4

It seemed like an age before anyone moved. Jessica eventually put the envelope down on the counter then told one of the uniformed officers to get some evidence bags. The desk sergeant stood next to her, shielding the finger from January’s view. The girl was still on the other side of reception and had seemingly not noticed anything untoward.

Jessica tried to keep cool. The finger itself was fairly shocking and she felt a little sick looking at it but she couldn’t react with other people present. Jessica knew she had made a mistake; her fingerprints would be all over the envelope, which was bad enough, let alone the finger being allowed to fall to the floor. Jessica crouched to look at the object, which had already attracted a few bits of grit and dust from the ground. It was hard to tell for sure without touching it but it looked as if it had been frozen, starting to thaw as it had gone through the mail. There were drips of a clear liquid she assumed was water that had a faint trace of blood in it.

She stood back up and looked at the envelope. Using the end part of her sleeve to prevent getting any further fingerprints on it, she turned the packet over so she could see the front. The postmark was smudged and it was stamped, not franked, meaning there was a good chance it had been put into a post box, as opposed to being sent via a post office. The date was just about visible through the smeared ink and Jessica noticed it was yesterday’s. That meant it had been collected the previous day, so it could have been sent anytime between the night before that and roughly late-afternoon yesterday; a period of twenty hours or so. In other words it was posted within a few hours of the rest of the hand being left and found.

The constable arrived back with the evidence bags and Jessica sealed everything up. January had begun to get annoyed behind the counter at having to wait but Jessica knew she couldn’t have seen the finger from the angle she was at and if she had noticed the envelope, she hadn’t reacted.

Discreetly everything was taken away and Jessica went up the stairs to see Cole while January was processed. She told him about what had happened and admitted she had made a big error in picking up the envelope. He wasn’t too impressed at the finger falling into the dirt but was as calm as he usually seemed to be. He made the point that whoever had sent it was unlikely to have left any obvious clues, so a few careless fingerprints probably wouldn’t cause too much harm, except for making more work for the forensics team.

‘Is there any word from the labs about whether the hand belongs to Lewis Barnes?’ Jessica asked.

Cole shook his head. ‘They only got the sample from his mother an hour or so ago. I spoke to someone over there who said the result will be in by the morning.’

‘They’re going to have the envelope and finger to check now too,’ Jessica said. ‘I’m assuming the finger is the one missing from the hand but we’ll need confirmation. I’m guessing that will be a day or so as well. Did anything new happen with the MP’s wife? I’ve not seen the news.’

‘You’ve been lucky. Somehow, we’ve come out of it looking completely incompetent. George Johnson’s wife Christine has been missing for forty-eight hours. Jason is at his house now taking a formal statement but he’s already given an interview to the TV crews and the government have put out a statement of support too. Everyone seems to know more than we do and those rolling news channels have been implying we don’t have a clue what we’re doing. They’re right but only because it hadn’t been reported properly.’

Jessica shrugged. ‘It all sounds a bit dodgy.’

If Cole agreed, he didn’t give anything away. ‘Maybe. These people live in a different world where assistants and helpers do all sorts for them. I guess when you live in the public eye sometimes the obvious answer – for instance calling us – is forgotten because you’re so used to doing everything through the press.’

Jessica wasn’t convinced. ‘I guess. Something doesn’t seem quite right though.’

The DCI was unmoved. ‘From what the news said, they’ve been married for twenty-seven years and have a couple of grown-up children. They reckon he spoke to her on the phone a couple of days ago but returned from Westminster to find she wasn’t at their home. None of their children or friends apparently knows where she is and their bank accounts haven’t been touched. She’s just vanished.’

Jessica couldn’t hide the disbelief on her face. ‘He told all of that to the news stations before talking to us?’

Cole shrugged. ‘I know. There’s not much we can do now except take his statement and get moving. The superintendent didn’t seem too fussed about how things had come out but the bad publicity hasn’t gone down well.’

Jessica didn’t know if she was better off in the middle of a media storm that wasn’t her fault or dealing with sliced-off fingers in the station’s reception area. Neither was particularly appealing. ‘I’ll talk to January then speak with you again afterwards,’ she said.

‘Do you think she’s involved?’

Jessica shrugged. ‘I don’t know. She ran at first but maybe she’s had a bad experience with us in the past? It’s hard to tell with some people.’

‘Did she actually try to escape?’

‘Not really. She saw us from a distance when we were at her front door. She didn’t resist but there’s something going on between her and Lewis’s mother.’

‘You could ask the custody sergeant to keep her in overnight while you wait for the results on the hand to come back. If they are a match to Lewis it would be better to have her downstairs rather than risk her running. Whether he’ll agree or not is another matter.’

‘I was thinking that. It seems a bit harsh if the hand comes back as someone other than her boyfriend’s but, with the media already thinking we’re useless, it wouldn’t look too good if we bailed someone who ran that ended up being our prime suspect.’

Cole nodded in agreement but there was little else to say and Jessica returned downstairs. With bail rules the way they were, if magistrates gave them permission, they could keep January for up to ninety-six hours in total which could be used a few hours at a time spread across weeks or even months before having to charge. If they kept her in overnight, that would take at least ten hours out of that period so it had to be weighed up whether that was worth it.

The reception area was quiet, with officers beginning to leave as the day team switched with the evening shift. Jessica could have gone home herself but CID timekeeping was always flexible, even if you rarely got paid for the hours of overtime you worked.

Jessica made her way through the corridors to the interview room where Rowlands was already sitting.

‘Where have you been?’ he asked. ‘I thought you were going to be just behind me?’

Jessica explained about the finger and having to talk to Cole.

‘You let it drop on the floor?’ the constable said.

‘Not on purpose.’ Jessica wanted to change the subject, feeling conscious of her mistake. ‘It’s chilly in here, isn’t it?’

Rowlands nodded to the air-conditioning unit above them. ‘It always is when it’s boiling hot outside. You end up wanting to wear shorts when you’re outside and a thick coat when you’re inside.’

January had been taken downstairs to the cells where she was given access to a phone so she could speak to a duty solicitor. She wasn’t under arrest but would be cautioned for the interview, meaning she was entitled to legal advice. If a suspect had their own lawyer, that guidance would obviously come from them but, for most people, it meant they ended up talking to the duty. In serious cases it would be in person but, in a lot of instances, it was simply over the phone.