Then she thought of something. She remembered the van. It had been behind her when she was jogging home, which meant that the killer knew where she lived. She sat up straight in the bath, goosebumps on her arms. He could come to her home. She was naked, vulnerable. Why had she told Jack to go out?

Laura stepped quickly out of the bath, wrapping a towel around her body. She needed to get away from the house.

Chapter Sixty-Two

Emma was sitting on her doorstep when Jack got there, her head against the door frame, her eyes almost closed. There was a glass in front of her, half-filled with cider. Her eyes opened slowly when Jack got closer.

‘You’re back,’ she said, and her hand moved unsteadily towards the glass.

He kneeled down in front of her and moved her drink away.

‘What did you see?’ he said urgently.

She went as if to grab the glass, but Jack held it further away, so that she slumped backwards against the door frame. She took a few deep breaths, and Jack thought she was going to be sick, but eventually she said, ‘I told you, Don took him.’

‘When was this?’

She shrugged, her movements uncoordinated. ‘I came home, and then I rang you. Thirty minutes before. Maybe.’

‘Are you sure it was Don?’

Her look darkened at that, her face seemed to gain a bit more focus. ‘Do you think I don’t know Don Roberts when I see him? He was dragging Simon to the car. Two men were holding his arms.’

‘Do you know where they were taking him?’

‘I didn’t ask. I just watched.’

Jack stood up, frustrated. He was about to leave Emma when she added, ‘Don’s got something in town.’

‘What do you mean, something?’

‘Like a workshop.’

‘How do you know that?’

Emma wiped her nose with her hand and beckoned for him to hand the glass over. She drank some greedily when he gave it to her, and then said, ‘I make it my business to know about him. I wanted to burn the fucking place down. But what’s the point?’

‘Where is it?’

Emma gave him vague details, her memory blurred by drink, and then he ran back to his car, leaving Emma on her doorstep, with an almost empty glass of cider for company.

Laura ran into the police station, banging the door against the wall. She was wincing from her bruises, the cuts on her knee bleeding again, making small stains on her trousers, but she tried to rush through, to get to the top floor. She avoided the lift, despite her sense of urgency, and climbed the three flights of stairs instead. When she reached the top, she grimaced and took a moment to catch her breath, before hobbling along to the CCTV room.

The operator barely moved a muscle as she walked in. He was drinking coffee and eating a sandwich from a small plastic box he had brought in from home.

‘Do you remember the footage I asked you to look at yesterday, of the man who came to the police station?’ she said, still panting a little.

He shrugged. ‘Yeah, why?’ he said, his mouth full of bread.

‘Have you still got it?’

He nodded. ‘You asked me to save it for you, so I did,’ he said, putting his food down. He sighed as he rummaged under some papers on one side of his desk and found a disc. ‘Here it is.’

Laura went to a computer terminal at the end of the screens and inserted it. The software seemed to take an age to load, and she was about to turn around to get some help when familiar images jumped onto the screen, the view from the camera that overlooked the reception area.

She was impatient as she scrolled quickly through the footage, the washed-out outlines like flashes as she went through it, and then she stopped when she saw him, the slow nervous shuffle of Rupert Barker fast-forwarded into a rush. She took the footage back and pressed play, and then watched carefully, looking for something she had missed from her last viewing.

The camera looked towards the large exit doors and the row of seats opposite the glass kiosks. The chairs were in front of a window, but it was hard to see what was in the car park because there was a van parked there, a white Transit with the police crest on the side.

Rupert looked hesitant and nervous, she thought, his hand stroking his cheek, and at one point it seemed like he was about to turn around and leave. But she told herself to ignore Rupert Barker. She knew already what he was thinking about when he came to the station. Shane Grix, the file he had uncovered. It was the people at the station she was interested in now.

Laura watched as Rupert looked along the row of seats. There weren’t many people in the station, just a bored-looking teenager in the obligatory tracksuit and a solicitor preening herself at the end of the row. Rupert sat down and fidgeted. Two police officers went through the reception area, their belts heavy with equipment, and Laura looked closely to see whether either of them glanced Rupert’s way. Neither did.

Then Rupert walked off camera. That must have been when he spoke to the counter assistant.

There was a delay before Rupert appeared back on screen, when he sat down on one of the seats, his head forward, his hands clasped together, looking towards the floor, his feet tapping on the ground.

Another police officer marched in through the doors, just moving out of the way to let two female officers out, closely followed by a police driver, who was dragging a trolley of bags to the exit.

Laura straightened, frustrated, and looked away for a moment, sure that the answer must lie somewhere else, glancing back at the CCTV operator, ready to ask him to tee up the external footage. Then she saw something. She looked back at the screen and watched Rupert again, who was still sitting down, looking nervous. There were no more police officers, and the driver was just banging through the doors with his trolley.

She went to scratch her head, but then remembered the stitches and pulled her hand away. She had seen something, she knew it.

She leaned forward to take the footage back again, but then she stopped. It was the driver who drew her attention. He was tall and skinny, the sharpness of his shoulder blades visible through his thin blue jacket. He was standing by his van, visible through the window behind Rupert, not moving. But it was the way he held his head, cocked to one side, like a bird listening out, that made her heart beat faster.

Laura felt a shiver of recognition and cold goosebumps prickled the back of her neck. Her mouth went dry and she felt light-headed as she thought back to the person who had stood over Rachel. She swallowed hard and tried to focus on the screen, ignoring what had happened earlier. Her hand went to the mouse and it felt slick under her hand as she dragged the footage back to where the driver first came into view.

Laura watched as he seemed to slink in, just the top of his head visible at first, a bald patch spreading on the crown of his head, hair light, and his head forward, so that his shoulders were hunched, one arm down to pull the trolley loaded with blue bags, ready for delivery to the prosecution in their office on the other side of Blackley. Then it was there. The glance over to Rupert and a stutter in his walk, just for a moment, barely noticeable, but that falter was what she had seen before. He kept on going though, but he seemed quicker as he went, banging through the doors with his trolley.

Then Laura watched him as he paused by the van, his head cocked, making no effort to load it.

Her eyes went back to Rupert, who was now looking up, towards the doors that Laura had headed for when she had got the message about him. Rupert hadn’t noticed the driver, and Laura saw the final nervous look on Rupert’s face as he turned and walked quickly out of the station, rushing past the van, the driver looking down, his arms by his side. As Rupert went out of shot, the driver looked up, and he seemed to be watching in the direction Rupert had just gone.