‘Boss. I wanted to apologise . . . for the other day, you know, our argument. I was being a baby.’

Patrick patted him on the shoulder. ‘It’s fine, Gareth. Just remember who your friends are in future. OK? And I’m sorry too, I was out of order. Let’s put it down to the pressure of the case, shall we?’

Gareth nodded gratefully. Patrick grinned at him, turning away to knock at Suzanne’s office door.

‘Hi, Patrick.’ Her voice was soft, but she looked as weary as he felt. ‘Come in, close the door.’ She gestured for him to sit. ‘I’ve just had a call from Mervyn Hammond.’

‘Don’t tell me, he’s offering to do our PR.’ Suzanne was in the papers too.

She dragged out a smile. ‘No. He wants to talk to you, though.’

‘What about?’

‘He says he has information that will help us find Graham, but he wants you to go there, to his house.’

Patrick heaved himself up, his knees cracking as he stood.

‘Hammond’s still trying to call the shots? This had better not be a waste of time,’ he muttered as he left.

In the car on the way to Hammond’s, Patrick thought over the investigation, about everything they knew.

They had shown Graham’s picture – sans beard – to Chelsea Fox, who confirmed he was indeed the man she’d seen stab Wendy. And Strong’s team had finally managed to find traces of a conversation between Wendy and someone called Mockingjay365 arranging the meeting at the Rotunda. The exchange had taken place on the OnTarget official forum. Mockingjay was obviously Graham who, with his top-level access, had been able to delete the private messages from the forum, although they had remained on the server.

They had also taken Graham’s photo to the Travel Inn. The manager, Heidi Shillingham, recognised him immediately, with his trendy clothes and stupid socks. He had stayed at the hotel a week before the murder, had even stayed in Room 365, under Melanie’s surname: Graham Haggis. Peter Bell surmised that Graham must have got his key card cloned, using the same kind of machine fraudsters use to duplicate credit cards, while he was staying at the hotel, so the magnetic strip contained the correct code to let him back into the room a week later.

What else? An officer had been to the street where both Melanie Haggis and Nancy Marr lived and canvassed the neighbours. The old chap who lived in one of the houses between the two women told them that Nancy and Melanie were friendly, that Nancy was always popping round to see the younger woman because she worried about her and thought she needed looking after.

Patrick had his own theory about what had happened. Perhaps Nancy had popped round one day to see Melanie, perhaps concerned because she hadn’t seen her for a day or two, and discovered the suicide scene. She had called Graham – Patrick guessed Melanie had talked to the old lady about her great love and best friend – who had rushed round. Somehow, Graham had found out why his friend had killed herself. Had there been a suicide note, naming the girls Melanie blamed? Had the note asked Graham to take revenge on them? If there had been a note, and Nancy had seen it, it made a sick kind of sense that Graham had decided to kill Nancy to keep her quiet before embarking on his trail of vengeance. Why torture Nancy, though? She must have made him angry. Perhaps he blamed her in some way, thought Nancy should have been keeping an eye on Melanie. Or perhaps he’d just been practising on her, the sick fuck, working out how he was going to get revenge on the younger girls.

The neighbour, the old chap, had told them one more interesting fact. Melanie was not only obsessed with OnTarget, she collected signed photos from celebrities. Among her collection was a picture signed by Mervyn Hammond. ‘She gave it to Mrs Marr,’ said the old man. ‘I don’t think Nancy really wanted it, thought Mervyn Hammond was a creep, but Melanie insisted. She said she knew him, that he was friends with her boyfriend.’

Patrick was close to Hammond’s house now and would ask him about this. As he got nearer he felt a stirring of hope. Hammond worked with Graham. Patrick was still suspicious that Mervyn was going to pitch to him, tell him he needed a PR man, but maybe Hammond really did have some useful information, something that would help them locate Graham.

He would soon find out.

He thought back to his second meeting with Burns, when he had come into the station to show Patrick the private messages between Rose and Jess. It had been a clever move. Graham must have fabricated those messages, knowing that it would strengthen Patrick’s suspicions about Shawn. A diversionary tactic, a trick he had later repeated to put Mervyn in the frame. At the time, Patrick had thought Burns was faintly ludicrous, a comical character. Did he dress the way he did to deflect attention away from his true nature? Or was he simply dressing to fit in with the media world? Psychopaths were good at that – camouflaging themselves, acting and looking like the people around them. Burns had fooled him, too, with the private messages from Mockingjay365. Burns had written those messages, had passed them on, no doubt edited so they didn’t give anything away.

He cursed aloud. Burns had fooled him. Finding him, ensuring he faced justice, was now a matter of personal pride.

Chapter 60

Day 15 – Patrick

Patrick parked outside Mervyn’s house and pressed the buzzer. The gates clicked open and Hammond’s voice crackled, very faintly, over the intercom: ‘I’m in the old barn.’

It was a miserable afternoon – the air cold and damp, the kind of weather that penetrates the skin and seeps through to the soul. Patrick headed towards the barn and knocked on the barn door. Mervyn called, ‘Come in.’

The light was poor in the barn, gloomy, filled with shadows. There was a distinctive smell in the room: petrol. Patrick clocked the model railway that filled almost all the floor space, three locomotives gliding slowly around the network of tracks, the little houses. There was something off about the display and it took Patrick a moment to notice what it was. All of the tiny figures – the passengers at the plastic stations, the conductors and guards and engineers, the trainspotters – were lying down.

‘Mr Hammond?’ he called.

‘I’m round here.’

Something was very wrong here. Patrick walked slowly around the edge of the model railway, noticing a small group of plastic female figures, four of them, lying at the edge of the display. They had been doused with red paint, like they were lying in a pool of blood. And another female figure stood close to them, gazing down on them.

Patrick stepped around the corner and froze.

Hammond was tied to a chair, his hands cuffed behind his back, ankles tied with rope to the legs of the wooden chair. He was dripping wet and, sniffing, Patrick realised immediately that the liquid that soaked Hammond’s clothes and hair was not water.

It was the petrol he’d smelled when he’d entered the barn.

Hammond looked up at Patrick, a desperate look on his face. He was pale, shivering, suddenly appearing twenty years older, an old, frightened man. ‘You need to do what he says,’ Hammond whispered.

Graham stepped out of the shadows. In his hand he held a large box of matches, the kind used by chefs.

‘Do you have a weapon?’ Graham asked in a calm voice. He was dishevelled, his hair sticking up in tufts, stubble darkening his face. He looked like he’d slept rough and Patrick guessed he’d walked all the way out here, knowing the police would be looking for his car.