Page 16 of Her Last Breath

‘You think I haven’t? Up here?’

‘And that will get recognised.’

‘This was my time. I’m pushing fifty. I won’t get many more chances.’

‘Dave, this isn’t personal. I didn’t cheat you out of your job. If you keep fighting me on this, we’ll both suffer.’

‘You seem to be doing pretty well from where I’m sitting.’

‘I’m good at pretending. Can we at least agree to park this and focus on finding out what happened to Alice Rogers for now?’

He sighed, hands gripped firmly on the steering wheel. ‘OK, ma’am.’

They drove in silence for the rest of the journey, Jane silently resolved to get justice for Alice, even if DS Johnson wouldn’t make it easy. The unanswered questions around Ed’s death still haunted her to this day. She wouldn’t let another family suffer that way. The death of Alice Rogers would be investigated with the same meticulous effort she gave to all her cases. Perhaps more.

As they neared the outskirts of Rose Hill, Jane noticed the roads were suddenly more suburban. Semi-detached, nice gardens. Not posh, but definitely getting there. What was Alice doing round here? Was she meeting someone?

‘That’s the house the door cam footage came from,’ DS Johnson pointed out.

It was a nondescript semi-detached. The door cam wasn’t visible.

‘Why would she be on this road?’ Jane asked.

‘There’s an empty factory at the end of the road,’ DS Johnson said, still some residual coldness in his voice. ‘It’s disused, the firm went bust a decade ago. Now it’s just land that’s gaining value, a quiet investment for some rich bloke somewhere. One of the residents say they think they saw Rogers go into the abandoned site.’

At the end of the road Jane saw the houses ended abruptly against scrubland, which backed on to a railway bridge. It was graffitied, looked unused. On one side of the bridge there was an old brick building. It felt out of place in this quiet neighbourhood.

DS Johnson parked up in front of the wasteland, and they both walked through wild plant growth, pocked with debris, abandoned white goods and other rubbish.

Looking around her, Jane noticed that the site was discreet and unwatched. You couldn’t see their vehicle parked on the roadside, and unless you were on the railway bridge itself you wouldn’t get a look into what was happening inside the empty building. Rusted stairs led to the factory entrance, and Jane spotted broken windows hidden behind thick overgrowth. Past the factory structure she could only see more scrubland.

If anything had happened to Alice here, no one would have known. Why on earth would she come to such a desolate place? Alone?

DS Johnson put on gloves and boot covers, handing Jane some spares. She declined the boot covers, DS Johnson’s face telling her what he thought about her desire to walk through the excrement-studded area with her own shoes.

‘I can scope out the buildings, I’ll leave the outside to you,’ he said.

As Jane put on gloves and started poking around the mess, DC Chan called.

‘We’ve been spooling through the door cam footage from the eighteenth of August, ma’am,’ DC Chan said, excitement in her voice. ‘Ten minutes before Alice Rogers went by the camera, at 1.23 p.m., we picked up a white van. Pretty sure it’s a Ford Transit courier, moving slowly down the road. Then ten minutes after Alice was seen, at 1.44 p.m., the van returned, driving in the opposite direction. Only this time it was over the speed limit, racing back up the road.’

As though someone was keen to get away. Feeling the DC’s excitement herself, Jane’s mind rocketed back to the tyre tracks near the site where Alice was found.

‘Tell me you got the licence plate?’

‘The camera angle is too high on the door cam, so we couldn’t.’

‘It’s a start.’

Jane couldn’t hide the disappointment from her voice. For a moment, she had thought the pieces were about to fall into place.

‘More than a start, ma’am,’ said DC Chan.

Jane spotted used condoms in the grass by her feet. Who the hell would want to have sex in a place like this? DC Chan’s voice pulled her back.

‘The camera guys did their magic, identified significant damage to the bodywork over the left side wheel. And we picked up the same damage on a van passing a garage near Padiham. The CCTV grab is side view only, so no reg plates, I’m afraid, but the garage is very close to where Alice drowned. That was at 2.42.’

‘Ok, so walking from Rose Hill to the river here in Padiham would have taken Alice over an hour and a half, right? Driving, though, that would take how long?’