Jessica entered the shed, holding her phone out in front of her for light. She didn’t know what she expected but the interior was about as shed-like as she could have imagined. A lawnmower was in the corner although, from the state of the back garden, it didn’t look as if it had been used in a while. A wooden shelf ran along the left-hand wall, stacked with jam jars, paint brushes and all kinds of tools, with potted plants lining the wall opposite.

‘This is like my dad’s shed,’ Rowlands said unhelpfully.

‘Thanks for that. I just spent five minutes tearing my fingers to pieces trying to get in here.’

‘Can you see anything?’

‘Junk.’ Jessica turned to leave but Rowlands was blocking her way. ‘Come on, move,’ she said agitatedly.

Dave stepped backwards, grabbing her arm. ‘Jess . . .’

Jessica turned to see where he was pointing his phone. Her eyes struggled to adjust to the light but, as she squinted, she could see an upturned bucket caked in soil. At first she didn’t know what he was highlighting but then she noticed it: sitting next to the bucket was a can of spray paint with a yellow cap.

10

Jessica had reached the main road on her commute the following morning when her phone started ringing. She pressed the button on her car’s dashboard to answer. Rowlands’s voice sounded but he didn’t even say ‘hello’ before getting to the point.

‘Have you seen the paper?’

‘Which paper?’

‘The Herald. They’ve got the fire on the front page.’

‘Who wrote it?’

‘Some Sebastian bloke.’

Jessica edged into traffic that wasn’t moving and put her handbrake on. ‘What does it say about Martin and Anthony?’

Dave mumbled to himself, as if reading quickly. ‘It says it happened at Martin Chadwick’s house and that he was recently released from prison. It mentions the Alfie Thompson case . . . I think that’s it. They’ve got a photo of the house so someone must have been there after we left.’

‘No Anthony or Ryan?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Well that’s one thing.’

‘There’s something else.’ Rowlands sounded ominous.

‘What?’ Jessica edged off the brake, crawling forward four car lengths before stopping again.

‘It’s got the girl’s suicide in. The one you were asking Ryan about. It’s only small but that’s on the front page next to the main story.’

Because she had seen Sebastian at the scene, Jessica knew that story would be going in but was worried about the journalist finding the link she knew existed between the two cases – Ryan.

‘Does it mention any names?’ Jessica asked.

‘No, not even the girl’s.’

‘Well, that’s two things.’ There was a pause but Jessica could sense Rowlands had more to say. ‘Are you on a late today?’ she asked.

‘Yeah, I’m not in until this afternoon. Do you know what’s going on this morning? I’d rather be with you.’

Jessica didn’t want to admit it to him but she would rather Dave was with her too. With Izzy’s maternity leave and the fact no one else had been hired to cover her, a detective constable was being asked to come in from a different district for a few hours at the end of the day to tidy up any of the late bits and pieces. It helped to clear the paperwork but hadn’t gone down well among staff.

‘I spoke to Jack last night,’ Jessica said, waving a car into her lane with an exaggerated movement of her arm to let the other driver know she was doing them a massive favour. ‘Someone was going to watch Anthony’s house overnight while he sorted out a warrant to search the property. They might have already gone in. I told him they might want to pay attention to under the back window and in the shed.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He pretended he hadn’t heard.’

‘Ha! What about Anthony? Have we got a warrant to pick him up?’

‘I don’t know. Jack said they had put him on the watch lists and were going to send uniform around to knock on doors. He reckoned they’d call me overnight if he turned up but I haven’t heard anything so I assume he’s still missing. We still don’t have anything concrete to connect him to the fire other than the fact he’s not at his house. I suspect the DCI’s played a bit of smoke and mirrors if he’s sorted the search warrant but we probably didn’t have enough for the arrest one.’

Jessica heard Rowlands yawn loudly. ‘Were you up late last night?’ she asked. ‘What were you doing?’

Dave yawned again straight away but Jessica could hear him trying to talk through it. ‘Nothing. I got in late and couldn’t sleep.’

‘Aye aye, so you’ll have deleted the Internet history this morning before Chloe saw it?’

Rowlands’s alleged web-surfing habits, which Jessica had invented to get a laugh out of Izzy a few months previously, were a frequent cause for her amusement.

Jessica laughed as the man protested. ‘Hey, I was phoning you to be nice and give you a heads-up.’

‘Yeah all right, your secret’s safe with me. I’ll see you later.’

Jessica hung up, realising she had travelled barely a quarter of a mile during the entire conversation.

Despite arriving late because of the traffic, Jessica reached the station in time for the morning briefing in Cole’s office along with Reynolds and Detective Sergeant Louise Cornish. The DCI said the investigating fire officer had found traces of petrol or diesel which he thought had been used to start the blaze at Martin Chadwick’s house. Meanwhile, they had searched Anthony Thompson’s empty home earlier that morning and, as Jessica knew full well, had discovered an empty petrol can and almost-empty tin of yellow aerosol paint.

Jessica thought about the fifteen minutes it had taken her to twist the screws back into the shed the previous evening and wondered whether the tactical entry team had simply smashed the door in with a battering ram. Cole didn’t mention her ‘tip’ to the rest of the room – but he did glance her way as he brought it up, letting her know that he knew what she had done.

As she suspected, Anthony was still missing and, with little else to go on, they were doing what they could to look for him without making it official. The items recovered from his house would be sent off for testing to see if they could be linked to the crime scene but it was unlikely. The wall where the yellow graffiti had been sprayed was badly fire-damaged, with the petrol can circumstantial at best.

As for finding Anthony, by discreetly working with the rest of Greater Manchester Police, they could coordinate things such as pulling over suspicious cars, door-to-door checks around the area he lived in, and visits to places he was known to frequent. What they didn’t want to do was tip off the wider media that he could be involved with the fire. For one, they didn’t know that he was but, worse than that, they didn’t want to risk the negative attention it would bring to them all if there was an innocent explanation for his disappearance. Jessica thought of what Sebastian’s gleeful face might look like if that happened.

The only other piece of news the DCI had was a steer from the coroner that Sienna’s death would likely be ruled as suicide but that he wasn’t yet discarding the chance of an inquest because there were still a few test results to come back. It was what they had suspected but Jessica still had a nagging thought in her mind about the presence of Ryan in both cases.

With the search for Anthony being kept quiet and Sienna’s death not yet ruled upon, Jessica and Reynolds were assigned to visit the college that Sienna had attended. Even if the coroner did eventually decide on suicide, it would do no harm for them to find out as much background as they could to what had happened.