Gina’s phone buzzed. She hoped that it wasn’t Hannah with another annoyed message. She exhaled as she saw it was Jacob, telling her that he’d got her something exciting, punctuated by a laughing emoji. She got in her car and drove to the station.

---

‘Morning, guv,’ Jacob said, sitting with his head in hands at the main table in the centre.

‘How long have you been here?’ she asked.

‘About half an hour. There’s no point lying in when you’re on your own. I woke up hungry, grabbed a buttie on the way and thought, why not, I’ll come in early, show willing.’ She spotted the sandwich bag on the table, grease absorbed into the paper.

‘I hope you got me one.’

‘That’s what’s exciting. Fried egg.’ He grabbed the bag and passed it to her. ‘Slathered in ketchup.’

‘Yum.’ She pulled the sandwich from the bag and bit into the cold sandwich, yolk running out of the sides. She was sure it would have tasted better half an hour ago. ‘Thanks.’ She noticed Jacob’s tie looked a bit wonky and one of his buttons had been pushed into the wrong hole. He’d made light of his break up with Amber but she knew deep down he was missing her. Maybe when the case was over, she’d see if he wanted to go for a beer, maybe they could all go for a beer and Gina might get another chance to try and blend in, act like a normal human being, enjoying a drink with colleagues.

‘My arm and hand are red raw from climbing over that fence. How are you?’

Gina rubbed her arm. She had a bruise and a few scratches from the bush she landed in. ‘No serious damage. I think I’ve survived the splinter. After the last case, this seems tame. At least no one’s trying to murder me.’ She took another bite of the sandwich and looked away as she recalled the attack in her home. Her attacker’s red mask flashed through her mind as she remembered her airways being restricted. As she swallowed a lump of mulched up bread, it wedged in her throat. She tried to gasp, failing and panicking.

‘You okay, guv? Need the Heimlich manoeuvre?’

Shaking her head, she tried to swallow and her eyes began to water up. It wasn’t going down. She dropped the sandwich on the table and darted to the ladies, almost choking as she heaved the sandwich into the bin. Shaking, she stood up and stared at her smeared reflection and kicked the bin. How dare her attacker and Terry still make her feel like this? She kicked the bin again and wiped her eyes before straightening up. There was a knock on the door. ‘What?’

‘Just making sure you’re not choking to death.’

‘I’m good.’ She burst through the door, almost crashing into Jacob. ‘I just got a bit of bread stuck in my throat. I’m okay now. Coughed it out.’

He followed her back to the incident room. Wyre and O’Connor were just turning their computers on.

Grabbing a tissue, Gina cleared her throat and wiped the grease from her fingers. ‘As you know, we found Westley during our drugs bust last night. You probably saw the email I sent you. He knows Christina, one of our missing girls. The last he says he saw of her was when he left her in Birmingham. Smith will be along in a moment to update us on the other interviews that took place last night. Darren Mason was also arrested as a buyer. Another couple were pulled in, along with a woman. All buyers, only one buying heroin.’

Smith entered. ‘That was a long evening. I did manage a few hours’ sleep. Lovely to be back so soon.’ He rubbed his eyes, rustled in the pocket of his fluorescent jacket for a mint and took a seat at the table.

‘How did the interviews go?’ Gina grabbed the rest of the egg sandwich, scrunched it up in the bag and threw it at the bin, missing. She’d pick it up later. ‘I still can’t help but feel there’s some connection to our case. Darren Mason and Westley Young turning up has almost sealed the idea for me. Tell me about the others.’

‘The woman is giving us real trouble.’

‘Which one?’

‘The one who was buying alone. She seemed a bit spaced out, refusing medical assistance and not speaking. We don’t know her name and she isn’t on our database. We ended up just having to leave her in a cell for the time being. I’m going to try interviewing her again this morning. If she carries on like this, I’ll have to ask the Superintendent for an extension.’

Gina picked at the sore flap of skin on her hand, where the splinter had been. ‘Have we offered her medical help? If she is on heroin, she may be withdrawing soon.’

‘She’s as cool as an iceberg, definitely not withdrawing. I did offer though. She just shook her head and said she was fine. She didn’t even make her phone call when it was offered.’

‘How about the couple?’

‘Ellen Simpson cracked. She’s prime carer for her elderly mother who is completely immobile and has dementia. They live at the big house at the end of King Street, the one with the large garden on the far corner. She said all she wanted to do was get her mother ready for bed and chill out and we’d apparently ruined her evening. Aaron Dunn virtually lives with her and helps her a lot too. The woman was constantly in tears, kept saying that she’s never been in trouble with the law and she just needed a little pick me up.’

‘Has she been in trouble before?’

‘Yes, fight in a nightclub when she was eighteen.’

‘So she lied about that?’

Smith leaned back. ‘She did.’

‘How about Aaron Dunn?’

‘Works in a biscuit factory on Cleevesford Industrial Estate. Seemed calm under interview and kept going on that all he had was a bit of coke for personal use and that we were being tossers for bringing them both in.’

‘Does he have a record?’

‘Yes, an incident in his twenties. It looks like he once had everything, a good position in the family business, some small chain of computer accessory shops, until he fell out with his dad. His first wife divorced him and he ended up on the scrap heap, working for one of these awful companies that sell orthopaedic chairs to elderly people and refuse to leave the house until they’ve signed their savings away. The company he worked for got closed down, Trading Standards were involved. As for his criminal past, yes, he’s had a minor run in with the law when he bricked the windows of his parents’ house.’

‘Nothing bringing him back to the girls?’

‘Nothing as yet.’

‘Keep me and the system updated every time you have new information.’

Gina checked her emails on her phone. ‘Right, Bernard has messaged. He’s hoping to come to the next briefing to talk over his findings. He and Keith are searching for a match for van girl’s dental records. Here’s something for you to work on, O’Connor. I know you and Wyre have been narrowing down a list of missing girls. Apparently our van girl had a broken finger that had long healed. Liaise with Bernard to narrow your list down.’

‘Yes, guv. The list is only standing at just under sixty now. We’ve been researching each one in turn until new information came in. All brunettes with red tones, and red heads. We have to consider that some people dye their hair. How many of the blonde or mousy haired girls had dyed their hair? This could take our figure back up.’ O’Connor tapped his left foot on the floor. Gina tried to ignore it.

‘I know it’s a tedious task but it needs doing. Any other information?’

Wyre looked up from her pad. ‘We’re on it, guv, the tasks I mean. It’s just taking a long time to go through everything. There has been nothing useful from the door to door interviews or the CCTV.’

‘Okay, have all the samples gone to Bernard from the drugs bust?’

Smith nodded. ‘All completed last night.’

‘Right, back to it. I need results,’ Gina replied. ‘Jacob, you and I can head over to speak to Simone Duxford’s biological mother.’

All the different strands of the case weren’t coming together at all. Something needed to give. Once the unravelling began, she knew it wouldn’t stop. She just needed to find the starting point and hope that she wouldn’t unravel with it. She coughed again, making sure that her throat was still clear.