There were three shelves. Mason took a small stack of plain white T-shirts from one shelf, a few pairs of white boxer shorts from the middle shelf and from the bottom shelf a thin blue nylon jacket and a bundle of white hairnets.

‘What do you think?’ asked Price as they bagged the clothing. ‘Do you think we’re going to get anything from this?’

‘If we do it’ll be the boots or the hairnets that come up trumps.’

Price explored the empty surfaces with his torch.

‘This place gives me the creeps. I bet it’s full of bustle and noise during the day but now it feels like a haunted house,’ said Price.

‘Don’t overthink it, mate. We’ve been in better places, we’ve been in worse. I’ll hold the torch. You lint the interior.’

Price tore a strip of four sheets from the lint roller and placed them on the ceiling of the locker. He ripped them off and Mason shone light on the sticky surface, where there was nothing other than particles of rust.

It took three minutes and the best part of a roll to print the inside of the locker.

‘We’ll do the outside of the door even though it’s going to be heavily contaminated by McKee’s workmates,’ said Mason.

Outside, the rain slackened but the wind picked up and wrapped itself around the almost deserted abattoir like a celestial fist.

‘Done?’ asked Mason. ‘Let’s get out of this place.’

104

3.44 am

Clay looked through the observation slot in the door of Edgar McKee’s cell and stared into the darkness. She made out his form, lying under a blanket on the bench, and he was completely still, apparently asleep.

‘Eve.’ She turned her attention to the whispering of her name and saw Poppy Waters standing nearby. ‘Sergeant Harris said you’d be here.’ She carried an evidence bag in each hand, one small, the other medium-sized.

Clay closed the observation slot with dismay. In her experience of watching what happened in the closed eye of night, the guilty paced while the innocent slept. She walked towards Poppy and together they walked away to the automatic doors leading to the staircase.

‘What have you found on Edgar McKee’s computer?’

‘It’s riddled with the most horrendous filth. I haven’t seen it all. I’d be watching until Christmas and beyond to check it all out. I didn’t find anything that showed a preference to overt violence towards women. There was a lot of rough sex but it cut both ways, men dominating women, women dominating men.’

‘How about his phone?’

‘The same.’

Their voices and footsteps mingled and echoed against the glass walls that housed the staircase as they ascended to the incident room.

‘Here’s the big one, Poppy. Has he been on any internet dating sites?’