At the time of Sharon’s murder Den had been helping his mother prepare a room in a local church hall for a hot pot supper. Then mother and son had gone home to watch a TV programme; a detective series which was one of Mrs Harvey’s favourites. When he’d been interviewed he’d been able to recite the whole plot, including the identity of the murderer. And, as the pair hadn’t possessed a working video at the time, this was taken as proof that he was telling the truth.

‘Why didn’t the mum stay for the hot pot supper?’ one of the DCs asked. It was something Joe had been wondering himself.

‘She was caretaker of the church hall and she wasn’t invited. But one of the event organizers – a Mrs Groves – locked up and dropped the keys off at the Harveys’ house on her way home. She confirmed that both mother and son were in when she called. In fact Den answered the door. This was at ten.’

‘So he was telling the truth.’

‘Possibly. But there are distinct similarities between Sharon’s death and Pet’s. Both were stabbed twice in the chest before their faces were mutilated.’ She looked round. ‘I want some of you to go through the Sharon Bell files to see if there are any familiar names in there – anything that connects her with Pet Ferribie. At the moment the only link we’ve got is Den Harvey. I take it he’s being brought in?’

‘A patrol car’s gone to pick him up, ma’am,’ said Sunny.

‘Good. I want to know when he arrives.’

Sunny held up a sheet of paper. There was more. ‘That password protected file on Cassidy’s computer – it was just accounts. Do you want someone to go through them . . . the fraud squad?’

‘No, Sunny. We’re too busy to do the tax man’s dirty work for him. Leave it.’

She began to march towards her office just as one of the DCs burst in to announce Den Harvey’s arrival.

She turned to Joe. ‘I think we’ll handle this one ourselves, eh. You ready?’

Den Harvey had been put in interview room number three, a windowless room painted a depressing shade of grey and lit by a pair of fluorescent strip lights. The table was bolted to the floor and what was at first glance a thin black dado rail half way up the wall was in reality a panic strip rather than a design statement. On the advice of his mother Harvey had requested the presence of the duty solicitor, a middle aged, overweight man who wore an expression of exasperated boredom on his flushed face. Joe knew it was nothing personal because he always looked like that.

‘We’d like to talk to you about Sharon Bell,’ said Joe after they’d introduced themselves for the benefit of the tape recorder humming at the far end of the table. ‘You remember Sharon?’

Den glanced at the solicitor who was turning a pen over and over in his fingers. ‘’Course I remember her. She was my girlfriend.’

‘She was murdered,’ said Emily, looking him in the eye.

Den bowed his head. Joe could hear his breathing, fast and slightly wheezy. He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a blue inhaler, held it to his lips and the thing gave a muted hiss. Emily watched and waited until his breathing eased. Then she spoke again.

‘You were questioned at the time.’

Den looked up. ‘I wouldn’t have harmed a hair on her head.’

‘I’ve heard that she was two timing you.’

Den shook his head vigorously and a small flurry of dandruff landed on the table’s shiny black surface. ‘That’s a lie. She said she needed time to sort out her feelings, that’s all.’

Joe leaned towards him, his fingers arched. ‘How did you feel about that, Den?’

‘I wasn’t happy. But . . . Well, it was up to her, wasn’t it?’

‘Some people would get very upset about something like that. Upset enough to kill.’

‘Not me.’

Joe spoke quietly. ‘Sometimes something happens that overwhelms us . . . makes us lose control.’

‘There’s no way I’d have done anything like that. I was never one of those lads who’d carry a knife round to feel big. Ask anyone who knows me. Ask my mum.’

Emily asked the next question. ‘Where did you meet Pet Ferribie?’

‘I never met her.’

‘Did she come to the leisure centre?’

‘I don’t know. I’m on the maintenance side so I don’t see the punters.’

‘When you found her body did you recognize her?’

‘No way. Anyway, it was Peter who found her, not me.’

‘But you were out there.’

‘I’d only gone out for a smoke. I didn’t see her. I had nothing to do with it.’

‘What’s worrying us, Den, is that there are some similarities between Pet’s death and Sharon’s. You see our problem, don’t you? You knew Sharon and you’re there when Pet’s body is found. You’re the connection between the two murders. Where were you at eleven thirty on Saturday night?’

‘I was home. I was with my mum.’

Den put his head in his hands and when he looked up there were tears forming in his eyes. ‘I didn’t do anything,’ he said. ‘I’m innocent.’

‘We’ll need to search your house,’ said Emily. ‘We can get a warrant but it’ll be easier all round if you give us your permission.’

‘Go ahead. You won’t find anything.’

Emily stood up, announcing that the interview was at a close.

‘Can I go?’ Den asked. He looked at the solicitor who was busy polishing his glasses on a grubby handkerchief.

‘Not just yet,’ said Emily. ‘We’ll need to talk to you again.’

Emily had been summoned by the Super who had wanted an update on the Barrington Jenks connection. There was nothing much to report and Jenks would now be up in Westminster doing what the taxpayers paid him to do. He would return at the weekend to take his constituency surgery but until then he would be living in his sheltered parliamentary bubble.

The previous day Joe had contacted the university to ask them whether a student called Jasmine was registered at the appropriate time but either Jenks’s Jasmine had lied about being a student or Jasmine wasn’t her real name. Or there was always the possibility that Jenks hadn’t told them the truth.

The phone on his desk rang. Scientific Support had traced Pet’s mobile at the time of Matt’s final call to her last Saturday night to the city centre. The Queen’s Square and Fleshambles area. Not far from the place where she was last seen following the Waits during the music festival. He ended the call and sat for a while, wondering where somebody could imprison and murder somebody without exciting comment in such a busy, bustling district.

He wanted to speak to Matt again about the call. But before he did, there was something he had to check.

Jamilla was at her desk in the corner of the incident room going through witness statements, making notes. She looked as though she’d be glad of a distraction.

‘Jamilla. Have you still got Pet Ferribie’s address book?’

Jamilla leaned over and took a plastic bag containing a small book with a floral cover from a tray at the back of her desk. ‘I’ve contacted everyone in there,’ she said, handing the bag to Joe. ‘It’s remarkably empty for a girl of that age. There are a few old school friends. A cousin in Devizes. Her father’s address in Dubai. But . . . Oh, I don’t know. It just seems a bit odd.’

He looked at Jamilla for a few moments. From past experience he had learned to trust her judgement. ‘When’s the father coming?’

‘Tomorrow. First flight he could get apparently.’

‘Is Andy Cassidy’s name in that book?’

‘Yes. But no address. Just his number.’

‘What about Ian Zepper?’

She opened the address book and handed it to Joe. On the page allocated to the letter Z, not usually the most populous of pages, were three numbers: one marked home, one marked uni and one marked mob, presumably for mobile. Zepper’s home address in Pickby was also there. He flicked through the book until he found Cassidy. As Jamilla had already pointed out, there was no address, just a mobile number.

There was no entry for Den Harvey and the rest of the names in the book meant nothing to Joe, apart from the one under D for Dad. Pet’s mum, so he’d been told, had disappeared when she was young, and had never attempted to contact her daughter again. Her stepmother, Jane Ferribie’s mobile number was there but no address.

When he reached the back of the book something caught his eye. It was written in bold capital letters on the inside of the back cover. ‘Paolo GP’. He stared at it for a while before handing the book back to Jamilla.

‘Any idea who Paolo is? No address or phone number, just GP by the name.’

‘A doctor perhaps?’

‘Check if there’s a GP called Paolo in the area, will you? Or maybe her father will be able to throw some light on it when he gets here. When I go to Torland Place I’ll see if her housemates can tell me anything about it.’

Each night she lay awake in the darkness listening to the sounds. They seemed to be coming from somewhere above her, maybe in the sealed off loft they’d never been able to access. It didn’t sound like birds; the sort of birds that nested in lofts didn’t drag things around.

She had never been the imaginative type but recent events had changed all that. Everything seemed to have changed since Obediah Shrowton entered their lives.

When she heard the door bell ring she made her way downstairs. There was a shadow behind the stained glass of the front door and somehow she knew it was the police. But after Pet’s murder, it was hardly surprising that they wouldn’t leave them alone.

She opened the door. It was DI Plantagenet and he was smiling apologetically. ‘I know you must be getting fed up with us but I’m afraid I need to speak to you again.’

Caro stepped aside to let him in. And then she turned and saw Matt standing in the living room doorway.

‘I wanted to thank you for those photographs of the party,’ Joe said.

‘No problem.’ Caro replied.

‘We’re still trying to identify that person dressed as the Grim Reaper.

‘We’ve asked around but nobody knows who it was.’ Caro hesitated. She’d kept her suspicions to herself for far too long for fear of making a fool of herself. ‘I thought it might be Pet’s tutor, Ian Zepper.’

‘What made you think that?’

‘Well she had a bit of thing for him and she was going to live in a flat in his house next year. The Grim Reaper – I don’t know what else to call him – seemed to be watching her and I just thought she might have invited him, that’s all.’

‘Why didn’t you say you thought it was him?’ Matt spoke for the first time.

‘Because I’m not sure. I didn’t want to accuse someone who might be innocent.

‘Dr Zepper says he wasn’t at the party.’

‘Then it wasn’t him,’ said Caro.

‘There’s something I’d like to ask you both. Have you ever heard Pet mention the name Paolo?’

Matt and Caro shook their heads.

‘He might be a doctor – a GP?’

‘We go to the university medical centre and I’m pretty sure there’s no Paolo there.’

‘Matt, I know we’ve gone over this before but have you remembered any more about that last phone call you made to Pet’s number?’

Matt frowned. ‘I’ve told you . . . it sounded like ‘please . . . no.’ Then there was a sort of . . .’ He wrinkled his face in concentration, trying to find the right words. Then he made a noise, a cross between a gasp and a yelp. ‘Look, it was over so quickly. I’ve gone over and over it in my head but that’s all I remember.’

‘Did you hear anything in the background?’

‘Like what?’

‘A voice, music, traffic. Anything.’

Matt shook his head. ‘No, like I said the call only lasted a few seconds.’

Caro suddenly felt a wave of irritation. ‘Look, why do you keep asking us all these questions? You should be out looking for whoever she met last Saturday. That’s when she disappeared.’

‘Following the Waits like that woman in the story,’ Matt said softly.

‘What’s this?’ Joe asked.

‘It’s just an old ghost story. A beautiful woman used to follow the Waits when they played in Queen’s Square. When they moved off towards Stone Street she just vanished.’

‘Eborby’s got ghosts coming out of every orifice,’ Caro said, annoyed with Matt for muddying the waters. ‘Crap for the tourists.’ She looked round for support but she couldn’t read Matt’s expression. He looked as if he was in a world of his own. A world where Pet might vanish and then reappear.

Once the DI had left, Matt went upstairs and Caro returned to her own room to settle down to work. A hefty dose of economic theory would dispel the demons that seemed to have moved into number thirteen since the day Pet disappeared. Or perhaps they had been there long before that, listening behind the battered skirting boards, hiding in crevices, stirring up trouble, disturbing the peace.

However, as soon as she’d sat down at her desk and opened her file, the door to her bedroom burst open and when she looked up she saw Jason standing there, breathless, as though he’d run up the stairs.

‘I’ve just seen him.’

‘Who?’

‘Zepper. I asked him straight. Was it you dressed as the Grim Reaper?’

Caro stood up. This was something she needed to hear. ‘And?’

‘He denied it. Have the police checked his alibi?’

‘Probably. Just leave it to them now.’ She took a paper from her file, hoping Jason would take the hint that the conversation was at an end. But, on the other hand she couldn’t ignore the fact that the Grim Reaper had been there, scythe and all. It had to be someone . . . and probably someone they knew. Caro had asked around everyone who’d been there but nobody had been able to throw any light on the mystery.

If she didn’t change the subject, she knew Jason would go on and on about it, worrying at the subject like a dog with a bone. And she was getting heartily sick of thinking about Pet’s murder. Pet had irritated her in life and she was continuing to do so in death.

Jason turned to go. But Caro had a question.

‘Have you ever heard weird noises from the loft . . . as though someone’s up there?’

‘I thought it was pigeons.’

‘It’s not birds.’

‘Well we can’t get up there to have a look cause the entrance is sealed up.’

‘Which is odd, don’t you think? I mean the water tanks must be up there and . . .’

Jason’s eyes lit up as though he’d suddenly been struck by a brilliant idea. ‘Why don’t we have another seance? We can try and get in touch with Pet. She can tell us who killed her.’

‘That’s sick. Now piss off and leave me alone. I’ve got work to do.’

Death gave the fire a hard prod with an old wooden stake. It was almost time to kill again. But he had no need of a uniform to complete the task.