‘Okay, this is going to be hard, Jonathan, but can you talk us through finding the body?’ Jessica asked.

‘It was about three o’clock or so and we were finished for the day. I didn’t really have anything on so went to the pub for a bit with a few guys from work. After that, I was just going to go home and play on the PlayStation or something.’

‘Did you drive home?’

‘No, God no. Got a taxi.’

‘And what happened when you got there?’

‘I let myself into the house . . .’

This was the part Jessica had been waiting for, even though she was pretty sure what the answer would be. ‘So the front door was locked when you arrived?’

‘I guess . . .’ Jonathan paused and then started nodding emphatically. ‘Definitely. It was locked because I still had my keys in my hand.’

‘Is it usually locked when you get home?’

‘Sometimes. I mean, if my mum has left for work and Dad’s not up yet I know she’ll leave it locked just in case. It depends if he’s out of bed.’

‘Okay. What happened then?’

‘I’d gone into the living room to say “hello”. Usually the first thing you hear when you walk in the front door is the TV but it was quiet. I walked into the room and he was just there . . .’

Jonathan tailed off.

At the crime scene before they came back to the station it had already been established each window and the back door was locked. It was the first thing Jessica had asked to be checked when she arrived. The front door was of course open but Jonathan had told the 999 operators he had let himself in before finding the body. Martin Prince’s own house keys had been found next to his wallet upstairs on the nightstand adjacent to his bed.

Again, there was no obvious way in or out.

Jonathan’s alibi of being at work all day would be checked with his workmates and boss but, again, Jessica had no doubt it would be legitimate. His mother looked like posing a slightly different problem. Sandra Prince had arrived home as the police were arriving at the scene. When she realised the authorities were entering her house and had the news broken to her about her husband, she had collapsed, unable to accept what she had been told. She had been taken to hospital herself in an ambulance – much to the delight of all the curtain-twitchers on the road, Jessica thought.

Before she had gone in to talk to Jonathan, Jessica had spoken to someone in charge at the local hospital who said Sandra was now conscious but not capable of being interviewed. It sounded like the shock had been too much for her. She had been in the hallway of their house when she fainted as the officers present didn’t think it was a good idea for her to see the living room and the state her husband was in. That did mean her handbag had been left in the house. Jessica felt terrible but had looked inside to see if her house keys were in there. They were, of course, as she had known they would be.

They would interview Sandra when the doctors said she was up to it. Given the circumstances – and the fact she had likely been at work all day, which was easy enough to check – she wasn’t going to be treated as a suspect. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t have any useful information though and Jessica would still want to talk to her sooner rather than later.

They released Jonathan and she told one of the uniformed officers to give him a lift to the hospital.

After finishing the interview, someone in uniform had given Jessica a message from Aylesbury that she and Cole should go up to his office. She had only seen him in the station this late once or twice. Counting the basement incident room, the station had three floors. After her promotion, Jessica had been given one of the smaller offices on the ground floor. She shared it with another detective sergeant, Jason Reynolds, who was a big imposing black officer a few years older than her. He was funny and helpful but currently heavily involved in a complex fraud case. If it wasn’t for that, there was a very good chance the murder case would have been given to him instead of her, which was an idea Jessica would have been very receptive to at that moment.

She and Cole took the stairs up to the first floor and made their way past some of the rooms used for storage into the DCI’s office.

‘What do we reckon,’ Aylesbury asked when they were inside, ‘is it the same killer?’

It was clearly what both Jessica and Cole had been thinking. Cole spoke first. ‘We think so, Sir. Obviously there are no forensics yet but the neck wounds look similar and the house at least seems to have been locked up like the first one.’

‘Did you get much useful from the son?’

Jessica spoke this time. ‘Not really. He was pretty shaken. He just confirmed he had unlocked the front door to let himself in, then found the body.’

‘And all the other windows and doors were locked?’

Jessica and Cole nodded in unison. ‘Yes,’ Jessica said. ‘The house could have been unlocked during the day, we won’t know that until we speak to Mrs Prince, but the son says it was locked when he got home in any case.’

‘We’re going to have to keep this out of the media for now. We can’t have talk of a serial killer at this stage, especially one killing people in their own homes. We should at least wait for the lab tests to come back and then maybe we can talk about releasing information. I’ll draft a press release with the office, just something about a body being found and so on. You two, keep your mouths shut – and tell all the other officers that too. We can’t have this getting out, not like last time.’

They were dismissed with Aylesbury’s words ringing in their ears. Jessica walked through the station’s reception. She was going to mention something to the desk sergeant about contacting her if any news came through about Sandra Prince but he was talking on his mobile and didn’t seem too keen to be bothered. Jessica hung around for a few moments but felt too tired to wait. She hadn’t driven in because of the wine she’d had but one of the other officers was going to drop her home. She was walking towards the bay of marked cars when the familiar sound of her ringtone started, muffled from being in her bag. She fished around and pulled out the device. The caller’s name was only half a surprise. She had saved the number as something she thought particularly appropriate. ‘Tweed wanker’ the display said.

Jessica pushed the touch screen to answer and put it to her ear.

‘What do you want?’

She didn’t know if Garry Ashford knew anything about what had happened that evening but she definitely wasn’t going to give away any information by accident.

‘Hi, it’s Garry Ashford. Can you speak for a minute or two?’

‘I know who it bloody is. What do you want?’

‘Can I run something by you?’

‘What?’ Jessica was shouting now. Did he know or didn’t he?

‘I’ve got it on good authority another body was found tonight.’

‘Whose authority?’

‘You know I can’t tell you that.’

Suppressing a sigh, Jessica tried to stay calm. ‘Like before, you are going to have to talk to the press office. They deal with media requests, not me.’

‘Are they going to put out a statement about this murder being linked to the first one?’

Jessica winced. ‘I don’t know who told you that, Garry, but I think someone’s pulling your leg.’

‘Or maybe you are now?’

Jessica was fuming, not really knowing how to respond. How could he know? He might have found out a body had been discovered – there had been plenty of people having a nose on the street the Princes lived on – but how could he know how the victim had been killed? Or that the house had been locked?

Either someone involved with the investigation was feeding him information or . . .

‘Are you my murderer, Garry?’

‘What . . . no. Of course I’m not.’

‘You seem to know a lot about the murders. Maybe things only the killer would know?’