‘I don’t know.’ Francesca was both shocked and relieved that her sister actually wanted to eat something. She’d more or less given up on food over the last week.

‘Sausage sandwich, if we have some. If not, I’ll pop out later.’ The determination in Veronica’s voice had returned and Francesca found herself wanting to cry with joy.

‘You have your bath. I’ll pop out if we need anything,’ Francesca called from the bottom of the stairs as she wiped a single tear from her cheek.

At Parkside, the incident room was a flurry of activity. It turned out that the annual Army Surplus Store Christmas party had taken place on the night of Saturday the fourteenth of December. The store employees had been taken to Pizza Express for supper followed by drinks at The Regal, a downtrodden Wetherspoon pub close to Parker’s Piece. After interviewing the general manager, Jason Bagley, an ex-army officer who had done tours of both Iraq and Afghanistan, Barrett had learnt about the Christmas party. It seems they ate at seven and were at the pub from about eight o’clock onwards. As far as Jason could remember – although he struggled, given the number of pints and whisky chasers he’d had – he believed that Wendy left the pub around half past ten or eleven. Jason wasn’t certain she left alone and had some vague recollection of her chatting to a man at the bar at some point during the evening.

Barrett had quickly called Singh, who was already at the CCTV control room, and asked him to check the cameras in the area from that night. It hadn’t taken Singh very long to find footage of Wendy leaving The Regal, tottering along the icy pavement and making her way to the nearest taxi rank. Footage from another camera showed her talking to a man wearing a hooded coat for some time, before the pair got into a taxi together.

Having seen the footage of Wendy and the man, Barrett and Palmer were convinced it was the same person who had been caught on CCTV leaving the area of the bookshop in the early hours after Dennis Wade’s murder. Although the police were already convinced that the killer responsible for both murders was the same person, they now had concrete proof. The only problem being that the man’s face was hidden from view in both instances.