Becky waddled along the corridor as fast as she could. She needed to talk to Tom about Jasmine and wanted to catch him before the end of the day. Now that they knew who their victim was, they finally had lines of enquiry to pursue.

She tapped on Tom’s open door.

‘Come in, Becky,’ he said, without lifting his eyes from the screen of his computer. She didn’t bother to ask how he knew it was her.

‘These trainers give a bit of an advanced warning of my arrival, don’t they,’ she said, sitting down and stretching her feet out in front of her, frowning at them. ‘But I do have some news, and it’s looking interesting.’

Tom clicked his mouse, presumably to close whatever he had been looking at, and lifted his eyes.

‘Ooh, you don’t look too happy. What’s up?’ Becky asked.

‘Just looking at some figures for a meeting. We’ve got too many unsolved crimes. The trouble is, we know exactly who did what, but everyone is covering for everyone else. It’s a nightmare. Anyway, you didn’t come in here to listen to me moan. What’s up?’

Becky sat up straight.

‘It turns out that Jasmine DuPont had been going to a bereavement support group here in Manchester. According to the few people who knew her, she was constantly in search of an explanation for why her sister had taken her own life. Jasmine didn’t have a regular job – she took bar work to pay her way – and she tended to live in flat shares and even the odd squat. It’s made it really hard to check her movements, but it seems that nobody had seen her for months – at least eight, from what we can work out.’

‘If she moved around, is that so unusual?’

‘Yes, because one thing she always did without fail was visit her sister’s grave every Friday. The man who tends the graveyard says she never missed. She used to sit on a plastic bag with her legs crossed and talk to her sister. But suddenly she stopped coming, and she didn’t turn up at the bar where she’d been working for a few weeks.’

Tom lifted clasped hands and put them behind his head. ‘What was the feedback from the people where she worked? Did they think she was flaky?’

‘That’s the point. They said it was obvious she had issues and seemed to struggle hugely with her sister’s death, but in spite of that she was reliable. In the short time she was employed there she’d only failed to turn up for her shift once, and she called to let them know she wasn’t feeling well. They thought she was troubled but reliable, and were surprised when she stopped showing up for work. They never heard from her again.’