‘That particular incident is true, Detective—’

She cut him off once more. ‘Do you know why you didn’t get more than a “token visit”, Councillor?’

‘What? No—’

‘It’s because you’re a complete arsehole. It’s because officers have better things to do than chase around after complete dickheads like you. We don’t have the manpower to list the hundreds of people who think you’re an idiot, let alone narrow it down to one person who might feel the need to graffiti your car.’ The man didn’t know whether to be angry or upset. He spluttered words out but there was nothing cohesive and Jessica was on a roll. ‘I’ll be honest with you, Councillor; I don’t care if you slam the police – we’re a public service and we don’t get everything right – but I do mind when you start telling mothers who’ve lost their sons that their kids deserved it.’

‘I wasn’t trying to—’

‘Is that what you think about girls who get raped? Do they deserve it for wearing a short skirt too?’

‘No, that’s not what I . . .’

Jessica narrowed her eyes and leant further across the table. The councillor shuffled slightly but he didn’t push backwards hard enough to move the chair and he was stuck trying not to look at her. ‘The type of statements you’ve been making are completely out of order. Do you understand what I’m saying, Councillor?’

The man looked at her, his face red with a mixture of embarrassment and rage. ‘You can’t just storm in here, you know—’

‘I asked you a question. Do. You. Understand. What. I’m. Saying?’ Jessica punctuated each word with as much venom as she could manage.

‘Yes, fine, whatever. Get out of my office.’

At first Jessica didn’t move but then quickly took a step backwards, again standing tall and towering over the seated man. ‘If I were you, Mr Coleman, I would hope there’s nothing you’re trying to keep under wraps. No dodgy deals, no made-up expenses, no secret mistresses hidden away. Believe me, if you even have so much as an out-of-date tax disc, I’ll make sure it’s on the front page of as many papers as I can leak the story to.’

The man reached for the phone on his desk. ‘I’ll be contacting your superintendent about this, you know. I play golf with one of the commissioners in this area . . .’

Jessica stomped back over towards the man and he slid his chair backwards, trying to get away from her. She pulled out one of her business cards and slammed it down on the desk. The noise echoed around the room. She pointed to the various lines on the card. ‘I don’t care if you play golf with the fucking Prime Minister. That’s my name, that’s my ID number, that’s my rank and that’s my phone number. Tell them whatever you want.’

She spun around and walked quickly out of the office, slamming the door as hard as she could. Without talking to anyone, she paced back the way she had come and returned to the car. Jessica’s anger hadn’t gone but she definitely felt better as she drove back to the station. She knew full well there were official ways to go about things. Usually a senior officer would have written a letter back to the newspaper or something similar but she didn’t care.

It wasn’t that she even disagreed with all of the points Councillor Coleman had made in the article but if he was serious about getting things done, he would have asked questions through the proper channel, especially if he did know the area’s commander. As it was, he was simply looking to score cheap political points, not just at their expense but in a way that would cause maximum hurt to people like Arthur and Jackie Graves.

Jessica doubted if the councillor would speak to anyone about her visit. She had no intention of trying to find dirt on him but he didn’t know that. She wasn’t sure if there was anything he was desperate to hide or not but if there was, the last thing he would want to do would be to draw further attention to himself.

After parking the car at the station and switching the engine off, Jessica sat for a few moments listening to the relative silence. She jumped as her phone rang, picking it up out of the storage well underneath the handbrake.

It was Adam again. ‘Hi, Adam, are you okay?’

‘Hi, Jess, we’ve finished working on the fingerprint.’

‘Whose is it?’

‘Well, we don’t know. Whoever it belongs to doesn’t have their prints stored in our files.’

‘So it’s not Donald McKenna?’

‘No, definitely not.’

Jessica didn’t say anything for a few moments. It wasn’t that she had been certain the results were going to come back as a match but the outcome hadn’t left them with very much to go on.

‘Are you still there?’ Adam asked.

‘Yes, sorry. Did you find anything else?’

‘Maybe. We’ve got some blood scrapings which don’t belong to the victim but we’ve been working on the fingerprints and it takes time.’

‘Have you phoned the station yet?’

‘As soon as we’ve finished talking.’

‘Okay, right, I’ll leave you to it. Thanks for calling.’ Jessica went to add, ‘I’ll text you about next weekend’, but heard the beep to indicate the call had been terminated.

The next two days consisted of one dead end after another. The public responses to the e-fit had dried up and nothing had come from the list of names that had been suggested. Despite not having a match for the fingerprints, they had been anxiously awaiting the results on the blood the forensics team had found.

Jessica and Cole were in their regular morning briefing with Farraday in his office when the bad news arrived. A call was put through to his desk phone and, after a short conversation, he hung up and told them the blood had also come back without a match. Whoever had killed Robert Graves was someone with no criminal record.

The chief inspector sat drumming his fingers on his desk for a short time and then started to speak. ‘Do I think we made a mistake with releasing that sketch to the media? Maybe. I think we might have to look at treating this murder separately from the first four victims.’

Jessica was annoyed not only by the way he had asked himself a question and answered it but also by the use of the word ‘we’. It certainly wasn’t her or Cole who had authorised releasing that photo; it was the DCI alone who had made an enormous error.

The news broadcasters had spent the last few days reporting on the five victims of the so-called vigilante, where they actually only had three for definite and four in all probability. All the while Farraday had let the speculation build and now it was coming back to bite him. He almost shrunk in front of them, sinking further into his chair, before looking at Cole. ‘What have we got on the bent prison guard?’

‘Nothing, Sir. We’ve checked his house and his locker at the prison. His wife insists they own no other property and, as far as we can tell, there’s nothing else in his name. We’ve looked into records for things like storage units and allotments that might have a shed or something like that but again there’s nothing registered to him. That’s not to say he hasn’t used a fake name but we don’t have anything to go on. Short of digging up the entire garden or ripping up every floorboard I’m not sure there’s much else we can do.’

Jessica couldn’t remember seeing Cole angry but there was certainly an undertone as he spoke. Their boss simply nodded, his jaw clenched. ‘Daniel, what have you got?’

‘Not much either I’m afraid, Sir. The search of Robert Graves’s room turned up nothing. The labs have been looking at his mobile phone, which was recovered from the scene, but there’s nothing from that either. I’ve been helping with the phone tip-offs. We had been trying to link the suggestions to Donald McKenna but nothing matched up. We’ve also looked into anyone else who seemed legit separately but there were no obvious hits. We haven’t been able to either find a suspect for Robert Graves’s murder or link him to the other killings.’