Except now she remembered what Callson had said to her earlier, his turn of phrase when she’d asked him if it was definitely a suicide: The ME says yes. She took a couple of steps closer to him, coming back on to the trail, as her Casio watch beeped to announce the half-hour. Seven-thirty, and it was hotter than any day she could ever remember. She pinched the material at the front of her shirt and began to fan it back and forth, trying to circulate some cool air. Callson glided a finger across his brow, a thick band of sweat beaded across his skin. She waited for him to say something else, to expand on his last comment, but he didn’t, so she pushed him: ‘Detective Callson?’

He looked at her.

‘You don’t think this is cut and dried?’

He didn’t reply for a moment, and she could see a minor conflict playing out behind his eyes. He grimaced a little and glanced out at the view.

‘Detective Callson?’ Jo asked again.

‘Ray’s fine,’ he said to her, not changing position, except for a slight narrowing of his eyes. Finally, his gaze strayed to the spot where Donald Klein had been found.

‘Ray, you don’t think this is cut and dried?’

‘Well, I definitely think Klein was involved.’

She eyed him. ‘But?’

‘But I don’t believe he was working alone.’

24

The town of Keighley was only a short drive from Skipton so, as soon as I picked up my car, I headed south to the address that Ewan Tasker had given me for Isaac Mills.

The vehicle was fixed to the extent that it no longer whined or hissed as I drove it, and the front looked better, but it was still misshapen and easy to spot, so I parked it a couple of streets away from Mills’s house and walked the rest. Rain dotted my face as I approached his road, a cul-de-sac on a slope with a park at the top. Halfway up I spotted his home: a large cottage, set behind an imposing set of gates. His Lexus was on the driveway and there were shutters at the windows.

On my left was a sheltered bus stop, one side of it Perspex glass, so I pulled up the hood on my jacket and moved under the roof. The rain was getting harder now, but I could see enough, and as I watched Mills’s home – satisfied I was at a safe enough distance – I got out my mobile phone and switched focus.

Scrolling back through the call log, I found the landline for Kevin Quinn, the detective that Patrick Perry had been in contact with in the months before he vanished.

His former source.

I saved the number and then called Ross again, asking if he’d ever heard of Quinn before. He hadn’t, and he said Quinn wasn’t a friend of his dad’s.