Fielding popped a piece of nicotine gum into her mouth. ‘There’s always more. They don’t always know it, but there’s always more.’ She rubbed one eye with a knuckle and stifled a yawn, skin stretching taut over her fine bones. Paula realised she wasn’t the only one who’d been up late the night before. ‘Another thing,’ Fielding added. ‘Why is he going to all this trouble to cover up the fact that he’s taken her? All the texts and the emails?’

‘I wondered that too. The only thing I could think of was that most private security cameras recycle their recordings, whether it’s tape or digital. They only keep them for a certain length of time. Maybe he was worried about the CCTV at the Trafford Centre and reckoned a month of blue water between the abduction and the alert would keep him in the clear.’

Fielding brightened up for a moment, her brown eyes alert and shining. Then she scowled. ‘So why kill her after three weeks if you’ve bought yourself some extra time?’

‘I don’t know,’ Paula admitted. ‘Maybe he didn’t mean to kill her when he did. Maybe she did something to make him lose his temper. And then once she was dead, he just wanted rid.’

Fielding gave a little snort of cynical laughter. ‘Aye, right enough. You wouldn’t want a corpse lying around making the place look untidy.’

‘They are a nuisance,’ Paula said. ‘It’s always easier to deal with them sooner rather than later, before they start decomposing and leaking all over your car boot.’

‘Yeuch. But you’re right, McIntyre.’

‘Thank you. Todmorden, then? Anya Burba?’

‘Sure.’ There was a moment’s silence, then Fielding said, ‘I had respect for Carol Jordan. I imagine you learned a lot, working for her.’

It was a statement, not a question. In Paula’s head, she’d worked with Carol Jordan, not for her. Not that there had been any doubt who was in charge. It was more that Carol had always acknowledged the different skills in her squad and had made sure they all understood that MIT was greater than the sum of its parts only when they played as a team. A team of mavericks, admittedly, but a group of people who saw the personal advantage of being part of a successful unit. Paula didn’t sense that same collegial spirit in Fielding. She was very clearly the boss and apparently everything went through her. Paula knew which style she preferred. But her preference was irrelevant. She had to work with what she had. Not to mention that Fielding’s methods also seemed to get results. ‘We all came out of MIT better cops than when we went in,’ she said, trying not to make it sound like a challenge.