

The reason for the woman’s call soon became obvious as a man with a baseball cap on backwards sauntered out of an adjoining room with a tube of crisps in his hand.

‘Pipe down, would you?’ he said aggressively before noticing Cole and Jessica in the doorway. ‘Who are you?’

Cole introduced himself and Jessica, adding: ‘I thought your stepmother told you we were coming?’

Nicky chewed a crisp with his mouth open, laughing. ‘Yeah right, mate, I don’t have a mum.’

Jessica was trying to place his accent but it was a mixture of everything, part local but with an over-pronunciation she guessed came from his private education. He was exactly how she would have pictured him: short hair gelled forward, expensive clothes and the inbuilt aggression of a pitbull being held on a leash while being poked by a stick. Everything he said sounded like a threat and his body language might as well have been backed by a tattoo across his forehead reading ‘bring it on’.