Dani should have been pleased to hear that. But she wasn’t. What about Jessica Bradford? The other missing women?

‘What’s led to that then?’ she asked.

‘We may have found the murder weapon.’

‘You’re kidding?’

‘Nope. In Harland’s apartment. One of the knives in the kitchen.’

‘Harland’s apartment?’

‘The one in Handsworth. Seems from what we’ve found that Harland was the main tenant, even though the agreement was in the name of Colton. Our conclusion is that Colton is nothing but an alias that both Harland and Reeve were using to hide their drug-related activities.’

Dani didn’t know what to say.

‘We scoured that apartment from top to bottom. Bagged all the knives for testing. One of them had blood traces on it. There was also a stash of old clothes in a suitcase, all looked clean enough – it’s not like they were blood-soaked or anything – but the forensics team used luminol on them and found blood traces there too. They haven’t had the full results back yet but if the blood matches the victims, it looks like Harland was our man.’

‘Why do you think it was Harland and not Ethan Grant?’

‘What?’

‘You’re assuming the knife and the clothes are Harland’s? But Grant lived there too, didn’t he? Have you even found him yet?’

‘There’s no evidence he lived there.’

‘Other than his mother gave us that address.’

Jason shrugged. ‘It’s not just me toeing this line. Fletcher is too.’

‘But you don’t know for sure that Harland is the killer.’

‘Not for sure, no.’

‘And you don’t know yet that the knife really is the murder weapon either. Just that it’s a knife with blood on it. Could be from a damn steak.’

‘Jesus, Dani, are you a defence lawyer all of a sudden?’

‘No. I’m just not sure why you were making it sound so cut and dried. It sounds anything but.’

‘Look, Reeve was a bad apple. Harland was too. A known low-level drug dealer, and a thug with a string of petty offences. If we can prove those clothes and that knife were linked to the murders, then we’ve got him. Grant is just a spoiled rich kid pulled into a bad world, if you ask me.’

‘That doesn’t mean it wasn’t him.’

‘No. I guess not,’ Jason said. ‘But maybe Grant is already dead. Harland could have knocked him off too.’

‘Except no body has been found.’

‘Not yet, no.’

‘So maybe Ethan did a runner because he knows we’re onto him.’

‘It’s possible, Dani,’ Jason said, by now sounding fed up that Dani was challenging him so hard.

‘And what about Jimmy Colton?’

‘Like I said, we’ve found nothing to suggest he’s a real person. Most likely he’s an alias that Reeve and Harland used for whatever reasons.’