Reynolds asked Nathan where he was on the night Isaac Hutchings disappeared.

‘I’m not sure,’ the man replied. ‘I keep everything on the calendar app on my phone. You took it away when I was brought in.’

Jessica looked at Reynolds. ‘Has it gone yet?’ She was asking if the phone had been taken to their forensics lab to be looked at.

The inspector shook his head and then looked at Nathan’s legal representative. ‘Are you happy for us to bring it into the room?’ The solicitor asked Nathan and they agreed. The inspector left and returned a few minutes later with Nathan’s phone in a small plastic bag. Again he addressed the man in the suit. ‘I have no idea what I’m doing with these things and for reasons that should be pretty clear, there’s no way we can let your client touch this. Are you happy for my colleague to open this bag?’ Nathan nodded and his solicitor agreed.

Jessica took the bag and opened it. The rigmarole was slightly over the top and, legally speaking, not necessarily something they had to do but it certainly eliminated any future doubt over whether evidence had been tampered with.

Jessica switched the phone on and there was an agonising wait before the main screen appeared. She turned it around so Nathan and his solicitor could see what she was doing, as the suspect talked her through which buttons to press. Jessica soon reached the calendar and scrolled up to the date Isaac went missing. Two words were typed on the screen and she knew Nathan was telling the truth.

‘Parents evening’.

After showing a relieved Nathan what he had been up to, the phone was switched off and re-bagged. Once reminded of that date, Nathan had a good recollection of how the day had gone. As school was finishing – the time Isaac was snatched from the other side of the city – Nathan had stayed behind to set up the classroom for the evening. He then went out for a pub meal with three of his colleagues before returning to the school. He said he stayed behind after the parents had left with a couple of other teachers to tidy up. His alibi would be checked but Jessica knew it would be verified.

With nothing else to ask, Nathan was taken back to the cells, leaving Jessica and Reynolds alone in the interview room.

‘Do you believe him?’ Jessica asked.

‘Unfortunately.’

‘Me too. We should still do him for deleting those emails. Perverting the course or something. He confessed to it, so it’s a piece of piss for CPS, just the way they like it.’

‘You know what’s going to happen, don’t you?’ Reynolds asked, refusing to meet her eye. ‘They’re going to want this finished. Benjamin’s done for the kidnap and murder, Nathan’s done for either perverting or assisting, whatever they think they can get him for. That’ll be it.’

‘But who stole Daisy’s car?’

‘They’ll say it was Benjamin. It’s not like he can deny it. We don’t have any prints from her house to say differently.’

‘What about the texts he sent, telling someone to meet him at the shed that night? What about the list of kids’ names? Where would he have got that from?’

Reynolds shrugged. ‘Unless forensics get something concrete from his phone, trust me, this will be the end of it. The chief super and everyone else high up want this out of the way before anyone realises quite how badly we ballsed it up.’

Jessica could not think of a reply because she knew he was right.

29

Jessica cradled the empty pint glass in her hand and tried to ignore the music blaring around her. She was sitting in a booth in the pub closest to the station with Adam on one side and Izzy on the other.

‘Are you all right?’ Izzy asked.

‘Yeah, it’s just this whole New Year celebration thing.’

‘What about it?’

Jessica was not in a mood for holding back. ‘It’s just . . . New Year’s Eve is for twats basically. Whichever way you want to dress it up, it’s for twats.’

Izzy laughed. ‘At least you can drink,’ she said, pointing towards her small glass of lemonade. ‘Anyway, what’s wrong with it? I always quite like New Year’s Eve.’

Jessica stood as Rowlands returned to the booth with Chloe and a tray full of drinks. He put them on the table and everyone shuffled around to let the pair sit down. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked.

‘Jess is moaning about New Year,’ Izzy said.

‘Shall I add it to the list?’ the other constable replied, which led to them both collapsing into giggles.

Jessica glanced from one to the other. ‘What list?’

Diamond and Rowlands looked sideways at each other, then started laughing again. Diamond eventually answered. ‘Every time you go off on a rant about something, we write it down. It’s sort of a “Things Jess doesn’t like” list. It’s quite extensive.’ Jessica looked around the table to see everyone, including Adam and Chloe, laughing.

‘What’s on this “list”?’ she asked indignantly.

Izzy didn’t even need to think before replying. ‘Er, Christmas decorations went on the other week. Then there’s Christmas music, radio phone-ins, charity collectors, carol singers, the rain, the snow, the frost, the wind, roundabouts, traffic lights, Dave’s hair, supermarkets, taxi drivers, bus drivers, people who don’t like wine, kids, teenagers, people who own dogs, people who own cats, dogs, cats, Londoners, and now New Year.’

‘And that’s just this month,’ Rowlands added in between laughs.

‘This is an outrageous abuse of my privacy,’ Jessica said, but no one was listening; instead they were giggling at her expense. When she thought about it, she could clearly remember complaining about all of the items on the list but that wasn’t the point.

‘What’s wrong with New Year?’ Adam asked when the group settled down.

Jessica didn’t need much thought. ‘It’s so forced. All these knobheads banging on about “What are you doing for New Year” all the time and then, when it’s the actual night, everyone expects you to be out partying and having a good time. If you’re not in the mood then you’re a spoilsport. Then it’s all about the countdown and “Auld Lang Syne”. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who knows more than the first two lines of the stupid song. Even when that’s all over, you have these morons and their stupid resolutions. I don’t get it. If you want to stop smoking, just stop. If you want to eat less, just do it. But oh no, you have to tell the world you’re bloody doing it, just because the year’s changed and then, by February, you’re back eating like a pig again. It’s bollocks.’

Jessica’s rant had spilled out almost as if it was one long word with barely a pause for breath. She looked up to see her friends staring at her and then couldn’t stop herself from laughing either. Her jaw was still aching. ‘All right, I do moan a lot,’ she admitted as Adam put an arm around her.

‘It is true about “Auld Lang Syne”,’ Izzy said. ‘I just la-la-la my way through it after the first two lines.’

Jessica smiled and pointed. ‘See, it’s not just me.’

‘It is mainly,’ Rowlands said.

‘Come off it,’ Jessica said. ‘Surely you’ve got to admit this is the worst Christmas party ever. Firstly, it’s being held at New Year; second, it’s in the pub around the corner from work and third, the music is older than I am.’

It was a set of complaints none of them could take issue with.

Jessica looked at Izzy. ‘When did you tell everyone anyway?’ she asked. ‘I must have missed it.’

Izzy smiled. ‘I didn’t want the whole big announcement thing just because I’m pregnant. I told Dave and he blabbed it around everyone else. Perfect really.’

‘Hey, it wasn’t like that,’ Rowlands protested.

‘It was,’ Izzy assured the table.

The New Year’s celebration, however poor, was at least succeeding in taking Jessica’s mind away from the other things going on. Everything had panned out in almost the exact way Reynolds had said it would. Nathan Bairstow was out on bail but would almost certainly be charged with something. Meanwhile, the case, while not officially closed, had been moved to one side. The few officers who were working over the festive period were being moved onto other things and, once the rest of CID returned after New Year, it was pretty clear the ones who had been investigating Benjamin Sturgess would be put on something else. They wouldn’t quite have the full amount of evidence they needed but, with the suspect already dead, they had enough. There certainly wouldn’t be a queue of lawyers desperate to dispute the evidence they had. Jessica was confident there was someone else involved but no one, least of all her, had a clue who that could be. Because the case around Isaac Hutchings was all but closed, the one surrounding Toby Whittaker’s disappearance also looked likely to be stopped. The dig at the woods had taken lots of time and resources and, apart from a wide selection of carrier bags, they had uncovered very little. Although Nathan Bairstow had worked at the same school Toby attended many years ago, no one thought he had anything to do with the disappearance. Quietly, it would just be forgotten about again.