‘Why does Mervyn need a bodyguard?’ Carmella asked.

Mangan grinned. ‘He doesn’t really. It’s all for show. Good for his image, you know, makes him look important. Plus I think he likes my company. He might act like he’s the king of the world half the time, but I reckon he’s lonely really. Christ, don’t tell him I told you that.’

‘We won’t.’ Patrick felt slightly ashamed. First, Rebecca Hedges had told them about Mervyn’s work with children, and now this. They had got him all wrong – although it was understandable with the image Hammond projected of himself. Patrick couldn’t decide if the public relations man was brilliant or terrible at doing his own personal PR, but it reminded him of a lesson this job had taught him over the years: never take anyone at face value. Everybody has secrets, and not all secrets are bad.

‘Let’s get back to Jade,’ Patrick said. ‘Where did you drop her? At home?’

‘Yeah. It was about three by the time we got there. I was knackered, but she kept me awake on the way home babbling on about someone who’d messaged her.’

Patrick leaned forwards. ‘Did she say who?’

Mangan twigged to the importance of what Patrick was asking. ‘Shit. I wasn’t really listening, to be honest. She was going on and on about how “someone amazing” had told her he’d seen her and wanted to meet her. It was like she wanted me to ask her who this amazing person was, but I wasn’t that interested. I just wanted to get home.’

‘Do you remember if she said when she’d got the message?’

‘I’m pretty sure it was at the party.’

‘And the person who sent the message was at the party too?’

‘I think so. God, I’m sorry, hang on.’ He propped his chin on his fist, thinking hard. ‘Yeah, I’m sure she did. She said something like, “Maybe he liked me in my waitress uniform,” and started giggling.’

‘But she definitely didn’t give you a name?’

‘No.’

‘Not Shawn Barrett?’

Mangan’s eyes widened. ‘You don’t think it’s him, do you? I thought you questioned him already.’

‘I think it’s someone pretending to be Shawn.’

Someone who was at the party. The same person who’d planted the evidence to frame Mervyn.

They thanked Mangan and headed back to the car. Patrick had almost forgotten that Kai Topper was on the back seat, looking like a dog who’d been locked in by a thoughtless owner. Patrick slid into the driver’s seat, Carmella climbing in next to him, and turned round to talk to Topper.

‘She’s not there,’ Patrick said.

‘Are you sure?’ His eyes were bloodshot and watery and Patrick was sure he’d been crying again. Did he realise how much danger his girlfriend was in?

‘We’re going to take you back to the station,’ he said. ‘We— For fuck’s sake!’

Topper had produced a knife from his inside pocket. Patrick immediately dived between the seats, grabbing the boy’s wrist and twisting his arm. Topper cried out and the knife fell onto the car seat. Patrick snatched it up. Carmella had already exited the car and yanked the door beside Topper open, handcuffs at the ready.

‘I wasn’t going to stab you!’ Topper blurted. ‘I just thought I’d better tell you I had it.’

‘Got any more concealed weapons?’

‘No. I swear.’

‘What were you doing, Kai? Planning to stab Kerry Mangan?’

Topper’s eyes fell. ‘I wouldn’t have actually done it. But he’s a hard man, a bodyguard. I thought he might attack me. I just . . . I just want to find Jade.’

As he spoke, Carmella searched him and cuffed his hands behind his back, just in case.

‘You’re going to tell us everything you know, Kai,’ Patrick said. ‘If you do, I’ll think about letting you off with a caution. Understand?’

The boy refused to meet his eye. ‘Yeah.’

‘Good. And in the meantime, you know what I want you to do?’

‘What?’ The boy’s voice was a squeak.

‘I want you to shut the fuck up.’

Chapter 54

Day 14 – Patrick

The incident room was packed full of bodies, every pair of eyes focused on Patrick as he paced up and down in front of the whiteboard. Photos of Chloe Hedges and Jade Pilkington had been pinned up beside the pictures of Jessica and Rose, plus the smaller one of Nancy Marr. Patrick stopped pacing and raised a hand, the whole room falling silent, including Winkler, who was skulking in the corner. Gareth was there too, refusing to meet Patrick’s eye, and Suzanne, standing upright by the door with her arms crossed, one foot tapping anxiously. It was 7.30 p.m. but nobody wanted to go home. Patrick knew this team would stay here all night if they were needed.

‘I’ll keep this brief,’ Patrick said. ‘But I want everybody up to speed with what’s going on. The first thing to say is that, contrary to rumour, we do not believe Mervyn Hammond is guilty of the murders – not least because he’s been here all day and, before that, DI Winkler was with him.’

Several heads turned towards Winkler, who pretended to be examining something beneath his fingernails. Fifteen minutes earlier, Winkler had called Sandwell, the journalist who accused Hammond of molesting a teenage girl years before. Hearing that Hammond was in custody, Sandwell had panicked at the thought of testifying in court and admitted to making the whole thing up, trying to settle old scores.

‘However, we are keeping Hammond at the station for the time being as we believe he holds important information and we don’t want to lose track of him. We also have Jade Pilkington’s boyfriend, Kai Topper, here for an interview.’

He turned to the whiteboard.

‘Here’s what we know at the moment: Jade Pilkington got a lift home from Hammond’s party last night and was dropped off just after 3 a.m. At noon, Topper went round to her house, but she wasn’t in. Luckily for us, Topper had an app linking his and Jade’s phones, so he could trace where she was.’

‘Creepy little fucker,’ said Winkler.

‘The phone signal told him Jade was at a place called Platt’s Eyot. He went there and looked round, but there was no sign of Jade or her phone, and the signal had gone, like the phone had been turned off. He then assumed she must have hooked up with Kerry Mangan after the party and headed round there, having looked up his address online.’ Patrick paused for a moment. Most people were shocked to discover how easy it was to find home addresses on the Web. ‘But Mangan hasn’t seen Jade since he dropped her home at 3 a.m. I’ve sent a couple of uniforms to this Platt’s Eyot place to look for the missing phone.

‘Chloe Hedges went out at around 4 p.m.,’ Patrick went on. ‘She told her mum that she was going to meet a friend and that they were planning to go shopping in Kingston later. We’ve contacted the friend, Pareesa, who tells us she had no plans to meet up with Chloe and, in fact, hasn’t heard from her for a few days. We called the Bentall Centre in Kingston who put out a tannoy announcement that got no response, and I’m going to ask one of you to go down there to review CCTV footage, though we don’t believe she ever went there. We are trying to pinpoint the location of Chloe’s phone, but it appears to be switched off.’

He paused and surveyed the room, ensuring that everyone was listening.

‘Here’s why we believe Chloe and Jade are in danger, why they may have been targeted and haven’t just gone off somewhere, either together or separately: we discovered that Rose and Jessica were the co-authors of a piece of fiction on a website called StoryPad.’

Martin Hale nodded as Patrick said this.

‘There were two other co-authors: Chloe and Jade. We don’t know what it is about this story that has made them the target of the killer – we’re going to talk to Kai Topper about this shortly.’

Winkler finally piped up. ‘You reckon someone killed them because of a story? What’s it about?’