The two had forged a good friendship that had been littered with the Welsh detective’s various disasters with boyfriends.

Since an encounter she regretted with one of Randall’s friends and the way things had turned out with Randall himself, Jessica hadn’t had anything that might even begin to count as a boyfriend. Not that she was bothered; the job was what drove her at the moment.

Just recently, it seemed as if Carrie had settled on someone she actually liked. Jessica could tell because, whereas before they would hold regular wine-fuelled inquests into disastrous dates, her friend had stayed pretty quiet about the latest man in her life.

‘He’s okay,’ she replied with a small smile, slightly more quietly than usual.

‘Still don’t want to talk about him, then?’ Jessica didn’t really mind. Her friend would open up when she was ready.

‘Nope.’

‘So what else is going on? Still having problems with the house?’

While a lot of police officers rented places while they were young because they could be moved around or apply for posts with other forces, Carrie’s father was insistent that renting was throwing money away. Because of that, her parents put up the money for a deposit on a two-bedroom house where she lived on her own a few minutes’ walk away from the Longsight station. Jessica had stopped over the odd night in the spare room after they had gone out together or following team drinks in the station’s local pub. It was in a great area for getting to and from work but not in a terrific place considering the neighbours.

It wasn’t as rough as the estate where Craig Millar had been killed but it wasn’t too much better. The fact the locals knew she was a police officer just made things worse for her. Bricks had been put through her windows twice in the past year and, while targeting a law-enforcement officer would be an aggravating factor if someone was arrested for the damage, no one had been found.

‘It’s not been too bad. That Mills guy is back out of prison.’

‘How long was he in this time?’

‘Not long. His girlfriend didn’t want to give evidence in the end and they dropped the charges.’

‘Did you really think she would?’

‘No. It’s always the way, isn’t it? Boyfriend smashes up his girlfriend’s face. She calls us when she wants protection then changes her mind the next day. At least it got him out of the area for a few weeks.’

John Mills was somebody else very well known to the local police officers. He was in his fifties but had a long record of being in and out of custody for various, usually violent, offences. He also happened to live half-a-dozen doors down from Jones after buying two houses and converting them into one much bigger property. A few months ago, Carrie had conducted some research in her own time and shown Jessica that crime rates on the estate where she lived directly correlated to whether Mills was in prison. When he was on the outside, he would have a network of low-level drug dealers working for him and things like burglary rates would go up without fail. It was hard to pin very much on him directly, though. There were always middle men to take the fall, with Mills set up as a legitimate businessman, owning a nightclub in the city centre. It was almost certainly where he laundered money but proving that was something far beyond either of their expertise.

Jessica nodded and the woman continued.

‘She visited him every day. She still stayed at his house and I’d see her driving off to the prison for visiting hours when I wasn’t here. You could still see the bruises on her face. The Crown were relying on her to give evidence but she was spending each day going to check on the guy who beat her up. It’s ridiculous.’

Jessica couldn’t disagree but knew from experience it often happened in instances of domestic violence. So many cases fell apart before they reached trial. Given his violent record, Mills would have been denied bail due to the likelihood of interfering with the one witness but that witness was happily visiting him each day in jail. The system was farcical.

‘Does he actually cause you any direct problems?’

‘Of course not. He wouldn’t dare put himself on the line like that. If he really wanted to get at me, he’d have someone unconnected do it.’

‘That’s how cowards operate.’

Carrie had said nothing at first. There was no specific reason why Mills would target her, other than his hatred of the police. He wasn’t stupid and wouldn’t risk his empire crumbling just for a cheap laugh at the expense of a detective who lived nearby.

‘He still stares . . .’ DC Jones said quietly. ‘Every time I walk past or anything like that. You can see him in the window or if he’s outside. He stares and watches until I’ve shut my front door.’ She didn’t sound scared but there was something in her voice. Mills obviously intimidated her.

Jessica had seen the man herself. He was perma-tanned with cropped hair, big muscles and an imposing physique two or three times the size of hers. There was no law against watching someone but the intimidation of her friend was hard to accept. They just had to hope the Serious Crime Division, a department Jessica had had issues with in the past, would pull their fingers out and nail him for something.

‘Are you coming out on Friday night then?’ Carrie asked, changing the subject.

‘I don’t know, maybe. You always get the idiots out at the weekend. What do you reckon about that midweek pub quiz Dave’s always going on about?’

‘Yeah, we should go sometime. It sounds like a laugh. We’ll find out how ubiquitous his knowledge is.’ Jessica met her eye and both women laughed.

‘The problem is he reckons there’s karaoke afterwards,’ Jessica said.

‘So?’

‘Do you know “karaoke” is the Japanese word for “arsehole”?’

‘Is it?’

‘No but it should be.’ Jessica smiled but, from the look on Carrie’s face, she wasn’t convinced her friend had got the joke. ‘Right, back to work,’ she added, scraping her chair backwards and standing up. ‘Have you got much on?’

‘No, I might go give Dave a hand before he has a proper strop or tries to rope in one of the blondes from uniform to help him out.’

Jessica smiled, knowing full well that was almost certainly the type of thing Dave would be doing at that exact minute.

‘I’ve got some paperwork and bits to go over,’ Jessica said. ‘I want to try to get it out of the way before Craig Millar’s test results come back. I’m hoping it’ll be simple but I’m not going to hold my breath.’

The constable looked at Jessica, squinting slightly with her head held at a sympathetic tilt. ‘Are you going to be all right?’

Jessica hadn’t dealt with a murder case since Randall. She knew what her friend was really asking. ‘I’m fine.’

‘You don’t have to do it all on your own.’

Jessica had missed an opportunity to get help with that case and had almost paid for it with her life.

‘I know.’

There were a few moments of silence before DC Jones lifted the mood by standing up and bounding past Jessica towards the exit. ‘Good. Let me know about Friday, yeah?’

After an uneventful two days, Jessica wasn’t in a great mood and still regretting her choice of accommodation. Caroline had moved out of the apartment she shared with Jessica in the Hulme area of Manchester a few weeks after Randall had been arrested and now had her own place at Salford Quays. Jessica had visited a few times and it was very nice but the atmosphere was always awkward between them. They had gone from being able to chat about everything and anything night after night to having nothing to say.

Rent prices in Manchester very much related to the quality of the area you wanted to live in. There were plenty of cheap apartments if you were happy to reside somewhere like Craig Millar did. The road they lived on in Hulme hadn’t been too bad but Jessica had opted for a newer one-bedroom flat in the Didsbury district when she moved. She could have afforded to stay in the old one if she’d wanted but, having nearly been choked to death on her own bed, that was never going to be something she was happy with.