More worryingly, there had been a recent download of data to a removable USB stick. It left DI Porter wide open.

Her mobile phone made her jump and she answered. It was the lab.

Neither of the knives retrieved from the lake in Potton Park matched Tyrone Fenton’s prints. They’d had positive results, though, from the Police National Computer database. The prints on the smaller blade belonged to Adam Cotton, and they also had a match for the larger blade: a known accomplice of the Cotton brothers. The clothes supplied by Jackson Akers last night had been tested urgently, and three chestnut hairs had been found with the same follicle profile as one found on Keira Bradley. Emma knew from his photograph that Jason Cotton had chestnut hair. The sweater had tested positive for Keira’s blood, and the small knife had a single usable print that matched to none other than Jason Cotton. If neither brother had had a police record, it could have taken months, if not years, to find matches. The past had a nasty habit of catching up.

The semen found inside Keira tested positive for Tyrone Fenton, but they’d expected that. The clothes taken from the raid on Tyrone’s flat yielded no physical evidence of a violent event. They found a hair matching Keira’s follicle profile and skin cells matching her DNA, but the pair were lovers, so again, no surprise.

She tried Porter once more. This time she answered. Emma told her the lab results first.

‘That is fantastic news. Bloody brilliant! Listen, I need you to get on to the counter-corruption intelligence unit to find out how to whistle-blow.’

‘Whistle-blow?’

‘I don’t believe the reporting of such a senior officer would be handled sensitively enough unless I’m anonymous.’

‘Good point. It should be on their website.’

‘And there’s a solicitor in Manchester I want you to call to see if we can get Keira’s file.’

‘She was seeing a solicitor?’

‘Yes. I want to know why. You’ll have to get a police production order.’

‘Guv, Will was in your office, on your computer, looking at your recent searches.’ She didn’t know how else to say it, so she just blurted it out.

‘What? Shit.’

Chapter 43

Neil Ormond teed off the tenth and felt the stretch in his spine. He planned to play the back nine.

His mobile phone vibrated in his pocket and it irritated him. The swing was good, and followed the correct line, but the wind gusted at the wrong moment and took it fifty yards to the left, into a tree.

Damn!