Page 77 of Her Last Breath

Nodding, Jane still meant what she’d said. The job was her priority, the rest had to wait. She just hoped she’d be able to hold it together long enough to see it through.

Chapter 51

‘Any intel from the foodbank staff?’ Jane asked DC Berry, spotting him as she strode back into the incident room.

‘One of the ladies there, Karen Brown, said that Wilson always put aside the pricier stuff. The M&S bits and so on. He’d slip them into the bags of certain individuals. Alice was one of those. Nothing she remembered that might suggest there was an issue between them, though.’

‘She saw him taking time to talk to Alice?’

‘Yes, often.’

‘Possibly he arranged to meet her somewhere? The kids are in school, right? Possibly during the day then. Let’s see if there’s anywhere they might have met up. DC Chan, any progress?’

DC Chan was waving a fork in the air as she spoke, covering her mouth as she chewed a Chinese takeaway.

‘Wilson has a cheap PAYG, so it’s switched off a lot,’ said DC Chan. ‘Tends to use free Wi-Fi when he can, not much in the way of traffic in terms of calls or texts.’

‘What about the time Alice disappeared?’

‘He wasn’t on shift, nor when we saw the van at Hargreaves’ place or near Burrows’ lock-up. The phone was either switched off or left at his home.’

‘No solid alibis?’

‘None that we can work out from intel or mobile phone data.’

Torn between bringing Colin in quickly and shoring up the evidence against him, Jane opted for caution. She wasn’t sure how the team would respond to losing a third suspect.

Jane checked the time: it was 6 p.m. already. She needed to let the team go so they could be fresh in the morning.

‘Has the surveillance for Wilson been authorised?’

DS Johnson nodded.

‘Yes, ma’am. All in place.’

‘Let’s wait and see what he does.’

It was the hardest part of the investigation, remaining patient when you had a suspect you wanted to bring in. One false move, one over-hasty step, and Jane knew her whole case could be blown out of the water. It wasn’t a risk she was willing to take.

Chapter 52

The house was silent when Jane entered, no low hum from the TV in her mother’s room. Jane hoped her mother would be asleep, but when she went in to check on her, Maeve was staring up at the ceiling. She was so still that Jane froze momentarily, terrified, until she saw the gentle rise and fall of her shallow breathing.

‘Hi Mum, how are you feeling?’ Jane called out softly. ‘You need anything?’

‘No.’ The reply was soft, weary.

Gently re-arranging her mother’s blankets, one side of which had fallen to touch the floor, Jane was startled when Maeve reached out and gripped her hand. The look in her mother’s eyes told her that this was going to be that conversation. She was done keeping up her walls and Jane needed to brace herself to listen.

‘I was distracted, that’s all I remember. I was making a roast; it was a Sunday.’

Images in Jane’s head. Laughter as the soundtrack. The four of them surrounding the small kitchen table, her childhood punctuated by these happy family moments at weekends. Weekdays are filled with school, football, work. Her father home late often, sometimes after the pubs closed. Her mother, lonely, tied down to looking after her children, her home. And it had been a home. For a while.

How did Jane manage to paint such a false narrative of her past?

The Sunday dinner was diabolical, the lamb or pork always under- or overcooked. Jane and Ed used to play nice, smothering everything in gravy. That was always freshly made, never from an OXO tin, and made up for the lack of taste everywhere else. She recalled staring at Ed as he chewed a particularly burnt bit of meat, trying to make him laugh, stifling her own giggles as he faked choking on the offending bit of food.

Steeling herself, Jane knew the hammer blow was about to come.