‘I’ve been on my fair share of buses and trains.’

‘You know what it’s like then.’

‘Yes.’

‘The plan was for me to get the car fixed, then pick her up after yoga.’ He delved into his pocket, taking out his mobile phone and pressing the screen, then tossing it across to Jessica. ‘Look.’

Jessica turned the screen around and read:

Nick: ‘Sorry hun. Car’s still shite. Shall I meet you?’

Grace: ‘Don’t worry babez. I’ll get the bus.’

Jessica stood and passed the phone back to him.

‘That was the last I heard from her,’ Nick said. ‘That stupid heap of shite car . . . we’ve only been married for four months. She was talking about little wee bairns . . .’

Jessica finished getting the rest of the details as Nick chain-drank his way through mugs of tea. Cassie and Grace had gone missing from a similar spot within days of each other.

When they were done, Jessica and Izzy got back into the car ready to head back to the station and swap cars. Their shifts had finished more than an hour ago.

‘I know that look,’ Izzy said from the passenger’s seat.

‘What?’

‘Cogs whirring, hamster wheels turning.’

‘It’s probably nothing.’

‘If you don’t want to trust anyone else at the station, you can tell me.’

Jessica flicked the headlights on and pulled onto the road. ‘It’s not that – I just don’t want to be wrong. Not now; I feel like there are people waiting for me to fail.’

‘All the more reason to run things past me.’

‘You, me and Dave walked along Oldham Road but it’s all blocked off. Did you know that before we went?’

‘No.’

‘Me neither – and you can only see the “road closed” signs when the barriers are already in view.’

‘Okay . . .’

‘So it’s not been well advertised and it’s not well signposted. Let’s assume most people don’t know that the road’s closed, even if they know the area. Cassie lived in Failsworth, Grace in Moston – the areas are right next to each other; they probably live a five- or ten-minute drive apart and they’d take a similar route home.’

‘That’s still a big area for them to go missing from.’

‘I know; too big to have everyone out on the streets checking every small side street they could have cut through. When we were in that area with the roadworks, I thought then that it was where Cassie disappeared from; I had this feeling.’

‘You think Grace was taken from around there too?’

‘Maybe . . . it was something Nick said. Have you ever been out in town late and you’re the last one standing? You’ve only got a few quid left, not enough for a taxi but just enough for the late bus. He called people “window-lickers”, which I nearly laughed at, but it means the people who are catching that last bus home. Most of them are either pissed, high, horny, or all three. Perhaps when Cassie was walking along the road, she thought she’d get the bus. Grace texted Nick to say she was either going to walk or get the bus. She might have started walking and then realised it was too far and that she’d get the bus instead. They’d have both been catching it from the same road.’

Jessica indicated to turn onto the main road but she could sense Izzy figuring it out herself. ‘When we were by those roadworks, there was a cover over the bus-stop sign.’

‘Exactly – and if there were no buses running along that route, who do you think might have been hanging around?’

‘Taxis.’

‘Bingo.’

Izzy didn’t reply for a moment. Jessica thought it was because she was thinking how brilliant her friend was, but the response was far more devastating than that: ‘“Bingo?” You’ve been hanging around with Archie for way too long.’

Despite her reservations about Jessica’s choice of words, Izzy did agree that it was something worth looking into. Without making too much of a fuss, she asked one of the night-crew constables who she claimed ‘wasn’t a total dick’ to see what they could come up with.

Jessica arrived home to a smell she didn’t recognise: cleanliness. She went into the living room, where Adam was sitting in his chair with his feet up watching television. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked.

Adam nodded towards the kitchen and smiled. Jessica walked through the hallway into the kitchen to find Bex sitting at the table reading a magazine. She glanced at Jessica and instantly apologised. ‘Sorry, I found this in the other room. You can have it back.’

Jessica batted it away. ‘It’s just some celebrity shite, which means it’s Adam’s.’

‘Oh.’

‘Why does it smell funny in here?’

‘I, er, don’t know . . . I cleaned . . .’

‘You cleaned?’

Bex peered at her feet, cradling her knees into herself again. She was so tiny, arms nearly as thin as the mop handle resting against the wall behind her. ‘Sorry, I wanted to do something to help.’

‘Don’t apologise, it’s just . . . I’ve never cleaned in here.’

‘I did the bathroom too.’

‘Whoa!’

‘Sorry . . .’

‘Stop saying sorry. It’s a good thing . . . well, sort of. You don’t have to clean up after us.’

‘I thought because you were both working hard and I was sitting around, that I should do something to help.’

Jessica sat on the chair next to her and rested a hand on the girl’s knee. ‘It was very kind of you. I hope you spent the day looking after yourself, too.’

That grin spread across Bex’s face again. ‘I had a bath.’

‘Did you enjoy it?’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever had a bath before. It was amazing.’

‘Good.’

The smile shrank to its minimum once more. ‘I don’t want to be a burden.’

‘You’re not.’

‘Adam . . . ?’

‘He’s happy for you to be here.’

‘He told me off for cleaning.’

‘That’s because he’s an old woman who likes to do it himself.’ They swapped grins as Bex reached across the table and picked up a letter. ‘This came for you, by the way.’

The only items of mail Jessica usually got were bills (Adam’s), junk (the bin’s), bank statements (Adam’s), or vouchers for the booze shop around the corner (Jessica’s).

Jessica took the letter but it was different from the type of thing that generally came through the door – the envelope was padded but thin. On the front, her first name was written in block capital letters but there was no last name and no address – this had been hand-delivered.

She was about to flip it over to open it when she noticed a small, sketched symbol in the top-right corner. It was a fork shape, with three prongs: one curling to the left, one straight up, one curling to the right. Holding them together was a loop at the bottom, making it look like some sort of sheaf. Jessica tried to place it, but wasn’t sure if she had ever seen it before.

Jessica could already feel the tension beginning to slink along the top of her neck as she ran a finger under the flap and opened it. Reaching in, she pulled out a single sheet of thin card with five words written on it in the same handwriting that had put her name on the envelope. Jessica read them three times then returned the card to the envelope before Bex asked about it. She wouldn’t be forgetting them any time soon though because, assuming the words referred to Holden, they were telling her what she already knew.

‘You’ve got the wrong man.’

19

Jessica’s first thought was to hand in the envelope and note – but that would have been what she’d have done when she thought she could trust people around the station. She spent a partially sleepless night wondering who else the words could relate to if it wasn’t Holden, but there was no one. She already believed that someone, somewhere, was trying to put pressure on them to make sure Damon’s death was pinned on Holden and now this note seemed to confirm that. Not only was there a person trying to make that happen, there was now somebody else trying to make sure that she was the one who stopped it.