Andrew removed the wire from the camera and plugged it back in before returning to typing on the keyboard. ‘Pretty much. You follow one of them, maybe take pictures depending on where you are. It’s not that hard.’

‘Is that mainly men?’

‘Actually no. Most of the ones I end up trailing are women – but that’s probably because it’s the men who are willing to pay to find out what their wife is up to. I think a lot of the females checking up on their husbands go to agencies in the city where they run these honeytrap things. They have these young women who look like models on their books who go into pubs and clubs and flirt with the men to see how they respond.’

‘I’ve heard,’ Jessica replied. One of her previous cases involved a man being murdered having being caught up in a honeytrap sting. She wondered how Adam might respond if a female with model looks tried to chat him up, remembering how shy he was when they first started going out. Jessica thought of the way he would trip over words and apologise all the time and figured it would be funny to watch him in action.

Andrew looked up and shrugged. ‘That’s not my thing anyway. If you’re hiring a girl to chat up your husband, I reckon you’ve got bigger problems.’ Jessica wanted to ask what else he did, thinking it couldn’t all be affair-related, when he added, ‘This is ready, by the way.’

She stopped playing with the plant’s leaves and went to stand behind Andrew. He brought up a window on the screen and started clicking through the photographs of Sienna.

‘You do know that a grown man following around an eighteen-year-old and taking photos doesn’t look good, don’t you?’ Jessica asked.

Andrew said nothing but he continued to click. There were a handful of photos of the young woman with another female friend, before a selection that showed her in a fast-food restaurant.

‘Go slower,’ Jessica said.

‘That’s the one I saw her kissing,’ Andrew said as they reached a photograph of Sienna having her bottom squeezed by one of the males. Jessica nodded and said they would need a copy of it. They had already interviewed some of the friends she had been out with but, with that picture, they might have a few more direct questions to ask the male in question. ‘There are two others as well,’ Andrew added.

He continued to scroll through the images. Jessica noted one that showed a male appearing to whisper something and another showing a young man feeding Sienna chips while having his fingers sucked.

‘She’s a popular girl,’ Jessica said, trying not to sound overly disapproving.

Andrew skimmed to the next photograph but Jessica was suddenly serious. ‘Go back one,’ she said. The man clicked forward before correcting himself and returning to the previous image. ‘Can you zoom in?’ Jessica asked.

‘Hang on.’ Andrew struggled with the controls, first zooming in on Sienna’s chest, which Jessica managed to resist teasing him about and then eventually focusing on the two people’s faces. Sienna was accepting a chip from one of the males with a grin on her face. ‘What is it?’ Andrew asked but Jessica didn’t reply. He turned around to face her. ‘Do you know him?’

‘Can you print it off for me?’ Jessica asked, ignoring his question. Andrew clicked the mouse and a printer under his desk whirred to life. He pulled out two pieces of paper, handing them to her. ‘Print the other ones off too,’ she added.

Of the first ones she had been handed, one had the full photograph, while the other had the two people’s faces enlarged. Jessica put them down on the table, the zoomed-in picture on top.

‘This is a very familiar face,’ she said quietly, partly to herself but mainly to let Andrew know she was on to something, even though she had no intention of telling him what it was.

Andrew was holding onto the other printouts but, before he could say anything, Jessica felt her phone vibrating through the pocket of her jacket. A fraction of a second later the ringtone sounded. Jessica took out the device, noting the call was from the station.

As she received the news she had been dreading, Jessica tried to keep a straight face. She hung up and reached into her other pocket, fumbling for car keys, but she could tell from Andrew’s expression that he knew something was wrong.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

Jessica had to compose herself before replying. ‘There’s been a fire.’

8

As Jessica drove closer to the estate where Martin Chadwick’s house was situated, the air began to thicken, almost as if a cloud had dropped on top of the area. Although it was evening, it felt to Jessica like a Manchester morning, where you woke up to see heavy mist outside your window and condensation clinging to the glass.

The difference was the smell.

Even with her car vents closed, the heavy burned aroma was apparent. Jessica parked at the bottom of Martin’s road. As soon as she opened the car door, the stench hit her.

She had attended her first fire scene when she was in uniform. From various television shows and training sessions, she had preconceptions of how things might unfold – but no one ever said what the smell would be like. Jessica wasn’t sure she would be able to describe it fully to someone else who had not experienced it. Saying it was like burned toast but a lot worse was true in some ways but far too simplistic. The combination of charred bricks, fried electrical cables, melted plastic and the fire itself created an almost overwhelming odour that could be sensed as much through the mouth as the nose. Although it was evening, Jessica felt a strong sense of déjà vu from the previous time she had been called out to Martin’s house in the dark.

As she strode along towards the flashing blue lights, Jessica struggled not to gag on the taste of the fire. She could see residents lining the road, standing outside their own houses, looking nervously in the direction of the fire engines and police cars. Some of them were holding tea towels in front of their mouths and she could see flecks of ash drifting in the haze of the street lights.

A fire officer had erected a cordon around the house as she neared. Although there was still a haze of heat, she could not see any flames. On the ground, a pair of hoses snaked limply, stretching from the pair of fire engines across the pavement towards Martin’s house. Knowing fire investigators weren’t always impressed with police officers trampling around their scene, Jessica made sure she asked the officer on duty where he was happy for her to stand. If the fire had still been burning, she wouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near the house. She walked around the first fire engine, noticing a small group standing in between that vehicle and another similar one. Most of them were fire officers, their heavy outfits making them appear enormous in the distorted light from the street lamps.

She could see the outlines of Reynolds and Rowlands, as well as a smattering of uniformed officers and residents. An older woman exited the house opposite carrying a tray. Even from the distance she was at, Jessica could hear the rattling of the teacups as the woman approached the fire crew and started handing out drinks. Jessica was still trying to ignore the almost overpowering smell from the scene but couldn’t resist smiling to herself. She dealt with many types of characters through her job and sometimes it was easy to forget the other side of things, where little old ladies with a tray of tea reminded you what most people were like.

Jessica turned to face what should have been Martin’s house. It was too dark to see everything but she could tell that much of the front of the property had collapsed or burned away. The side wall where she had seen the graffiti was largely intact but she squinted to check where the top floor had collapsed onto the lower one.