Cole’s lips were pursed, eyes fixed: ‘What exactly are you trying to say?’

‘Nothing, Sir.’

‘Good – then do your job and let’s start moving some of these unsolved cases into the non-incompetence pile, shall we?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

Cole gave Jessica one final hand-on-hip stare and then he was gone, back into the corridor to act like a dick in front of someone else.

Jessica sat for a few moments, running through everything he’d said to her. What. An. Arse. She picked up some of the items that had clattered to the floor and then headed through the station to the main floor, where she found Rowlands frantically bashing away at his keyboard.

‘Is this another letter to the problem pages?’ Jessica teased, nudging him in the shoulder as she perched on the desk in front of him. ‘“Dear agony aunt, my right wrist is so completely swollen compared to the left one that my entire body leans to one side. If that’s not enough, then I smell a bit like a bin . . .”’

‘Haven’t you got better things to do than hang around here trying to be funny?’

‘I never try to be funny – I am funny. Anyway, let’s go for a walk. You can practise trying not to lean to one side.’

Jessica led him through the corridors until they were back at her office. Once inside, she locked the door. Dave spun round at the sound of the click.

‘All right, calm down,’ Jessica said, pressing herself against the door. ‘Go to my desk and open the top drawer. Inside the top envelope is another one.’

Rowlands shrugged but crossed the room and opened the drawer, pulling out a blank white envelope and reaching in to take out the one inside with her name written on it. He held it up. ‘Where did this come from?’

‘Someone put it through my door at home yesterday. Look inside.’

Rowlands read the card. ‘Who’s the wrong man?’

‘I presume Holden Wyatt – I don’t know who else it could be talking about.’

‘Who sent it?’

‘No idea.’

After reading the card again, then turning it over to check the back and returning it to the envelope, Rowlands noticed the sketch in the top-right corner. ‘What’s this?’

‘I was hoping you might be able to look into it. I would . . . but things are awkward around here and I’ve got people on my shoulder the whole time.’

Jessica was about to add something else when there was a large bang from the other side of the door, followed by a female-sounding ‘Ow’. Jessica unlocked the door and opened it to find Izzy rubbing the side of her face and blinking rapidly.

‘Your door was locked,’ she said, pointing out the obvious.

‘I know; people usually knock.’

Izzy continued rubbing her head and looked a little woozy, glancing conspiratorially between Jessica and Dave. ‘Sorry – I was in a rush and thought you might want to come along. We’ve had a sighting of Bones.’

20

Jessica watched from the passenger seat of an unmarked car as either end of the road was blocked off by officers as conspicuous as someone wearing a fluorescent top at a funeral.

‘I don’t remember your operations being this chaotic,’ Izzy said from the driver’s seat, anxiously. Jessica should really have been doing the heavy lifting but it had been Izzy’s case throughout and the sergeant was more than capable. Jessica was only there to take the flak if things went badly. She was in enough people’s bad books as it was, so one more balls-up wouldn’t make much difference.

Jessica nodded towards an officer at the far end of the street arguing with a driver who was trying to make their way along the road. ‘Where did we hire this new lot from? He looks like a duck that’s been sniffing glue.’

The officer started whirring his hand in the air, the universal sign for ‘turn the car around, love’, and then reached for his pocket when the driver began arguing.

‘He’s not going for the pepper spray, is he?’ Izzy said, one hand on the radio.

Luckily it was just his identification which, in fairness to the driver, Jessica would’ve been asking for if she’d been asked to turn around by someone who looked like they belonged on a farm.

With the obvious escape routes blocked, the tactical entry team scurried into place around the rundown semi. The Eccles estate wasn’t the prettiest at the best of times. If tourists had been taken around the area and told it had been deliberately left as it was to provide a snapshot of war-torn, bombed-out 1940s Britain, then their cameras would’ve had plenty to snap at. There were the once red-brick houses now stained with black soot, even though Jessica doubted there was a coal fire anywhere nearby. There were the inexplicable mud piles in front gardens, the pot holes in the road, the random heaps of scrap dotted around, the upturned sofa on the side of the road with yellow foam spilling out, the smashed-up bus stop with the words ‘arse on toast’ graffitied onto it. What was it with spray-painters and the word ‘arse’? Not to mention the fact that Jessica had no idea what the toast reference was about. Perhaps it was some gang thing? Bloody hell, she was getting old.

Even among all that, the house Bones was apparently hiding in stood out as being a dump. The windows and doors across the lower floor were boarded up, with yet more graffiti shining out like a beacon. If your name was Sharon and you lived on this estate, then you certainly seemed to have a varied sexual appetite. Upstairs, the windows were just about in place – well, the frames were. Some of the single-glazed panes had been smashed, with all manner of stone-shaped holes adorning those that were left. Even for an estate agent, this would be a hard sell: ‘The downstairs can be a little dark, while you get the odd draught upstairs. Overall, though, it’s still a bargain . . .’

Luckily for them, a little old lady across the road had spotted someone with a tattooed head sneaking inside earlier. Most people on this estate wouldn’t bat an eyelid but thank goodness for little old ladies.

Behind the tactical entry squad, armed officers primed themselves, looking like a pack of beetles with their rounded black armour and shiny helmets. Across their fronts, their MP5s hung.

‘Christ, I hope they don’t shoot anyone,’ Izzy said.

‘They’re more likely to shoot each other than they are Bones,’ Dave chipped in from the back seat, unhelpfully.

‘If you count the officers with guns,’ Jessica added, ‘we’ve probably doubled the number of automatic weapons on this estate, at least temporarily.’

‘Will the pair of you shut up,’ Izzy snipped, not taking her eyes from the house.

Jessica and Dave exchanged chastened looks like a pair of naughty schoolchildren, but they did at least pipe down. Jessica peered around the rest of the area. There were a few faces in windows and the inevitable camera phones taking pictures to try to sell to the news channels. From where they were parked, they had a clear view of the front and side doors of the rundown house, plus a hint of the overgrown rear garden. Jessica wondered what the people who lived next door must think. That house was admittedly in a little better state, with a frail-looking once-red wooden front door and cracked window frames that hadn’t seen paint in the last decade or three, but the windows were at least intact.

Confirmation came over the radio that everyone was in place and Jessica turned to Izzy for the passing of the baton. ‘Go on then,’ she said.

Izzy looked at both officers, then the house, and then she gave the order: ‘Go, go, go.’ It might be a cliché – but it was a bloody cool one.

Thunk, crash, fwoosh: the boarded-up door splintered in an instant as the tactical entry team jumped to one side and allowed the tactical firearm squad to thunder into the building. Jessica wondered if her department could be rechristened the ‘tactical figuring-stuff-out crew’. Adding ‘tactical’ to the front of anything instantly made them sound better.