Abs looked sharply at his friend. He remembered that as a kid Jez was always sitting in his room writing letters to her, and was very protective of his mother’s reputation, would get upset if any of the other kids teased him about her.

He recalled with alarm the conversation he thought he heard Jez having in the chalet in the wood behind Bethany’s parents’ house, and bit his lip so hard it stung.

‘That’s typical of Lauren, or whatever ridiculous thing she’s calling herself nowadays,’ said Jez, annoyed. ‘Telling lies, making trouble for me.’

‘You think Jez’s mother killed his friends?’ Bethany asked, incredulous. ‘And now she’s coming after Jez?’

It seemed to Abs that when she finally spoke, Sasha Dawson chose her words very carefully.

‘Rachel Weston is a person of interest in the investigation. At this stage, it’s important that we find her as soon as possible to eliminate her from our enquiries.’ A phone rang in her bag and the detective lifted it out as she said, ‘The first thing we need to understand is why her DNA has been found at a crime scene, and the only way to do that is to talk to her.’

Abs paced, throwing glances at Jez, who pressed his fingers into his pale knees, leaving red marks. His friend seemed weirdly calm, considering the bombshell they had been given: that his mum, a convicted murderer, could be responsible for the deaths of Tony and Deano.

‘Excuse me.’ Sasha Dawson frowned at the screen. ‘It’s my office, I’m going to have to take this.’

They all listened tensely as she spoke on the phone. ‘Yes, send me over the address… thanks, and tell DC Chambers to meet me there. I’ll get some photos… Okay, will do.’ When she put the phone away, the detective told Jez, ‘A colleague just told me your mother stayed at Approved Premises in Basildon when she was released from prison.’

‘Approved Premises?’

‘A bail hostel,’ DI Dawson told Bethany. ‘Some former offenders are obliged to stay there for a period of time under the terms of their release.’ The leather cracked as she lifted herself from the sofa. ‘I’m going to head over there now to see if I can find out where she went after that. But before I go, Jeremy, do you have any images of her I can take with me? We have a mugshot photo of your mother, but it’s twenty years old now.’

‘No.’ Jez shook his head. ‘I had a couple of photos of her when I was younger, but I tore them up. They were… too painful.’

Abs vaguely remembered Jez showing him photos of Rachel Weston when they were kids, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember what she looked like. ‘Are we in danger?’