‘That doesn’t sound too bad actually. I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do when I left school.’

‘We’ve been doing it for a couple of years now. Are you sure you don’t want a coffee?’

‘Have you got anything stronger?’

Jessica’s attempt at a joke had clearly been missed and the deputy head looked fairly concerned. ‘Er, no . . .’

‘Sorry, I was joking. I know I’m an acquired taste,’ Jessica said. ‘I only usually drink before operating heavy machinery and driving.’ The woman pulled another face. ‘Shit, sorry, I make bad jokes when I’m nervous . . . and, er, swear.’

The woman didn’t seem too impressed. ‘Are you going to be all right to not do that when I take you through?’

‘Yes, sorry. I’m a little nervy. I don’t really deal with children very often.’

‘It’ll be fine. They only bite at the end of the week.’ It was Jessica’s turn to pull a concerned face. ‘Sorry,’ the deputy head added, ‘I guess I make ill-judged jokes too.’

After a few more minutes, the woman stood, leading Jessica down a corridor into an empty classroom. Even though she couldn’t have expected anything else, the height of the tables and chairs took Jessica by surprise. Each desk had four chairs placed around it that barely seemed higher than her knee. The whole room was a mass of colour with measurement charts, paintings and giant pictures of castles. In the corner was a carpeted area surrounded by low bookcases whose spines offered yet more colour.

‘We’re going to have a couple of classes joining into one for your talk,’ the deputy head said. ‘It’s up to you if you want to sit or stand. I’ll get you a chair if you want one.’

‘Standing’s fine. I quite fancy one of those little chairs anyway though. I’ll put one in our interview room to confuse people.’

This time the teacher realised she was joking and laughed. ‘If you want to settle yourself, I’ll go and get everyone.’

Jessica put her phone on silent and turned around to have a look at some of the work pinned to the wall. There was a display showing various students’ handwriting and she had to admit to herself that almost all of the examples were better than what she could have managed. With the way she delegated jobs and the fact most of the work she did was through a computer, Jessica rarely had to write anything down and, when she did, it was generally an untidy scrawl. She wondered if the children knew how little they would most likely have to use a pen as soon as they left education.

The sound of high-pitched chatter interrupted her thoughts and she turned to see a stream of youngsters walking through the door. Some of them were carrying chairs and by the time they had finished arranging themselves, the room was packed. Two other teachers stood at the back as the deputy head came to the front and introduced Jessica.

The students gave a resounding chant-like, ‘Good after-noon, De-tec-tive Dan-i-el’ that was more creepy than anything else. Jessica tried to keep things simple in her speech, talking about how a criminal could be caught by fingerprints or their blood and then saying how they could get a warrant to read people’s emails or text messages. She didn’t want to go into too much depth and there were clearly areas of her job it wouldn’t be appropriate to talk to children about. After that, she reverted to the usual kind of speech a standard police officer might give, telling them about things like dialling 999 in an emergency.

When she began to see heads turning to look at the walls instead of her, she realised it was time to stop and let them ask questions. Jessica had been expecting the students to put their hands up but it was the deputy head that had the first query. ‘Why did you want to become a detective?’

Jessica almost felt as if she were the subject of a dreary magazine article but explained it had never really been an ambition and that applying to join the police force was just something she had done when she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with her life. It was only once she was working as an officer in uniform, that she had decided to take the step up. She knew it didn’t really answer the question but there wasn’t a better explanation.

From the predictable dreariness of an adult’s question, the children’s queries were far more random and funny. The first, ‘Have you ever shot anyone?’ brought a few giggles from around the room and an apologetic ‘sorry’ from one of the teachers at the back. Jessica didn’t mind answering and struggled not to smile herself. She told the young boy she hadn’t shot anyone as there was a specialist firearms squad and she didn’t carry a weapon. That brought the perhaps inevitable follow-up question, ‘Have you ever wanted to shoot anyone?’

It took a little while for the youngsters to move away from questions relating to guns. Given the security gates below it could have been a little unsettling but there didn’t seem to be any malice, simply kids asking about the things they had no doubt seen on television. She was asked the fastest speed she had ever driven at and whether or not she knew someone’s dad because they were in prison along with a series of other things she couldn’t have predicted.

The final question was the one that tripped her up the most. A young girl near the back asked how they could get away with a crime. Jessica didn’t know if she was just talking about stealing sweets from a shop but either way she couldn’t responsibly answer the question. ‘You’ll always get caught,’ she said, not really believing it herself but at least feeling she might have put someone off committing a crime at such a young age.

After the children left for lunch, the various teachers thanked Jessica and she left to walk back to the station.

The last question had stuck with her because she knew the answer. If you wanted to get away with something, the best way was to make people like her think the crime was committed by someone else. If George Johnson had arranged for his wife to disappear, maybe that was where he had gone wrong? He had left them nothing to go on, instead of something misleading to follow up. With her case they had the woman in the black cloak from the very first day and Jessica wondered if that was where their problem lay? The hands were being left in public places for a reason and Jessica felt as if whoever was behind things wanted her to put the pieces together. There was definitely a degree of showing off, which the wave to the CCTV camera proved, but the full reasoning seemed beyond her.

As she walked, Jessica remembered her phone was still on silent. She took it out of her pocket and thumbed across the welcome screen, noticing she had a text message from Rowlands.

‘Call me, urgent.’

She pressed the button to phone his mobile and the constable picked up on the first ring. ‘Jess, are you on your way back?’

‘Yeah, I’m walking. I’ll be about five minutes.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘Another finger has arrived for you.’

23

Jessica instantly asked the question she knew Rowlands wouldn’t have the answer to. ‘Whose is it? We’ve not found a hand.’

‘We don’t know. The forensics team have already been and gone. The envelope was exactly the same and the mail room staff got the DCI involved straight away.’

Jessica raised her voice. ‘Why didn’t anyone call me?’

Rowlands’s tone sounded softer than usual. ‘It was the DCI’s decision. I guess he thought there wasn’t much you could do anyway. None of us could because the science lot were called immediately. The finger and the envelope and all of that have been taken back to the labs.’

Jessica hung up without saying goodbye. She felt angry at not being called, even though there was nothing she could have added if she had have been. As she neared the station, she sat on a wall for a couple of minutes to compose herself. She realised the fury wasn’t something she felt against her colleagues, more towards the person who was sending her body parts. Jessica felt targeted but figured the only way she could escape those feelings was to find out what it was the person was trying to tell her.