Page 28 of Her Last Breath

‘In case you were making plans with what I was going to leave you.’

Jane felt more hurt than she liked to admit.

‘Mum, I haven’t needed anything from you for the last twenty years, it’s fine.’

She felt shaken, needed a moment. The carers were coming into the lounge so she went to the kitchen. Filling a glass with water, Jane drank it too quickly, soaking the neck of her blouse. Staring out of the kitchen window, she felt a jolt. The glass slipped from her hands, smashing into pieces on the hard floor. Jane blinked, staring hard to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating.

She wasn’t.

The hopscotch she had started redrawing last night … someone had finished drawing it, leaving a stone by the chalked-out number one, ready to be played.

‘You OK, Detective?’

Lorraine came into the kitchen behind her, making her jump.

‘Yes. Just, does that hopscotch look fresh to you?’

Lorraine followed her gaze out of the kitchen window.

‘Your mum asked me to chalk it up. Not sure why. She can barely walk, can’t see her hopping around the yard, can you?’

For a moment Jane felt frozen by the emotional gut wrench that her mother had done this for her, before her phone suddenly started to buzz with notifications. E-mails, text messages, calls. She scanned what was coming through, her heart pumping. She called DC Berry straight away.

‘We’ve run down Liam Harrison’s friend, ma’am. His full name is Mark Burrows. He was found dead ten days ago.’

Chapter 16

The past crawled and slithered around under the surface of her skin, the night’s drinking exacerbating Jane’s nerves. The same feeling she got from pulling an all-nighter on strong black coffee and Red Bull. Her voice felt as though it was filtering through a mouthful of pebbles, her throat dry and tasting acidic. She’d breezed through team briefings after partying into the early hours and going to work with no sleep in the past, so was concerned by this new feeling of vulnerability.

‘As you’ll know by now, Mark Burrows – thirty-nine-year-old, white male – was found dead ten days ago, on the night of Friday, twenty-second August. Burrows was a key witness to a violent attack on Alice Rogers by her partner, Liam Harrison. The two men met while sharing a cell in HMP Buckley Hall and became friends there, according to Harrison’s probation officer.’

Jane drew an arrow from Liam Harrison’s picture to that of Mark Burrows, to match the one that was already connected to the picture of Alice Rogers.

‘DC Berry …’ Jane invited him to pick up the narrative.

DC Berry had the look of a man who hadn’t slept much, who had rushed to work. Unshaven, same suit and shirt as the day before. Jane wondered at his ability to function at all with his three small kids. Still, he stepped up, eager to address the room.

‘Mark Burrows was discovered four days after we believe Alice Rogers went missing,’ DC Berry began confidently. ‘He was found in a storage lock-up he rented in the central Burnley area, where he had used a plastic bag and a helium canister to take his own life. The owner of the lock-up garages saw him at approximately 6 p.m. the same day, arriving alone. When the owner returned to the scene at 11 p.m., after taking part in an evening footie match, he saw that the shutters to the lock-up hadn’t been closed fully. Investigating in case there had been a robbery, he found Mark in his car and called 999.’

Jane wrote the words ‘suspected suicide’ on the board. The coincidence wasn’t lost on anyone in the room.

‘Did CSI check out the site?’

‘No, ma’am,’ DC Berry said, looking embarrassed.

‘Why not?’ Jane could feel her anger surfacing.

‘Officers responding to the scene did a preliminary search; uniform didn’t flag anything that needed to be followed up, marked it as very low priority. A clear suicide, nothing was taken. It didn’t seem worth calling in CSI.’

‘Get them out there, please.’

‘Burrows was also known to the responding officers, has had numerous run-ins with us over the years,’ DS Johnson added. He looked subdued, although not sullen or difficult. ‘Minor drug offences mainly. Got banged up for robbery once. Uniform dealt with it as there was nothing suspicious. They reported it as a clear case of suicide, no evidence of anyone else being involved. He had cash and his mobile phone on his person, so they ruled out signs of foul play or robbery. When I looked over the case, I concluded the same.’

Jane knew how that worked. If uniform didn’t flag anything significant, Mark Burrows’ case would barely have made a dent in her team. No wonder DC Chan didn’t know who he was when he came up in relation to Alice Rogers.

‘Tell me about the manner of his death,’ Jane said.

‘The method is becoming more common among suicide victims,’ DC Berry continued. ‘Deaths of despair have been far too common around the Northwest these last few years. The plastic bag and helium gas are easily bought.’