‘If you want a link between Mike Corley and Don Roberts, I’ve got one,’ Jack said.

‘Tell me,’ she said, and Laura didn’t interrupt as he told her all about the meeting with Emma.

‘Did you say her child was adopted?’ Laura asked.

‘Yes,’ Jack said. ‘Her son was taken from her and handed over to a family friend. She tracked him down once, but she wasn’t allowed to see him.’

Laura went quiet for a few seconds, and then she said, ‘When was this?’

‘She was raped in seventy-six, so she had the baby in seventy-seven.’

‘It fits,’ Laura said, almost to herself.

‘What fits?’

‘I can’t tell you, Jack, not yet, but thank you for this,’ she said, and there was an urgency in her voice. ‘Who else knows?’

‘Just one other person. A policeman. Abbott. Simon Abbott.’

There was another pause.

‘Laura?’

‘Don’t go near Abbott,’ she said. ‘I’ll speak to you later.’ And then the phone went dead.

Jack breathed out deeply as he put his phone back in his pocket. He knew exactly where he was going. As he pulled away, Jack took one last glance at Corley, just in time to see his hand fall away from the curtain.

Chapter Fifty-Six

When they arrived at the police station, Laura didn’t head for the doors.

‘Where are you going?’ Joe said.

‘I’m going to find Ida, Shane’s mother,’ she replied, and held up her phone. ‘That was Jack. Remember the reference to Emma in the emails? She called him not long ago, and so he interviewed her.’

‘Why didn’t he come to us first?’

‘Because he was doing his job,’ Laura said. ‘And perhaps she wouldn’t have spoken to us. She hasn’t been keen up to now.’

‘And what did she say?’

‘Mike Corley and Don Roberts once worked together, back in the seventies,’ she said. ‘Jack got the full story from the woman, except back then she wasn’t a woman. Emma was a fifteen-year-old kid when Corley and Roberts raped her.’

Joe’s eyes widened. ‘Rape? Mike Corley and Don Roberts? Is she sure?’

‘One of them got her pregnant,’ Laura said. ‘Guess what happened to the baby?’

‘She gave it up for adoption. Shane?’

‘That’s my guess, and it seems like she’s had one confidante all along. A policeman. PC Simon Abbott. Maybe we were wrong after all. Maybe Shane did die in that London alleyway, but Simon Abbott is exacting some kind of revenge on behalf of Emma?’

‘Simon Abbott?’

Laura nodded. ‘That’s what Jack said. Do you know him?’

‘He’s a beat bobby, on the town centre patrol, the shop-lifters’ circuit. He’s the right height, I suppose, but why would he do that?’

‘When you find him, you can ask him,’ Laura said. ‘And check the duty rosters on my desk. See if he was on duty when the emails were sent from the station.’

‘What are you doing?’ Joe said.

‘I’m going to find Ida.’

‘Carson said you weren’t supposed to be alone.’

‘I’m not a child,’ she said. ‘Now we’ve got a name, you should have him locked up pretty soon.’

Joe nodded and walked towards the station doors. Laura went to her car and set off towards the town centre, where she thought she had seen Ida not long ago.

Her intention was to park her car and then walk. Ida wouldn’t know much about Blackley, and so she would stick to the major roads, perhaps not even venture out of the shopping zone. Laura checked her watch. Five o’clock. She left her car in one of the multi-storeys and started wandering.

It was thirty minutes before Laura saw her, as the crowds thinned out and the shops started to close. Ida wasn’t alone. There was a another woman alongside her, taller, younger. They were walking slowly, Ida’s eyes flitting around as she looked at people as they passed her. Laura followed them for a few minutes, and then she realised something else, that it was just men Ida was looking at, as if she was looking for traces of Shane, the adopted son she thought was dead.

They walked slowly until they got to the end of a line of shops. When they turned around to walk back the same way they had come, Ida stopped dead. She had seen Laura. She began to look around, as if an escape route was about to appear at her side. The woman with her looked confused, and then angry as Laura went to Ida and grabbed her gently by her elbow.

‘Mrs Grix, we need to talk.’

‘Who are you?’ the other woman said angrily.

‘It’s all right,’ Ida said, and then, ‘what are you doing here?’ Her expression was a mix of fear and confusion.

‘I work here,’ Laura said. ‘The question is really what are you doing here?’ When Ida looked away, Laura pulled her to one side and said, ‘Come on, let me buy you both a drink.’

The other woman stepped forward. ‘Please tell me, who are you?’

‘I’m the detective who spoke to Mrs Grix yesterday about Shane,’ Laura said, and as she studied the woman’s face, she remembered her from the photographs in Ida’s house. ‘Is it Amanda, Shane’s sister?’

Laura saw her anger fade. Amanda nodded but didn’t say anything.

Ida allowed herself to be led to a small coffee bar in the precinct, Amanda following meekly behind. It was filled with shoppers making their slow way home, the passage through the tables made difficult by bags and boxes on the floor. They found a space at the back, and Laura went to buy the drinks. When she returned with three coffees, Laura said, ‘Talk to me, Ida.’

Ida sighed and looked down for a few seconds, and when she looked up her eyes were watery. ‘Is it Shane?’ she said.

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Just the things I read in the paper,’ she said. ‘They said that Doctor Barker’s murder was connected to someone over here, and so I read about them. They sounded like Shane, but it can’t be him, because Shane is dead.’

‘How certain did the police seem back then?’ Laura said.

‘They told me they were sure, and they showed me some of his things. And it seemed like they were right, because Shane never came home. Back then, I had no reason to think that they weren’t right.’

‘But now you’re not so sure?’

Ida took a drink of her coffee before she answered. She kept looking down as she spoke. ‘Doctor Barker thought it was Shane, I know that now, and he was a clever man, so if he thought it was Shane, well, maybe it is.’

‘So that’s why you are here,’ Laura said.

Ida tapped the side of her cup, her expression lonely and morose. ‘I want to find him,’ she said. ‘I know what you think he did to those women, and if he killed them, he should pay for that, but he’s my son. He’s not my flesh and blood, but I brought him up. I did all those things for him that a mother should do, and I think of him as my child.’

Amanda snorted angrily. ‘And he threw it back in your face,’ she said.

‘Don’t say that,’ Ida said, sounding hurt.

‘Oh, come on, you know it’s true. He ran away as soon as he could, and it ruined everything.’

‘He wasn’t a bad boy,’ Ida said. ‘He was just different.’

Amanda sat back and scowled. ‘He used to watch me getting changed,’ she said. ‘I didn’t tell you then because it didn’t seem important, because I used to hit him when I caught him. He used to push the door open and peep through the gap.’

‘That’s not a nice thing to say,’ Ida said.

‘But if he is alive and has killed these women, then he was always like that,’ Amanda said bitterly, and then folded her arms. ‘I just thought you ought to know.

Laura saw the resentment of Ida’s natural child, that the cuckoo had got all the attention.

‘What will you do if you see him?’ Laura said.

Ida shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Tell me how he was adopted.’

Laura saw a flash of panic in her eyes, some long forgotten fear resurfacing with a jolt.

‘What do you mean?’ Ida said.

‘Just that,’ Laura said.

Amanda looked at Laura, and then at her mother, confused.