Jessica’s mind was racing and she prayed the answer to her next question would be positive. ‘Did you keep the flyer?’

‘Oh . . . I don’t know. Mary usually kept things like that just in case. I don’t know if it was one of those things you had to hand in.’

‘Can we have a look?’

‘Of course.’

Paul Keegan quickly stood up, clearly understanding what could be happening. He marched towards the door, Jessica just behind. His house was only a few minutes’ walk away and Jessica followed him along a cut-through towards the estate. Neither of them said a word. Jessica could feel the nerves in her stomach. Suddenly things seemed to be making sense, at least for the final two victims. Nigel Collins had tracked down Claire Hogan and perhaps befriended her as a client. Then he had sabotaged the lock on her front door by squirting glue into it and just happened to be there to fix it for her. It would have been so easy to keep a copy of the key for himself. He could have either let himself in, murdered her, then left, locking up on the way out, or he could have gone to her as a client, killed her and locked the door behind him.

Even the ‘why’ seemed clear. It was as Hugo had told her – misdirection. While the police were busy trying to find out how the crimes had taken place, they weren’t focusing on what linked the bodies. He had even used the trouble with local kids as another way of directing attention away from himself but this time for the victims. The victims had blamed local children for the trouble, not bothering to trust the police to do anything.

Something similar would have happened with Mary Keegan, except Collins had been even cleverer, all but ensuring the Keegans would come to him to get their door fixed. He cunningly posted a flyer through their door offering a cheap deal and then damaged their locks not long after. It wasn’t entirely foolproof but everyone liked a good bargain.

It would be a pretty good bet the Christensens and Princes had to have had their locks changed after being robbed too. Most people obviously wanted it doing for their own piece of mind but it was usually an insurance requirement after a burglary anyway. How Collins had managed to make sure he had a key for those properties wasn’t exactly clear and there were still gaps, such as how he knew where everyone lived – but she knew she had figured out a large part of everything.

Now she just had to figure out the final but largest part of the puzzle – where was Nigel Collins?

Paul Keegan unlocked the same front door Jessica herself had done not that long ago when she had discovered Mary’s body and they both went in. She remembered the tidy stack of post on the table next to the front door and it looked as if it had been added to. She was led into the kitchen and Paul opened a drawer to the left of the sink. ‘We keep things like menus and vouchers and so on in here. If it’s not here, it won’t be anywhere.’

He pulled out a big pile of glossy pieces of paper and put them on the kitchen table. Jessica was on one side as he sat opposite her. They each started looking through a very large heap. Jessica worked quickly. She could see from some of the vouchers that the expiry date was years old. The whole house was spotless but this seemed to be something of a forbidden drawer, where all sorts of miscellaneous junk was thrown just in case. Her dad kept a similar hoard at home.

She didn’t want to seem disrespectful and copied Paul by putting the pamphlets that weren’t useful in a separate pile. Her stack was twice the size of Mary’s husband’s, who was taking time to read each piece of paper, while she was far more ruthless. There were lots of menus, plus vouchers for money off fried chicken and pizza, various flyers for local supermarkets or the off-licence on the main road. Between them the initial selection was down to around a quarter of its original size.

Jessica started to put one more sheet on her discard pile and then she saw it. She had been so close to tossing it away but stopped in mid-action and brought the flyer back towards her so she could read it. She scanned the words, her eyes flicking from side to side and reading the contents twice over.

She knew where to find Nigel Collins.

35

Paul Keegan watched her take the flyer. He had stopped sorting himself and glanced up. ‘Have you found it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can I see it?’

‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’ Jessica didn’t think he was the type to go storming off looking for revenge but she didn’t want to risk giving it back to him just in case. It looked as if he understood anyway.

He nodded gently and simply made one request. ‘Just make sure you get him,’ he said sadly.

Jessica followed the details on the flyer to the address it had given. Things almost made sense, though there were still gaps. The location listed would have almost certainly been the place closest to all four homes if they wanted to get keys cut. As well as being the nearest place, there was a good chance it would be the cheapest too. All of the victims were local and would have been well aware of those facts.

It was quite possible the person that ran the place would have had the skills to replace a lock for Claire Hogan too but, even if he didn’t himself, there was still a very reasonable connection. Jessica didn’t know if she would ever truly know the whole story – unless Nigel Collins was willing to talk after he had been caught. There was perhaps still some coincidence but maybe she just didn’t know the whole story yet.

The biggest problem Jessica had was that she couldn’t find the place listed. She knew she was roughly in the right area but found herself walking in circles. She had made at least two laps of the site, weaving in and out of the people and checking each possible location individually. She didn’t understand how she could be missing it.

Eventually she decided she just didn’t have enough knowledge of that precise area and that she should ask someone who did. She walked up to the closest person, took out the flyer and held it up to the man in front of her.

‘Hi. I was wondering if you knew where this place is?’

The man squinted to look at the paper in her hand. ‘Hang on a minute, love. I’ll need my glasses.’ The man fiddled with a pocket on the inside of his jacket and took out a case, before removing a pair of bifocals. He put them on and reached out for the flyer. Jessica was reluctant to let it go, given it could be used as evidence at some point, but released her grip nonetheless. The man took it and scanned through the words. ‘Sorry love, I’m only here on Saturdays. Not a clue.’

He gave it back but Jessica was silently fuming. ‘Why didn’t you just bloody say that in the first place,’ she thought to herself.

She decided to ask a woman close by, walking over and holding the flyer out once again. ‘Hi. I was just wondering if you know where this place is?’

The woman took the paper from her and gave it a read. ‘Do you know the offer’s out of date?’ Jessica felt like shaking the woman. ‘Of course I bloody know,’ she thought. ‘I do know how to read. Just answer the question.’

Instead, she actually said: ‘It’s okay. I was looking to find the place rather than use the offer.’

The woman shrugged at her, pointing the way Jessica had come from. ‘It should be on the end just over there.’

Jessica took the flyer back, put it in her bag, said ‘thank you’ and turned around. She was puzzled as she knew she had checked each place behind her. She figured the woman knew better than her, so walked back the way she had come and paid even more attention to her surroundings.

She reached the place on the end, where the woman told her she should be looking and got as close as she could without drawing too much attention. The woman must surely be wrong – this place didn’t deal with locks . . .