Boon looked stunned. ‘Did he have a meeting with Becky yesterday?’

‘It’s possible, but we don’t know for certain,’ Jane replied.

He shook his head. ‘If he’s killed Becky, we may never find her.’ He was close to tears.

Jane saw Stanley walk in. ‘Barnes wants a meeting with us in his office.’

‘I know. I just saw him in the corridor. Looks like Meade took the coward’s way out once he knew we were on to him,’ Stanley said.

‘I’m not so sure you are right about Meade. There may be other reasons he took his own life that we’ve yet to discover,’ Jane said.

Boon glared at her. ‘Why are you defending him? He clearly killed Sister Melissa, and he’s probably killed Becky. I hope Meade rots in hell.’

‘It’s possible Melissa was going to the presbytery to see him the night she was killed, but never got there,’ Jane suggested.

‘You’ve changed your tune,’ Stanley remarked.

‘Meade could have gone to the convent to kill Sister Melissa, then packed her bag to make it look like she’d run away,’ Boon said.

‘It’s possible that’s what happened, but he’d have been taking a big risk of getting caught in the convent or waking Julie Dorton.’

Boon stood up. ‘People commit suicide for a reason. Meade couldn’t live with what he’d done. Stanley’s right, he took the coward’s way out.’

‘We’d better go see Barnes,’ Jane said. She had never seen Boon so worked up. She knew he wasn’t thinking clearly and trying to reason with him, or Stanley, would be pointless.

‘Did you find anything of interest at Becky’s flat?’ Barnes asked Stanley.

He handed Barnes a notebook. ‘This was beside her bed. Meade’s name is in it, along with some others. I think it’s her thoughts about the investigation.’

‘Strange she didn’t take it with her to work,’ Barnes remarked, flicking through it.

‘She’s got a small pocketbook for work,’ Boon said. ‘Becky told me she kept a notebook beside her bed. She’d often wake in the night and think of something important. She said if she didn’t write it down, she’d have forgotten about it by the morning.’

‘I know that feeling well,’ Barnes replied. He put the notebook down on his desk. ‘There’s tons of stuff in there, but it’s all in shorthand.’

‘I can read shorthand,’ Jane said.

Barnes handed her the notebook. ‘Transcribe and type it up for me, please.’ He turned to Stanley. ‘Did you speak to Becky’s flatmate?’

‘Yes, at her workplace. Her name’s Jayne Burman. She was at school with Becky and has been her flatmate for two years. She said Becky had become obsessed with the murder, thinking it could be her breakthrough to working for a mainstream paper.’

‘Did she mention Meade?’ Barnes asked.