Jessica sat in their office taking phone calls and giving statements to local radio stations and other newspapers with Farraday reluctantly agreeing to go on camera for that evening’s news broadcasts. Officers were brought in to answer the phones and Jessica took Carrie to the main road near the universities later that evening. They had arranged for the press office to print out flyers of the e-fit and handed them out to the young people walking past. Being two youngish women standing on the street, they got a fair amount of attention and inappropriate suggest ions but the sight of their respective police identification cards sent people scurrying quick enough.

As the passing foot traffic dried up, with everyone either in or out for the night, Jessica sent Carrie home, telling her to make sure she took the hours back in lieu and then drove herself to the station. Jessica watched the late-evening news on the television in the reception area. It replayed everything that had been on the earlier broadcasts, which was good as their story was still high on the bulletin. She walked through to the incident room where a bank of half-a-dozen phones had been set up at the back. Given the time, the area was fairly empty. Four of the officers were chatting with each other, with two others on calls.

Jessica pulled up a chair and sat behind them. ‘How much have you had in?’

‘Bits and pieces. Loads earlier but nothing much recently,’ one of the officers said.

‘Any names being repeated?’

‘Two or three.’

Each call would have been logged through the computer system but she had instructed the officers working earlier to make a hard-copy note of any names suggested. The officer used a pencil to point Jessica towards a clipboard at the end of the line. It was about as low-tech as she could have imagined – literally a tally chart. The full length of the page had around twenty-five names listed. Most had just one mark next to the name but three instantly stood out. One had four ticks, another six and one name near the top – Dan Wilkin – had seven. Jessica noticed there was even one for a ‘Danny Wilkin’ lower down the sheet where someone hadn’t realised it was likely the same person. As Jessica was scanning the list, one of the officers who had been on the phone hung up and beckoned for her to hand the list over. She passed them the clipboard and they very deliberately put one more mark next to Dan Wilkin’s name.

The next morning, Jessica took DC Jones and four uniformed officers with her to arrest Daniel Wilkin. His name had been added to the tally chart twice more the night before and, from the full call records registered through their computer system, his address had been given too. He lived in a block of privately owned student flats around ten minutes’ walk away from where Robert Graves’s body had been found.

The building was arranged in a large semicircle with a courtyard at the front. There were half-a-dozen doors, each listing twenty flats inside that particular area. If their suspect was looking to run, he wouldn’t have too many options but one of the officers was sent around to the back in case he jumped out of a window.

Inside the main entrance, there were five more doors to choose from, each apparently hosting four flats. One door was on the ground floor, with two on each of the levels above. Jessica and the other officers made their way up to the top floor and knocked on the flat’s main door. A man who’d seemingly been asleep in his underwear answered it. Jessica had woken people up many times but couldn’t remember anyone looking quite as tired as the young man in front of her. He could barely open his eyes and she wasn’t entirely sure how he was standing.

‘Is Daniel Wilkin in?’

The person in front of them clearly didn’t understand and rocked slightly on the back of his feet. ‘What, man? Who’s been sick?’

Jessica ignored his ramblings, pushing past him into the flat. One bedroom door was wide open, which she presumed belonged to the man who had let them in, while an opening at the opposite end of the corridor clearly showed a fridge. There were four more doors to choose from. Jessica first tried pushing each of them. The final one on the left swung open to reveal an empty but filthy bathroom.

With only three options, she indicated for Carrie to stand at one door, while one of the officers took another and she took the third. The final two officers stood by the front door. Jessica counted down from three and, on one, they all banged on the remaining bedroom doors. ‘Daniel Wilkin,’ Jessica shouted loudly.

No one could have slept through the noise. The door in front of Jessica and the uniformed officer opened almost simultaneously. There was a young man wearing only a pair of boxer shorts in front of her. Jessica had her identification in her hand. ‘Daniel Wilkin?’

The man was clearly puzzled and tired but pointed to the still-closed door Carrie had been knocking on. ‘That one.’

Jessica told him to go back into his room, as well as the man who had answered the main door and then indicated for the officers to clear a bit of space around the remaining bedroom door.

She knocked one final time. ‘Daniel, if you’re in there open the door now or we will break it down.’

She heard it unlocking and the door was pulled open to reveal a man standing there fully dressed in a pair of jeans, a T-shirt and denim jacket as if he were on his way out. He looked exactly like the e-fit. Jessica didn’t know if he had just got dressed because he had heard them or if he had been looking to make a run for it. Ultimately it didn’t matter.

Jessica left Daniel Wilkin in the cells under the station talking to a duty solicitor. She checked his name in their records but there was nothing. Being a student it was likely he lived elsewhere but she couldn’t find any matches on the national database for anyone with his name and age who had a criminal record.

She asked Cole if he would join her in the interview room and, after getting everything ready, they finally called for the suspect to be brought upstairs. The student confirmed his name, date of birth and address, both his university one and that of his parents, who lived in Portsmouth. Jessica asked him where he was on the night Robert Graves had been killed.

‘No comment,’ Daniel replied.

‘Did Robert try to rob you?’

‘No comment.’

‘Have you ever seen this man?’ Jessica asked, showing a photo of Robert Graves before he had been killed.

‘No comment.’

Jessica turned to the duty solicitor. ‘Did you tell him to do this?’

The solicitor just shrugged at her. ‘You know you can’t ask me to disclose what I say to my clients.’

Jessica sighed and looked back at the suspect. ‘Look, Daniel, I’ll be completely honest with you. We’ve got fingerprints and we’ve got DNA. You know that swab you gave us when you were brought in? That’s on its way to our labs right now to be tested. I don’t know if it’s you who did this or not but we will know for sure within the next forty-eight hours. No commenting is just going to look bad in court. If you’re completely innocent, by all means refuse to answer the questions but if you’re not – if I were you – I would go back down to the cells, call your parents and get them to arrange a proper solicitor for you.’

The young man looked to the solicitor next to him and Jessica knew they had their man.

‘I want to do what she said.’

Two hours later and they had a full confession. Daniel told them how he had been walking home from the local shops when some guy had jumped out at him and demanded his phone. With all the reports about students being attacked, he acted on instinct and punched the assailant hard in the face. From there, things got out of hand. Before he knew what had happened, the other man had stopped moving.