Cole was already in there, setting up the recording equipment. Eric Christensen wouldn’t be under arrest but he would be cautioned and interviewed plus told he could have a legal representative if he wanted. Unless time was absolutely paramount or someone’s life was at stake, all interviews were supposed to be done at the station and documented.

Each interview was recorded onto three tapes. The master would almost certainly never be listened to. It was there solely as a backup to prevent any allegations of tampering. It usually had a yellow seal around it to show it had not been opened since the interview. One of the copies would be for the police to use, while the third was the suspect’s.

Jessica swallowed a mouthful of sandwich. ‘We must single-handedly be the only organisation in the world keeping the manufacturers of cassette tapes in business.’

Cole jammed the final tape in the machine and looked around at her. ‘I’ve been saying for ages it’s ridiculous.’

Jessica pointed at the device. ‘I can get a better quality recording on my phone than off this thing. Did I tell you about the case I was at the other month?’

‘Go on.’

‘At the magistrates’ court we had some guy up for handling stolen goods. The quality of the recording wasn’t good enough and the written log was incomplete so the whole thing fell apart. I was sitting at the back as the defence ripped us apart.’

‘Shame it’s not me that sorts out the budgets,’ Cole said with a smile.

As he finished talking, there was a knock at the door and Rowlands entered with two men just behind him. The first was wearing a suit and Jessica recognised him as one of the duty solicitors. His role was to offer free legal advice to people that had to be interviewed. That would often happen over the phone but, in serious cases, it was always in person. There were only a few duties for the area, so they were all familiar faces.

That meant the man behind him had to be Eric Christensen. He was tall and blond and casually dressed in a pair of jeans and light-fitting shirt. On first impression, Jessica wouldn’t have said he looked upset at hearing of his wife’s death but he certainly seemed subdued.

Cole gave Eric Christensen the standard caution and the rest of the interview itself went pretty much as she suspected it would. The man said he was shocked by his wife’s death but insisted he would never have meant her any ill will. He explained their divorce was going to be a formality as they had separated five months ago and said they had simply drifted apart over the years. Now that James had gone to university, they no longer saw the need to stay together for him.

He was seeing someone new who lived in Bolton and said he had been out with her on Tuesday night, playing snooker with friends on Wednesday, in with his partner on the Thursday, and then out again last night. He claimed he didn’t have a door key to his old house and, as far as he was aware, Yvonne and James were the only people who did.

The husband was bailed without conditions but told to contact the police if anything occurred to him. He had asked if he could tell his son about Yvonne’s death. It was an awkward decision but Jessica guessed there was never a good way to be told your mother was dead, whether in person by someone in uniform or over the phone by your father. Either way an officer from the local area was going to be sent out to speak to James, if only to formally exclude him from the inquiry.

When the room was empty except for the two officers, Cole looked to her and raised his eyebrows. ‘What do you reckon? Do you think he’s our guy?’

‘It’s not as if he was thinking through his answers – everything was natural. We can get someone checking the alibi but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t solid. He answered all the questions too, even the intimate ones.’

‘I know. He’s either got nothing to do with it or is one of the most natural liars I’ve ever seen. The son seems unlikely too. Unless there’s a huge life insurance policy, neither of them seems to have a motive either.’

Eric had told them James went to Bournemouth University. It was a nine- or ten-hour round trip but his father reckoned he had gone that far just to get away from them.

‘He fell in with the wrong crowd a few years ago, then me and his mum were arguing all the time,’ he said. ‘He couldn’t have really found somewhere further away, could he?’

Jessica knew the logistics of getting from Bournemouth to Manchester and back again wouldn’t be impossible but James would surely have been missed if he had disappeared for that length of time.

‘He didn’t give us much else to go on, did he?’ Jessica said.

‘No, it sounds like he has just moved in with his new girlfriend and wants to get on with his life.’ They tidied up the room and walked through to reception. ‘Are you heading home?’ Cole asked.

‘I guess so. Is there anything you want me to do here?’

‘No, I’ll call the higher-ups then get off myself. We’ve got officers going door-to-door and we’re not going to get any results from the labs through until Monday at the earliest. There’s not much more we can do.’

Jessica said goodbye to the desk sergeant and asked him to call her mobile if anything interesting happened. She walked out of the station on her own, taking her phone out to check for any new messages. It was now late afternoon and, though the sun was still out, it had lost much of its heat. She shivered slightly but, as she did, for the second time that day, the phone started to ring while in her hand. She shook her head, thinking she should definitely change the ringtone to something less energetic, and looked at the screen to see who was calling.

There was no name displayed, just a mobile number she didn’t recognise. She jabbed at the screen to answer. ‘Hello.’

The man’s voice on the other end was slightly shaky and whoever it was sounded nervous. ‘Is that Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel?’

‘Yes, who’s this?’

The person paused for a moment. ‘I’m just calling to talk about the dead body you found this morning.’

4

Garry Ashford was not happy. The alarm on his phone he didn’t remember setting had gone off and he couldn’t get back to sleep. As he lay in bed, he didn’t think an electrical item could be smug but his phone certainly looked close to it as it showed him in big LED characters that it was one in the afternoon. There was no way he would have set an alarm for that time on a Saturday, not after being out until three in the morning, so someone was taking the piss.

It didn’t help that he was being charged thirty-five pounds a month for the privilege either.

His head throbbed slightly as he remembered the previous evening. Not only had he endured a bad week but he had spent nearly seventy quid the night before and ended up in the same position he always did with the opposite sex – precisely nowhere. As one of his supposed mates had pointed out in the taxi a few hours ago, this was more than a sexual barren spell; it was becoming a life choice.

Garry threw the duvet off and went to the window to see what the day had to offer him. Opening the curtains, he was surprised to see the bright light of the sun shining into the room. Nice day or not, there wasn’t an awful lot the sunlight could do about his shambles of a home. He had never been sure whether his rented accommodation actually counted as a flat, a bedsit or a hovel.

Everything was in one room, or two if you counted the fact that the bathroom had a door that didn’t quite shut all the way. In the main room, which also doubled as the kitchen and dining room, his bed folded out from the sofa. It didn’t matter whether you used it as a couch or a bed though; either way the springs had gone. He had a small old-fashioned portable television on a nearby table with an indoor aerial that never seemed to work properly planted on top pointing at the window. There was a cooker and microwave next to a sink a few feet away and a dining table with two plastic garden chairs in the centre of the room. On the other side of the bed was a chest of drawers that was, for some reason, the largest item of furniture in the entire flat. Aside from the faded flowery wallpaper, that was it for the main room.