‘I think he’s still pissed off at having to cross the border.’

Detective Chief Inspector John Farraday originally came from Yorkshire but had been asked to move to Manchester after Aylesbury had been promoted. Usually, there would have been an internal appointment from the local police force but DI Cole had only been promoted to his current position less than two years ago and was never in contention. There was no obvious choice in the other local stations so management had looked elsewhere for a suitable person.

To Jessica, it made absolutely no difference where someone came from; she treated people as she found them. To a few older members of the team, there was still some sort of bizarre cross-county resentment in relation to a Yorkshireman coming to Greater Manchester and telling them what to do. Before he started, a couple of the more experienced uniformed officers spoke about how ‘tight’ they expected the new appointment to be. It didn’t help that Farraday himself didn’t seem overly pleased at having to live in Manchester. In the past six months, Jessica must have heard him complain about the ‘pissing rain’ at least three times a week. Still, it did piss with rain at least three times a week, so he probably had a point.

Cole stood up from his desk and they both went up to the first floor. They walked past the windows of their boss’s office and knocked on the door before being waved in. ‘Cole. Daniel,’ Farraday said. He greeted everyone by their surnames and Jessica had a sneaking suspicion it was because he couldn’t remember their first names or titles.

Farraday was sitting in his chair doing something on his mobile phone. He was around six feet tall but seemed more imposing because of his large chest and shoulders. He was somewhere in his late forties but had only just begun to go grey. Jessica often thought he would have been an extremely good-looking guy when he was a little younger. He had a very symmetrical face and, although the wrinkles were building up with age, he still had a boyishness about him. That was until he spoke. The man had an enormous voice even when speaking at a regular volume, let alone when he shouted. His accent was thick and something he was obviously proud of.

The two officers sat and Farraday put his phone down and began.

‘I’ve just finished speaking to the superintendent. From what he says, the prison governor is not happy whatsoever. He reckons we’re telling him how to do his job. Personally, I think he probably needs to be told how to do his job but it wasn’t my call to make. Either way, it’s been cleared for you two to go back tomorrow. You can interview McKenna again and check whatever you want in his cell or wherever.’

He was drumming his fingers on the desk while he spoke. ‘Based on whatever you come back with, someone’s going to have to make a decision about what we do next. Do I think we’ll be able to charge him? I doubt it. We’ll have to get the CPS in or something.’ Her boss had an incredibly irritating habit of asking himself a question and then answering it. Jessica wasn’t sure if other people noticed it but every time he did it she had to battle not to clench her teeth in annoyance.

‘Surely we can’t charge him, can we?’ Jessica asked.

Farraday glared at her. He didn’t like being interrupted and clearly hadn’t finished his train of thought.

‘As I was about to say, I can’t believe the CPS would be recommending charging McKenna, given the guy is behind bars. You’d have to have a complete set of morons on the jury to find him guilty.’

Jessica knew there were plenty of ‘morons’ just ready and waiting to sit on a jury but doubted any of them were crazy enough to find beyond reasonable doubt that someone behind bars had committed a crime on the outside.

‘Given all that, we have to start looking into anyone that might connect Millar to McKenna.’ Her boss stopped talking and leant back slightly in his chair, an invitation for either of them to speak. Jessica didn’t want to point out she had already assigned Rowlands to look into anyone that connected the two men.

With Cole not looking as if he was going to speak, she did get in first though. ‘One of the constables was sent to the register office this morning and confirmed there was no twin registered alongside Donald McKenna. There’s no obvious record of any other brother or sister born to his mother either.’

‘Are his parents still alive?’

‘There was no father’s name on the birth certificate but the mother died years ago.’

Farraday shuffled in his chair, humming to himself. ‘Any bright ideas?’

Jessica didn’t have any. As far as she could tell, they were doing all they could. She looked at Cole, who looked as blank as she did.

‘No, Sir,’ Cole said.

‘Are we bringing in the media?’ Jessica asked.

‘Do I think we should bring in the media? Not yet. We’ll wait until after you’ve been back to the prison tomorrow.’ He paused for a second. ‘Anything else?’ Neither of them answered.

‘Right then. I’m off to the cricket.’ Jessica looked queryingly at the man sitting next to her but Farraday filled them in before either had to ask. ‘Lancashire–Yorkshire at Old Trafford. Last day of the County Championship season. Would have been there first-thing if it wasn’t for having to deal with the super.’

Jessica didn’t know what to say. If her boss wanted to go to the cricket, she guessed it was up to him. ‘Is there anything specific you want us to be moving with then, Sir?’ she asked.

‘No. Just try to connect Millar and McKenna. It’s only some scumbag kid, isn’t it? If it is McKenna, I hope he takes down a whole bunch more of these little shits with him.’

Farraday stood up to indicate the meeting was over and the other two officers followed his lead. Jessica went back to her office – Reynolds was again absent – and sat at her desk. There was something a little unnerving about her boss’s tone at the end of their talk. There was a lot of black humour in police stations and people got away with saying the most outrageous things because there was no real malice behind it but it didn’t sound as if he had been joking.

Jessica had consistently found the DCI hard to read since he started. In his first week in the job, some of the officers had decided to see how many references they could get to Yorkshire into conversations with him. Someone would slip the word ‘whippet’ into a morning briefing. One officer kept going on about ‘Batley’, a town in the county, for no obvious reason, while others spoke about ‘tea’ and ‘Yorkshire pudding’. Instead of using the word ‘you’, half the team were calling each other ‘thee’. Things were getting out of hand but he eventually clocked the game when one of the younger members of the team spoke about ‘Geoffrey Boycott’, a famous Yorkshire cricketer, and then burst out laughing.

It was all very childish but the chief inspector took it in the spirit it was meant and had even invited everyone who worked in the station to his new house for an introduction party of sorts. He owned a large property to the south of the city in a nice area. The fact he had saved up enough to buy a place such as that hadn’t helped his ‘tight’ reputation around the station. Apparently he had grownup children but no one had met them, although his wife came across well at the party. Jessica had gone but spent much of the evening hanging around with Carrie and Dave. Rowlands had been rather taken with one of the family photographs that centred on one of their boss’s grown-up daughters. Some of the other officers had made a big joke out of subtly moving items around, even if it was just switching ornaments with each other. Their host had taken a fair ribbing over a framed photo of Headingley cricket ground he had hanging in his hallway.

As well as that gentler side, Jessica had also seen him bellowing at various officers for perceived misdemeanours. His voice travelled and if someone was in trouble, everyone knew about it. He could be direct and abrasive and Jessica had never figured out if that was a genuine mean streak or just something about his manner.