‘What type of key?’ Jessica asked.

‘I don’t know. We’ll have to wait.’

Jessica thought about the state of the vehicle when she had arrived on the scene. The passenger’s side was far more damaged than the driver’s and, because of the airbags and condensation, that was probably why she had missed the items. She was still annoyed with herself for not spotting them though. Cole looked up from his pad and held it up for them to see. He had written the number ‘61’.

‘Does this number mean anything to you?’

Jessica stuck out her bottom lip and looked at Reynolds as they both shrugged their shoulders.

‘In what context?’ the inspector asked.

Cole put the pad back down. ‘The keys were attached to some sort of fob with the number sixty-one on. It could be a key for someone’s flat but it seems unlikely you’d have your own door number on it.’

‘Maybe it’s from a hotel room?’ Jessica suggested.

The two men nodded before Cole spoke. ‘Perhaps. We’ll have to wait for it to be analysed and released back to us.’

‘What about the map?’ Jessica asked.

‘They still need it but someone’s going to email over digital photos. The guy reckons they’re clear enough to use if we want to follow them up before we get the actual map.’

Jessica stood. ‘Right, let’s go follow the map.’

She knew it wasn’t really her call to decide which cases she was allocated but, having found Isaac’s body in the boot, she wasn’t ready to stand aside and let someone else take it up. From their reactions – and considering how well they knew her – there were no objections from either of the other two.

Cole nodded. ‘Jason’s on this too. I don’t know where the site is yet but you’ll need a team with you. Start sorting that and I’ll forward you the emails when they arrive.’

As Reynolds and Jessica exited the office and began to walk down the corridor, the DI put one hand on her shoulder. ‘Are you all right, Jess?’

‘Yeah, just wet.’

‘I mean the body you found. I know what you’re like, just breezing through everything. I found the body of a child once . . .’ He tailed off but Jessica didn’t give him an opportunity to continue.

‘I’m okay. But I could do with a towel.’ She knew that wasn’t the question her colleague was asking but she didn’t want to stop working. Reynolds knew her well enough not to push.

‘All right, you sort yourself out and I’ll get a few calls in.’

Jessica was glad to get away from the inspector. It wasn’t that she didn’t like or respect him but she never enjoyed it when anyone asked questions that might make her think about her own well-being too much. She went off to dry her clothes and hair as best she could before finding Dave in the large open-plan area which the constables shared on the station’s main floor.

She couldn’t help but smile as she followed a trail of water to find him towelling his own hair as he hunched over a desk.

‘You look as if you’ve been dragged from the bottom of a lake,’ she laughed.

‘You look as if you’ve been swimming with your clothes on.’

Jessica grinned. ‘How was Laura when you left her?’

‘Shaken, but she’ll be okay. When she got wind that the other guy was dead, she kept saying it was her fault. I don’t know what she could have done about it.’

‘Do you want to come back out? We found a map in the car with the bodies. No idea what it leads to but we don’t know who the driver is yet and the body from the boot hasn’t been identified formally so we don’t have anything else for now. There was a spade in the boot so it might be where he was going to bury the body but I don’t know why you’d need a map for that. Something doesn’t add up.’

Rowlands rubbed the top of his head with his hand. ‘Do you think there’s a point you reach where you can’t get any wetter?’

Jessica was confused. ‘What?’

‘When you’re out in the rain, absolutely soaked, do you think there’s a point where you’re so wet, it doesn’t matter if you stay out in it because you’re already as wet as you can possibly be?’

Jessica screwed up her eyes, arching an eyebrow. ‘When most people settle down with a girlfriend or boyfriend, it does absolute wonders for their personality. With you, it’s just bloody weird. I preferred it when you spent half the day looking at those shite lads’ mags, now you’re offering philosophical opinions about rain.’

‘I was just . . .’

‘Whatever. Are you coming?’

Rowlands gave a small smile. ‘Yeah, but I’m getting one of those big coats from storage that uniform use before we head out.’

Jessica shared a car with DI Reynolds and Dave Rowlands while two other vehicles carried teams of officers to the location marked on the map. The digital photographs were decent quality and someone in the administration department had made copies for the team to take with them. As Reynolds drove, Jessica looked intently at the printouts in her lap. She had never been great with directions but the images appeared to come from an Ordnance Survey map. A red cross marked an area just outside the M60 ring road not too far from the main road that would take them to Altrincham.

Jessica didn’t know the district too well but the map showed some woods and a few large fields which backed onto an area that one of the other officers told them was an industrial park. The cross itself seemed to have been marked very deliberately, slightly into the woods in red pen. The photographs were a little out of focus but offered an accurate idea of what the original map would look like.

The entire team were now in heavy waterproof jackets and their bulging coats made the vehicle feel much more fuller than usual. At least the heater was working a lot better than the one in Jessica’s car did.

Rain lashed the roof as DI Reynolds drove carefully towards their destination. There was little small talk as Jessica focused on the map and the inspector concentrated on the road. Only one of the officers knew the area to which they were headed and he drove in front, the other cars following. Jessica watched as the leading vehicle turned off the main road and began to follow a tight one-track lane with high hedges on either side. Luckily there was no other traffic as it would have been awkward to squeeze more than one car through.

Eventually the front car pulled onto a verge next to a wide metal gate which opened into a field. The three vehicles just about squeezed onto the same patch, allowing access to through traffic.

Jessica slid the printout of the map into a plastic wallet to shield it from the weather and stepped out of the car. The sound of the rain bouncing from the vehicle was almost deafening. Jessica and the team of officers started walking along a thin track that ran alongside the field, their heavy boots splashing through the pools of water that had built up on the muddied ground.

No one knew what to expect, with some of the officers carrying shovels, while another had a metal battering ram. The initial visit to the location was more to get a feel of the surroundings and see if there was anything obvious. If need be, excavation experts could be brought in to dig up entire areas.

Jessica was wearing an old pair of leather shoes and could feel water squelching through her socks. She tried not to show her discomfort as the group continued to follow the two men at the front. They soon reached a stile, which the men climbed over. Jessica took her time as the coat she had borrowed was far too big and, though she was usually quite fit, she was struggling to lift her legs because of it. Dave climbed the fence after her and though she expected a joke at her expense, he was also struggling in the sodden conditions.

Slowly they crossed a line of trees into a wooded area that was nowhere near as overgrown as Jessica might have guessed if she had looked at it from a distance. The tree trunks were thin but evenly spaced, the branches overhead stopping at least some of the rain from coming through. As her shoes slid along the ground, Jessica quickly realised the soil was still soft despite the cover. She hoped someone had thought to bring torches. Although it was daytime, the skies were grey and murky, the trees blocking out much of the natural light. Her eyes took a few moments to adjust and, although she could still see, visibility was far from good.