Somebody who knew where she lived.

In the end, her Wednesday morning didn’t begin in the way she thought it would – it began in the way her Tuesday morning had: supermarket cafe, pensioners, single mums, bored-looking waitresses, orange juice, sausages in a bap, brown sauce, newspaper on the table and Garry Bloody Ashford. This time it was at his request.

Jessica peered around at the surroundings, wondering if this was what her life had come down to: the faint smell of coffee and the wafting aroma of fried egg, together with intermittent public address announcements for Janice to go to the front of the store.

‘So you couldn’t quite get enough of me,’ Jessica said, watching Garry cover his chin in brown sauce again. There really was no elegant way to eat a sausage sandwich. Still, if you were the one with the sausage sandwich then you were winning anyway.

Garry rolled his eyes. ‘Yes, I’m here to declare my undying love for you and this is the best place I could come up with.’

‘What do you really want?’

Garry wiped his lips and nodded at the paper in front of him, which showed a photograph of Holden being led into court the previous afternoon. As she had predicted, he hadn’t been given bail.

Jessica glanced across the page and shrugged. ‘Didn’t we talk about this yesterday?’

Garry shook his head. ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen. When the story came in on the wires that you’d found that second girl’s body out at Little Hurst, we started pulling things together about the fact two young women’s bodies had been found a few days apart. No one at your end was giving details but we got a camera down there and were trying to get a name.’

‘We couldn’t have told you before we told the victim’s family.’

‘I know; that’s not the issue. The point is that we’d cobbled something together anyway. Admittedly it mainly went over the first body find – Cassie Edmonds’ – but we had something. It was all lined up ready for the front page when the editor was called out of conference. Usually, he refuses to take calls when we’re in those meetings but his secretary told him it was important and he left the room. A few minutes later, he came back and everything had changed. Suddenly, he was saying we didn’t have enough to run the young-women-being-killed story properly and that we’d lead on Holden. Within a few minutes, your press office was on giving us every tiny detail we might possibly want about the decision to charge Holden Wyatt. We’d normally have to coax each morsel out, but we were given it all on a plate.’

‘So your main story was changed?’

‘Yes – it was the same on the radio and TV this morning. They might not have had the same call but the fact you were so cooperative with details for Holden meant that story was always going to be the easiest to run.’

‘Who’s your editor?’

‘You won’t know him. He’s been in place for about a year. The old one was making too much money, so the parent company made him redundant and parachuted in some guy from down south. He doesn’t know the area but no one in management really cares about that, as long as the paper comes out and the ads get sold.’

‘Do you know who called him?’

‘No. The old editor would do things like that all the time – decide what he wanted, then blow his top at anyone that disagreed – it’s just the way he was. But the new bloke is different. We all know he’s the management’s guy, there to make a few cuts. He usually leaves the news order to those of us who’ve been there a while and know the area. He doesn’t get angry because he’s got nothing to be angry about. Half the time, he’s itching to get back outside and have another fag. Yesterday was different, though. When he said we should change the order, one of the lads asked if he was sure and he totally lost it. He was going on about people questioning his authority, asking if unemployment was an attractive prospect and so on. Everyone sat in silence because he’s usually so passive.’

‘What was he like before he took the phone call?’

‘The same as ever; slumped in his seat fiddling with his phone. I thought you were just moaning yesterday but—’

‘“Moaning”?’

Garry hid behind the final mouthful of his sandwich. ‘You’re always going on about something.’

‘Justifiably!’

‘Either way, there’s something going on. I’ll see what I can find out and give you a call if I come up with anything.’

‘“Moaning”? You’re back on my shit list.’

At the station, results were beginning to come in from Grace Savage’s body but it was a similar story to everything that had been found on Cassie Edmonds’. Neither had been sexually assaulted, both had broken ribs from the beating their upper torsos had taken, and both had had a finger and part of an ear cut off. The rain had washed away much of the evidence at both scenes, with the fingertip search a waste of time too. They hadn’t been able to find anything to link the two victims, other than their age and the fact they lived in roughly similar areas.

As Jessica waded through her overnight emails and memos, Izzy knocked and entered her office with a sheaf of printouts. ‘This is your list of registered black cab drivers,’ she said.

‘What about people who drive pre-booked taxis?’

‘Shite, I didn’t think of that. I’ll get someone to do it. Everyone’s got to be registered with the city council, so it’s not too hard to pull it all together.’

‘Get Archie to contact all the companies and find out who was on duty that night. I know a driver could’ve gone out anyway but it’ll give us somewhere to start – and let’s start running the plates through ANPR. Even if we haven’t got CCTV, we’ve got enough number-plate cameras along the main road to look for a match from one database to the other.’

Izzy nodded and headed out of Jessica’s office just as DCI Cole stormed in, making the door bang against the frame. Jessica was so taken by surprise that she bashed her knee against her desk, sending a cardboard folder flying off the edge, which created a domino effect of things collapsing around the floor. Her office really was a tip.

Cole had one hand on his hip, the other clinging onto a printout. ‘What’s going on with Holden Wyatt?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You’re supposed to be one of my inspectors and you don’t know?’

‘I didn’t even know you’d charged him! You can’t expect me to know every aspect of a case if you tell me one day you’re charging him, then you hold off and continue questioning him about something else, then he ends up getting charged for the first thing. I went to see Grace Savage’s husband last night and we’re trying to sort a possible link to taxi drivers this morning. I—’

‘You’ve what? Last week it was trying to catch a pickpocket but I don’t have a name for that. A knife robber is on the loose because you or one of your team let him go. His head is covered in tattoos – why’s it so hard to find him? You had a student dumped in a bin but you’ve not been able to pin that on anyone either. Now there are two dead girls and the best you’ve got is something to do with taxis. What exactly is it you’re doing down here?’

Jessica had two words for him but narrowly managed to bite her tongue. ‘You’re forgetting everything else that we have sorted out.’

Cole removed his hand from his hip, so he looked a little less like a teapot and more like the dumpy man he had become. He ran a hand through what was left of his hair. ‘There’s no use living off past glories – you know there’s a big report into the effectiveness of this force coming at the start of next year. What we don’t want is a host of unsolved cases.’

‘Isn’t trying to rush things what got us into this mess in the first place? Well, that and fabricating evidence but we’re definitely not trying to fit up Holden Wyatt, are we?’

Jessica glared defiantly at the DCI but knew she’d gone too far.