‘And has the owner been interviewed?’

‘He lives in Sheffield. There’s a team on the way there now to talk to him.’

‘So if the Sheffield driver is eliminated,’ said Fry, ‘the only other possibility is that our man didn’t have a vehicle of his own in the car park.’

‘Well, he had to have a vehicle somewhere close by,’ put in the DC with the striped tie. ‘He must have been parked on the street.’

‘More CCTV footage, then. The town centre cameras?’

‘Right.’

Fry turned back to the DI. ‘And what are we doing about the phone messages, sir? The clues he left …?’

Hitchens had his map pinned up on the board – or at least, an adaptation of it, showing the whole six-mile circle around Wardlow, with labels marking a scatter of locations.

‘We’ve passed on a list of potential locations for the uniforms to check out when practicable,’ he said. ‘By that, I mean any locations that might possibly be referred to as “the dead place”. Otherwise, unless his clues get any clearer, there’s nothing concrete for us to act on. Meanwhile, if you’ve got any reasonable theories, let’s hear them. If you haven’t heard the tapes and you want to listen to them, speak to DS Fry.’

‘When practicable? That could mean never,’ said Cooper.

Hitchens shrugged. ‘As you said yourself, DC Cooper, the possibilities are endless. We need something more substantial.’

‘We’re hoping he’ll phone again?’

‘Well, it would help, wouldn’t it?’

DCI Kessen had been listening quietly to the discussion. When the meeting had finished, he stood up and put his hand on Hitchens’ arm.

‘Keep me in the loop, won’t you, Paul?’ he said. ‘Regular updates.’

Ben Cooper was about to leave the briefing with everyone else, when the DI called him over. He thought at first he’d misheard, and Hitchens had to speak to him again – a bit louder this time, as if Cooper was daydreaming at the back of the class.

‘Oh, Ben. Have you got a minute?’

‘Yes, sir?’

Cooper left his jacket over the back of his chair and walked to the front of the room, moving against the flow of bodies and conscious of the glances he was getting. But perhaps he was being over-sensitive. He still felt ashamed of his outburst at the hospital last night, and this morning he couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes. His thoughts kept drifting back to the image of his mother’s pale, helpless body lying in that side room off the ward, amid the smells of disinfectant and the constant slapping of heels in the corridor outside the door, back and forth, back and forth, until he thought it would drive him mad. When he’d phoned the ward first thing this morning, he’d been told that Mrs Cooper was ‘satisfactory’.

‘There’s something for you, Ben,’ said the DI, fiddling with some papers on his clipboard. ‘It looks as though you’ve had a bit of early luck. A member of the public called in to say she recognized the facial reconstruction.’