‘Yes.’

‘As in Porky Pomeroy – one of my bosses?’

Garry plonked the cup back down on the table and nodded. ‘Yep.’

27

To say the structure of Greater Manchester Police was complicated would be underestimating quite how convoluted the whole thing was. As well as being split into CID and uniform divisions, everything was then carved up into regions – North, South, East, West and Metropolitan. Individual stations then housed officers based loosely upon geography, so Jessica worked for Manchester Metropolitan CID, based at Longsight, with DCI Jack Cole as the highest-ranking officer permanently on site, and Detective Superintendent William Aylesbury overseeing half-a-dozen stations.

So far, so simple – sort of.

Above that were two chief superintendents, five assistant chief constables, a deputy chief constable and the overall chief constable.

No one Jessica spoke to ever seemed to know quite what the chief constables actually did. Clearly it involved rolling up at civic functions in a suit, quaffing champagne, and guffawing every time the council leader told a rubbish joke. There was definitely an element of turning up if anyone important was in town, or flouncing off to London for a glass of rosé with other chief constables a few times a year. If you were really lucky, you might even get a knighthood if you brown-nosed the right person. What you definitely did not do was head into the city centre on a Friday night to help pack drunken revellers into the back of a riot van while simultaneously trying not to get puked on. Not that Jessica did that either, but that wasn’t the point.

Admittedly, she rarely spoke to anyone who wasn’t Izzy, Dave, Archie or, in the old days, DCI Cole, but that wasn’t the point either.

All that could be put to one side, however, because the fact was that Graham Pomeroy was a significant name in the Greater Manchester Police force.

Jessica wasn’t sure what to say and couldn’t get past her first question: ‘Why would he be getting involved in day-to-day police work?’

Garry was looking slightly perkier after the coffee. ‘I thought you might know.’

‘Usually you can’t get that lot off the golf course unless there’s the chance to go on TV.’

‘Have you ever met him?’

‘A few times. Once or twice a year, they’ll host these engagement things to make it look like we’re a part of the community and so on. The thought’s in the right place but no one seems to realise that the only people who come out and get involved are the ones who don’t mind us anyway. We should concentrate on the teenagers and the kids – they’re the ones who are going to grow into adults who can’t stand us. We end up holding these dreadful events no one wants to go to, but if we did something like a football day, or if we hosted a BMX event, that kind of thing, we’d actually get a few of the lads down.’ Jessica sighed – this was an argument she’d made before. ‘Anyway, whenever we have one of these god-awful things, either the chief constable, his deputy, or one of the assistants turns up. They’ll smile, wave, have their photo taken, and then sod back off to the house in the country. Pomeroy usually shows up if there’s a free meal on the go.’

‘He’s distinctive then?’

‘If by “distinctive”, you mean “morbidly obese”, then yes, he is.’

‘Do you think whatever’s going on around your station is down to him?’

DCI Cole had said it himself: ‘Word has come down from above to get the Potter case sorted . . .’ Had Pomeroy given the call?

Before Jessica could reply, her phone began to ring. She apologised and took the call, then said sorry again after hanging up. ‘I’ve got to go – another woman’s gone missing.’

Everyone knew the drill with missing persons – make sure twenty-four hours had passed, ask if they’d checked the shed in case the person was hiding there. Was there any chance the absentee had simply had a night on the lash and fallen asleep on the bus home?

The reason Jessica drove across the city to the home of Joe Peters was that he lived with his girlfriend Leanne two streets away from the spot where it seemed likely Cassie and Grace had disappeared – and she hadn’t been seen in almost sixteen hours. Joe had read about the other missing girls and persuaded the 999 operator to put him through to someone who would listen.

Joe’s story was depressingly familiar and almost horrifyingly mundane. He and Leanne had argued over what to watch on television the previous night but, instead of compromising or turning the set off entirely, things had escalated into a full-blown barney and she’d stormed out of the house calling him every name under the sun. An hour later and Joe was regretting calling her a ‘fat fucking bitch’, which he insisted was in response to her branding him ‘a small-cocked, weasel-faced wanker’. Joe insisted to Jessica that he wasn’t ‘small-cocked’ but didn’t seem to argue about being ‘weasel-faced’. Either way, Leanne’s mobile phone seemed to be switched off and she wasn’t at any of her friends’ houses, or her mother’s, which meant that Joe had gone into a panic over the fate of the girl whose weight he had lovingly questioned less than a day ago.

It was precisely this kind of pettiness that was the reason why they didn’t usually start to investigate missing people until an entire day had passed – often longer.

Joe sat in an armchair trying to rock their baby to sleep, cooing in the child’s ear that ‘Mummy will be home soon’, while reeling off the list of insults he and Leanne had thrown at each other the previous night.

He placed the child on his lap and began massaging his shoulder with a pained groan, before adding: ‘We’ve kicked off in the past but she always comes back.’

They took a photograph of the missing woman in case they needed to run an appeal – or if a body turned up.

As she left the house with Archie close behind, Jessica noticed a black woman leaning against the front door of the adjacent house, smoking a cigarette. With a side-flick of her head, she beckoned Jessica over. When Jessica and Archie were close enough, she broke into a knowing smile, showing an impressive array of bright white teeth. ‘What is it this time?’

‘Sorry?’ Jessica replied.

‘It’s always something with those two – shouting at each other, swearing at the top of their voices, throwing things. Poor little baby has to sit through it all.’

‘How long have they lived here?’

‘Just over a year. I reckon your lot have been out half-a-dozen times since then.’

That was something someone probably should have checked before they’d decided to prioritise this as a missing persons case worthy of attention.

‘How well do you know them?’ Jessica asked.

The woman finished her cigarette and stubbed it out with her foot. ‘As well as anyone knows their neighbours nowadays. He’s Joe, she’s Leanne – neither of them seem to work, that’s about it.’

‘Have you actually seen them arguing?’

A weary nod: ‘Last summer – well, that one week in July – they were having a barbecue in the back garden. I went over for a sausage to be polite but couldn’t get away quickly enough. They’d invited a bunch of their mates over and it was already rowdy by mid-afternoon. A few more beers and everyone was shouting at everyone else. I was in our back bedroom watching as she went for him with the big tong things they were using to turn the meat over. She was whacking him on the shoulder and calling him all sorts. Then she picked up a garden gnome and hurled that at him too. I was in half a mind to give your lot a call but didn’t want the trouble in case either of them found out.’

With the alternative being that their killer had taken another woman, Jessica hoped this was another argument that had got out of hand.