‘Fine, just tell them,’ Rowlands said, sinking further into the seat. Chloe gave a small squeal and crossed back to sit next to him, snuggling her head into his reluctant shoulder.

Hugo stopped playing with the hat, stretching himself out so he was lying flat on his back looking at the ceiling. ‘When we were freshers, there was this speed-dating event in the first few weeks to help everyone get to know each other. Dave, me and a few other lads went along. There were about fifty or sixty people there and you got around a minute with each person before the buzzer went and you moved on. We’d only got to the second person when we heard this shouting and Dave was having an argument with some girl.’

Jessica looked across at Dave. ‘You had a row with someone while speed-dating?’

He shrugged. ‘Yeah, I dunno, something like that.’

‘How can you fall out with a complete stranger in less than a minute?’

‘She was going on about how “Return of the Jedi” is better than “The Empire Strikes Back”.’

‘Oh for f . . . So it wasn’t even a proper argument, it was a geek argument?’ Jessica said.

‘Well, obviously it’s not better,’ Rowlands protested as Chloe hugged him tighter, a large grin on her face.

Caroline was the first to openly fall asleep, although she had been flagging for a while. Between them, they had drunk everything Jessica had bought, as well the bottles of wine brought by her guests. Finally Dave, Chloe and Hugo ordered a taxi. Caroline was asleep on the floor so Jessica and Adam helped her onto the sofa before covering her with two blankets. Jessica was feeling tipsy but not completely drunk. She led Adam out of the room holding his hand but as he shut the door behind them, he stopped and pulled her close to him, hugging her. ‘Did you have a good day?’ he whispered into her ear.

Jessica pulled his arms tighter around her, then turned so she could cuddle him properly. ‘Yeah. It was great.’

‘The food was good.’

Jessica didn’t respond to his compliment but squeezed him tightly. ‘Merry Christmas.’

Adam laughed slightly. ‘Merry Christmas to you too.’

Jessica knew he couldn’t see her because her head was snuggled under his chin but she closed her eyes anyway and took a deep breath. ‘I love you,’ she whispered loud enough for him to hear.

26

The police’s press conference about Benjamin Sturgess had occurred just before Christmas. With little else going on and journalists generally being off work with the rest of the world, the story of Isaac Hutchings’s kidnapper already being dead led the news agenda for four straight days. Jessica tried as best she could to avoid the coverage but she had either to endure it or watch no news at all. She tried to catch up with what was going on at least once a day, either on the television or through the Internet or, occasionally, by actually buying a newspaper.

Jessica had been to the station on Boxing Day and most of the rest of the week. Despite Adam being off work, she was determined to get something done before New Year. She visited the allotments but number sixty-one was roped off while a full excavation was being attempted. As with the woods where Toby Whittaker’s clothes had been found, the freezing weather was making things difficult. Inside the shed, the floor had been pulled up to reveal the pit underneath, each piece of carpet sent off for analysis. With that gone, the hidden section seemed far less impressive and was simply a large muddy hole in the ground.

Jessica re-read the original documents relating to Toby Whittaker’s disappearance twice to see if any of it made more sense now that they were pretty sure Benjamin Sturgess was involved. When none of it did, she spent an hour pacing her office before deciding to go for a drive.

It had turned out even colder as Jessica pulled her car onto the side of the road fifty metres away from Deborah Sturgess’s house. It was Wednesday afternoon, the sun was setting, and she didn’t really know what she was hoping to achieve. She wrapped herself in a thick woollen coat and watched the woman’s front door from a distance.

Reynolds had handled the questioning and, although she trusted him to do a good job, it annoyed her that she hadn’t been present. She didn’t know if she thought Benjamin’s former wife was involved. She was certainly hard to read but perhaps it was just shock that her ex-husband had died and that a child’s body had been found in his boot. She doubted Deborah had anything to do with Isaac’s kidnapping and murder but there was still a question over whether Benjamin had been responsible for Toby’s disappearance. They would have been married fourteen years ago, but then, if Benjamin did have his allotment patch and hidden pit, maybe he had been acting alone? The one thing she was certain of was that he hadn’t acted by himself when it came to Isaac – he had arranged to meet someone at the shed. For now, other than Deborah, Jessica had no idea who that person could be.

As she was watching the front door, Jessica’s phone rang. She scrabbled around for it in the well between the seats. The display showed a local number but it wasn’t programmed into her phone so she didn’t know who was calling. ‘Hello?’

‘Is that Detective Sergeant Daniel?’ a male voice asked.

‘Who’s calling?’

‘This is Kingsley James from the Bradford Park laboratories. I tried to contact someone at the Longsight station but whoever was working there gave me your number.’

‘Okay . . .’ Jessica was always suspicious when someone she didn’t know rang her mobile.

The man didn’t seem to notice the scepticism in her voice. ‘I’ve got something you might be interested in. I’ve been in on my own today but I’ve got the phone I think you found in the Sturgess case.’

‘Which one?’

‘We examined the smartphone first but it was pretty clear there was nothing untoward with that one. It just seemed like one used for business. There were all sorts of messages on there but it didn’t look like much had been deleted. I’ve been working on the other one.’

‘Did you find any contacts?’

‘Not contacts, no, but I did manage to get back into the call history that had been erased. We’ve traced a number for you. It’s different from the one the text messages were sent to. Can I pass it on?’

‘Hang on, let me get a pen.’

Jessica put the phone on the passenger seat and frantically searched in the glove box and door wells for a pad and pen. She used to keep at least one in the vehicle and could remember a time when she had lent one to her journalist friend in a supermarket car park. Back then he had complained it didn’t work but now she couldn’t find anything at all. Jessica looked over her shoulder but couldn’t see anything in the back seat before she had an idea. She picked up the phone and opened the car door, walking around the rear of the vehicle.

‘Okay, go ahead but read slowly,’ she instructed. Kingsley read the number and Jessica scraped the digits one by one into the thin crust of frost which had started to form on her rear window. She thanked him for his help before hanging up and calling Reynolds with the number. She knew she should probably have contacted Cole but wasn’t ready to engage with him quite yet. The inspector took the information and said he would start things moving.

Getting a number from the history was just the first part. The prefix made it clear the number belonged to a mobile, while they would know which operator the SIM card belonged to from the first five digits. Things became complicated if someone decided to keep an old number on a new phone. Even when they figured that out, if a phone number wasn’t public knowledge in the telephone directory, they had to have a warrant approved to get the mobile network operator to release the details of the person the number belonged to. Sometimes that could all happen over the course of a morning, other times it would take weeks. In some cases, it would lead to another unregistered pre-pay SIM card that couldn’t be traced.