‘I was wondering the same thing myself,’ I said. ‘Maybe he changed it to make sure she wouldn’t find out the truth with a quick Google search.’

‘Going to look into it?’ Wozza glanced sideways at me.

‘Is the Pope Catholic?’ I murmured, deep in thought.

Back at the station and settled in our office, we turned our attention to Jack Barratt once more. The best case we could build against him was to link the victims to the polaroids.

Holding the list Pete Mars had given us in one hand, Wozza wrote the victims, locations, dates and times on the whiteboard in our office. Pete had offered to check phone data.

‘We need to check Jack’s work roster against these,’ said Wozza, nodding at the board.

‘Yep,’ I said, ‘and I’ve just run a background search.’

‘Find something?’ Wozza asked. He must’ve noticed the look on my face.

‘There’s an apprehended violence order out on Jack Barratt.’ I scrolled down. ‘Lily Barratt. It’s dated three years ago.’ I thought for a moment, remembering the conversation Jack and I had had at the pub last night. ‘He told me he’d tried the wife and picket fence thing but it hadn’t worked out.’

‘It never works out when you hit them,’ said Wozza grimly.

Wozza offered to drive over to Jack’s work and get a copy of his roster. Meanwhile, I did a search on Lily Barratt and found a contact number. I picked up my phone and dialled the number.

By the time Wozza returned with a roster that didn’t preclude Jack from any of the druggings, I had a tale of woe for him. Lily had been married to Jack for seven months. It had been a relationship of violence and control. She had fled in terror one night when he tried to strangle her. She hadn’t seen him for a couple of years and had no desire to ever see him again.

The next step was to find out who Jack had tried to call the night we arrested him. Using the number he had written down for the ‘feed the cat’ friend, I filled out the online form for the subscriber check and waited to hear back. It usually took around twenty minutes. Today, it took fifteen. The result wasn’t good. The number was allocated to a phone purchased through a supermarket chain rather than a provider. No details required.

‘We could just ring it,’ I said in a low voice.

Wozza looked at me. ‘You done that before?’

I grinned. He got up and shut the office door.