Later that day, Chloe was in the staffroom showing Jake for the third time that week how to use the coffee machine when her mobile phone began ringing in her pocket. She gestured to the button Jake needed to press, waving a hand in despair when his impatience had him jabbing at it in a way that would turn an already slow process into an impossible one.

‘That’s how you keep breaking it,’ she said, swiping a finger across the screen of her mobile. ‘DC Lane speaking.’

She moved to the other side of the room, keen to escape the noise of Jake’s fight for a simple cappuccino. It would have been quicker and easier for him to use the café over the road. Not for the first time, she wondered how he survived day-to-day life.

There was silence at the other end of the line.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello,’ a voice eventually said. It was a male voice, young. ‘You said to call.’

‘Faadi?’ Chloe sat at one of the tables in the corner of the staffroom. ‘Is that you?’ She thought he might hang up, and wondered for a moment whether he had changed his mind and gone. Then she heard breathing at the end of the line, heavy and laboured.

‘Thank you for calling, Faadi,’ she said, keen to keep him talking. ‘Did you think of anything else you wanted to tell us?’

‘You asked about the gaming. Who we played against at the weekend.’

‘Okay,’ Chloe said, searching the clutter that littered the table for a pen and a scrap of paper. ‘Tell me about it. Did you play someone different on Saturday?’

‘I don’t know,’ Faadi said, his voice still quiet; his reluctance to speak obvious. ‘Maybe … I think so.’

Alex entered the building through the main doors and scanned the room. It was an old-fashioned pub with round wooden tables and a brown patterned carpet that might have once been red. The air smelled of stale beer and disappointment. The place was quiet; a couple of men stood drinking at the end of the bar, and in the far corner the manic tinkling of a fruit machine cut through the silence, its multicoloured lights blinking frantically in the otherwise dimly lit room. The man playing the machine cursed loudly and kicked the base when his luck failed to come in.

Reaching into her pocket for her ID, Alex went to the bar, where a young man was crouched at the fridges bottling up. ‘What can I get you?’ he asked without looking up.

‘Detective Inspector King. Can I have a minute?’

The young man looked up. Alex flashed her ID, and he stood, arching his back as though he was decades older.

‘Know this man?’ She put a photograph of Christian Coleman on the bar in front of him: the image that had been splashed across the front of the local newspapers following his sentencing.

The young man nodded. ‘Seen him in here.’

‘Was he here at the weekend?’

The barman pulled a face as he tried to recall. ‘Couldn’t say for sure. We were pretty busy over the weekend.’

‘Know who he drinks with?’

The man cast a glance along the bar as though to check no one was eavesdropping. He was out of luck: the two older men who were drinking there had paused their conversation when Alex had produced her ID, and neither bothered to hide the fact that listening in on what was happening at the other end of the bar was far more interesting that whatever they’d been talking about.

‘I don’t know. Sorry.’

He didn’t sound it, and it was obvious to Alex that the unwanted attentions of the men had brought his side of their brief conversation to a premature end. Christian was a regular here, or had been before his prison sentence. Despite his notoriety throughout the town, it seemed there were certain places and certain people that were still willing to accommodate him. She wondered whether they did so through loyalty or fear.

‘Pass me those please,’ she said, gesturing to the notepad and pen that were resting on a shelf beside the till.

She wrote her name and number on the pad, ripped off the top sheet of paper and handed it to the barman. ‘When he comes in next, I want you to call me.’

The man nodded, though Alex knew the chances of his calling her were as likely as Christian having rehabilitated during his time in prison. Shooting a glance at the men standing at the end of the bar, she wondered just how many people Christian still had on his side. He would more than likely have a rock-solid alibi, but as far as Alex was concerned, that would mean nothing. He might not have been the person to actually cut the brake fluid line on her car, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been behind it somehow.

Stepping back outside the pub, she swallowed down a gulp of fresh air. A part of her had wanted to find Christian there, yet at the same time she recognised the relief she’d felt when she found the pub next to empty. She knew what the man was capable of. Despite everything she suspected of him, she knew she wasn’t ready yet to face him alone.