Jessica could tell it had worked.

Terry shifted uncomfortably in his chair, rubbing the back of his neck. Richard had sensed his friend’s nervousness and slumped in his seat.

‘It was supposed to be a joke,’ Richard said quietly, refusing to look up from the table. ‘We thought Ollie would find it funny when he saw his name in the paper but didn’t think he’d actually . . . y’know . . . a few days later.’

Jessica said nothing, allowing Rowlands to speak. ‘You do realise that in the history of school pranks, this is not only one of the shittest but also one of the most poorly timed?’

His words echoed around the empty classroom as neither student dared look up from the table.

‘What’s going to happen to us?’ Terry asked, his voice cracking halfway through the sentence, partly through emotion, partly fear.

Jessica exchanged a look with Rowlands, holding his eye to allow the tension to build. ‘Nothing for now,’ Jessica said firmly. ‘But we both know who you are and what you did. If either of us ever hear you’re in trouble again, then we will rain some serious shite down upon you.’

She allowed her words to hang, before adding, ‘Now get out of here.’

Richard and Terry jumped to their feet in unison, muttering a ‘thank you’ before racing towards the classroom door and the relative safety of the corridor. The truth was that neither of the young men had committed any sort of offence, other than one of stupidity – and if they started convicting people for that, they’d need some pretty large new prisons. Jessica didn’t think a few idle threats could do them any harm.

When the room was empty, Jessica caught her colleague’s eye. ‘I quite like our bad cop, bad cop routine.’

Rowlands smiled, then stood and walked across to stand by the window. ‘We should take it on tour.’

‘You’ll have to start speaking to me properly first.’

The constable didn’t reply for a few moments, before eventually saying: ‘Different world here, isn’t it. At my school, the toilets barely worked. Here, they’ve got their own operatic society.’

Jessica went to join him by the window. ‘Let’s hear it then.’

‘What?’

‘How you guessed all of this. We could’ve come in here and had them tell us they didn’t know anything about it.’

Rowlands turned to face Jessica, leaning against the glass. ‘“Guess” is the right word. I think it had been floating around the back of my mind anyway after Iz told me you’d been here to talk to Oliver’s friends. I thought about my own mates and how we’d arse around. It was never anything like this, mind, we’d hide each other’s clothes after swimming, or give each other dead legs.’

‘Sounds mature.’

‘Well, exactly, but when Ruby was going on about boys being boys, I thought that Oliver was a bit different to us.’ He pointed towards the door Terry and Richard had just left through. ‘Those two don’t seem the type to go around pissing in a Lucozade bottle, then leaving it around the changing rooms after rugby practice.’

‘You did that?’

The constable shrugged but offered a half-grin. ‘Maybe. The taste is about the same. Anyway, the point is I thought they’d be doing something a bit more high-brow. Placing an ad predicting their friend’s death seemed the type of unfunny thing they’d come up with. The fact he ended up being killed days later was just . . . unfortunate.’

The way he said the final word sounded a little callous but Jessica knew what he meant. ‘Something always seemed a little off,’ she said. ‘There was never anything predicting Kayleigh’s death and it never really fitted. The two killings were brutal, not something whimsical that someone would choose to predict beforehand.’

Rowlands crossed the room and sat opposite Jessica. ‘I guess our killer isn’t as clever as we thought.’

Jessica made sure her friend was looking at her as she replied. ‘We could have figured this out ages ago if you were talking to me properly.’

She expected the constable to brush off the remark and pretend nothing was wrong but instead he squirmed as awkwardly as Terry and Richard had done minutes before.

‘Can I tell you something?’ Jessica asked quietly. Rowlands nodded but she couldn’t read his face. ‘I went back to see Nicholas a second time.’

‘On your own?’

Jessica nodded. ‘Iz knew. I wanted to see what he was like on his own with a woman.’

The constable loosened his tie. ‘I can guess.’

‘You wouldn’t even know the half of it.’

For as long as Jessica had known Rowlands, he’d kept up a front of bravado. Although some of his boasting about women in his younger days had no doubt been true, at least in part, it had taken Jessica a long time to realise that he was very similar to her. As she told him Eleanor and Leviticus’s stories, she could see in his face that he was as horrified as she was.

‘. . . And you put yourself in a room alone with him?’ he replied.

‘I didn’t know all of that at the time,’ was the only justification Jessica could think of.

‘Have you told Jack or anyone else yet?’

Jessica shook her head. ‘What good can it do? All it proves is the type of person he is, which we partly knew already. There’s nothing to link him directly to Oliver or what happened to Kayleigh.’

Dave loosened his tie further and undid his top button, breathing out deeply. ‘Do you reckon Serious Crime would be interested?’

‘Do you think Eleanor, Leviticus or Ruby might want to give evidence against him? Even if they did, much of it is dated, circumstantial or one person’s word against another. And what would they do him for anyway, other than what they’re already looking into him for?’

Jessica could see the constable shared the same feelings of injustice she did. While they had officers out checking the speeds of motorists, someone like Nicholas Long was seemingly free to continue going about his business.

Although there was silence in the room, there was a hum of activity from elsewhere around the school. Students were hurrying to and from lessons, others whooping on the various sporting pitches.

‘Shall we go and tell everyone what conquering heroes we are?’ Dave asked, sliding his chair backwards with a screech.

Jessica didn’t move. ‘I miss you,’ she said quietly.

The constable stopped, hands fixed to the back of the chair as he was half-standing. ‘Sorry?’

‘I miss you mucking around and taking the piss. You’re such a dick but you made it fun coming to work. Me, you and Iz are a good team.’

Jessica had been wanting to tell him that for weeks but everything fell out in one unrehearsed sentence. As soon as she had spoken, she half-wished she could take it back but the emotion of hearing the endless stream of degradation Nicholas had poured over those around him had worn her down.

Rowlands seemed frozen, half-bent over the chair. Jessica could feel him staring at her but she didn’t acknowledge him. Finally, he stood and walked back to the window.

‘Are you going to at least tell me what’s up?’ Jessica demanded, raising her voice.

‘Things have been complicated.’

‘That’s it?’

Jessica scraped her chair back and walked to the window to stand next to him. They both stared towards the sports fields where a group of children were playing lacrosse.

‘What type of a game is that?’ Dave asked with a forced laugh.

‘Is it to do with you breaking up with Chloe?’ Jessica asked, refusing to let him change the subject.

‘I’ve been out with plenty of girls since then.’

‘That’s bollocks. If you had, we’d have all heard about it.’

Out of the window, play stopped as one lad was tackled roughly by another. The teacher and the other students crowded around as the two started pushing and shoving. Almost simultaneously, the familiar pitter-patter began as rain descended, bouncing off the tarmac of the car park that separated the school from the field.