Despite the distance of only three blocks between his house and the station, they drove back.

‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ Jaq said as she ushered White into the station and past the argumentative drunks, who were yelling at the desk sergeant, ‘We’d like it if a police surgeon looked over your body.’

‘What?’ White said, staring at.

‘It’s all for your own benefit and protection, sir,’ Jaq said, giving him a slight, nothing to worry about here, smile. ‘If there are no scratches or marks on your body, it will be a point in your favour.’

White looked like he didn’t understand.

‘It will only take a moment,’ Jaq said and to her surprise, he gave a nod.

So she walked him down to the police surgeon’s cubicle.

‘He’s very docile, isn’t he?’ Darren said when Jaq rejoined him at their desks.

Jaq nodded, noting that they were the only team that was back, and Amber was by whatever was on her computer. ‘But also scared shitless. You see how he’s shaking, and that look in his eyes, like he’s not altogether here.’

‘Too scared. I’ve seen plenty of innocent people afraid they were about to be fitted up. I’ve seen guilty people in tears because they’ve been caught. But this guy is genuinely terrified, only I can’t work out the reason, innocent or guilty.’

‘Same,’ Jaq said, and put her updates into the team database on the case before checking all the new information from the other teams. There wasn’t much yet, so she was glad to see the surgeon stroll in.

‘Anything? Any scratches or bruises to indicate he’s been involved in a fight?’

‘Not so much as a razor burn,’ the surgeon said. ‘Although your man’s been through the wars. Looks like he tried to slit his wrists at least once in the past, maybe twice. He was also a victim of violence, most likely domestic. He’s got cigarette burns all over his body.’

‘Not self harm?’ Darren asked.

‘Not the ones on his back, at any rate, and nothing recent.’

‘Fine, then let’s stick him into the interview room and let him stew for now.’

‘Okay,’ Jaq said and followed the doctor back to his cubicle, where Simon White emerged from behind the screen, his clothes all neatly arranged. He was definitely a tidy one. ‘Now, if you wouldn’t mind, Mr White, we’d appreciate it if you could answer a few of our questions.’

‘Oh… okay,’ Simon said, giving her a hopeless look.

At least he was still being cooperative.

Jaq showed Simon into a grey, featureless, soundproofed interrogation room and said, ‘I’ll just get someone to rustle you up a cup of tea. It’s been a long night after all. I won’t be a sec,’ and she closed the door on him before he could object.

Then Jaq hurried to the room next door, where Darren was already watching White through the one-way mirror. It was useful to understand the mental state of the person they were going to interview and, with Simon, get a handle on why he was so nervous.

Some people were cocky bastards who would take a stroll about the room and check themselves out in the mirror. Most stayed put in the chair, but looked about. Simon sat slumped in the chair. His chin rested on his chest so that they couldn’t see his face. He gripped his hands in his lap, and his right leg jumped incessantly.

‘Yeah, scared shitless,’ Darren said.

A uniformed officer entered the interview room and deposited a paper cup of black tea, with a sachet of milk and another of sugar beside it and withdrew. Simon didn’t even glance at the tea, never mind make a move to drink it.

‘Alright, let’s do a bit more digging,’ Jaq said and headed back into the open plan office.

While it was a cruel tactic to leave someone to stew, it was effective. It gave people time to consider what they should do next, what to divulge and what to keep secret and what to say to wriggle out of the situation. Then, by the time a cop sat down opposite them, they’d blurt everything out. They might believe they were being clever, but they usually landed up saying more than they should.

‘I’ve found something,’ Amber said. She pulled a chair over from the opposite desk and sat with Jaq to her left and Darren to her right. ‘Your man changed his name when he was still a teenager. It turns out he’s actually Adrian Black, and he has quite the record.’

Amber was beaming at them as if she’d just uncovered a gold mine.

‘Adrian Black? Is that supposed to mean something to me?’ Jaq asked.

‘Maybe not, but I’m sure you’ve heard of Doctor Gregory Black.’

It didn’t even need a second to work through her mental files for that one.

‘The serial killer!?’ Jaq said and looked up into Darren’s equally astonished face.

‘He’s the son.’

‘Didn’t Gregory Black use his son to lure in the women he murdered?’ Darren asked.

‘Yeah,’ Jaq said. ‘He staged him like a traffic accident victim. They kidnapped the women who hurried over to help. They were then assaulted and finally murdered. I can’t believe the son of Gregory Black, the most prolific serial killer the Midlands has ever seen, is sitting in our interrogation room.’

‘It explains why he looks so nervous, though,’ Darren said. ‘I wouldn’t want anyone to know I had that kind of past, either.’

‘And he got a record from that?’

‘They prosecuted him under the joint enterprise law,’ Amber said, looking over her notes. ‘But because he was only fourteen, appeared as a witness against his father, and was also a victim of abuse, they only gave him three years in a juvenile detention centre.’

‘And after that, nothing?’ Daren asked.

‘Squeaky clean, boss.’

‘Or just very careful,’ Jaq said, ‘after all, his father was able to keep killing for four years. Who knows what his son learned from that?’

‘I know you like playing the devil’s advocate, Burnham, but that may be taking it too far.’

‘What we need is somebody to tell us what kind of person Simon White is.’

‘While you figure that out, I’ll check the list of local sex offenders, and see who we look at next.’

Jaq nodded and considered a bit. It was late, two am, but there was somebody who might be able to help. She called up the database with the phone numbers of all the prison directors and called her.

‘Do you know what time it is?’ an annoyed voice said on the phone. ‘This better be an emergency.’

‘I’m sorry to bother you, Director Strange, but we have a missing woman. Currently, I’ve got Simon White, AKA Adrian Black, in custody.’

‘Simon?’ Director Strange said, and she actually sounded surprised.

‘I don’t need details of his crime. I just want to know whether, in your opinion, Simon or Adrian might commit a similar crime to that of his father’s?’

‘You mean in line with the abused becoming an abuser?’ The director asked, and she sounded even more tired. ‘I’d say that’s unlikely. The young men who come to my facility fall into two categories. Those who will become lifelong criminals and those whose experiences inoculate them against that life and who will go straight. Especially as he was more a victim than anything else. Adrian’s behaviour after leaving the centre bears that out, don’t you agree?’

‘Yeah, it does look like it.’

‘Detective Inspector Burnham, we don’t just incarcerate troubled youth at young offenders’ institutes, we also provide counselling, education and emotional support. All of which Simon desperately needed because his life before he came to us was brutal, absolutely brutal. My staff and I spent three years putting that boy back together again. It was slow, and it was difficult. Even when he was with us, he overdosed twice. I hope, therefore, that whatever you’re doing won’t crush him.’

‘I understand, thank you, Director Strange,’ Jaq said, and hung up to find Darren watching her with a questioning expression on his face. ‘He’s been stewing for two hours. Should we go speak to him?’

‘Why not?’ Darren said.

***

Simon White was sitting in exactly the same position as when they’d led him into the room. The tea was untouched.

‘That will be stone cold by now,’ Jaq said, and flagged down a uniform to bring in another.

‘Have you found Liz?’ Simon asked, looking up.

There was a tremor in his voice.

‘I’m afraid not.’ Jaq took the left seat opposite White, with Darren on her right. ‘I’d like to thank you for your cooperation, Simon. You don’t mind if I call you Simon, do you?’

Simon shook his head.

‘I know this must be very stressful for you, but you understand that we have to do everything we can to find Liz.’

‘Yes,’ Simon whispered and his gaze dropped back to his hands clasped in his lap.

So Jaq started the questioning, about Simon’s relationship with Liz, how they got on at work, why she might have been near his house, even his daily routine. He answered everything without hesitation, although his right leg kept drumming away.

Finally, Jaq and Darren had no more questions.

‘Can I get you something to eat? You must be hungry, a sandwich or something?’

Simon looked up, making eye contact for the first time.

‘You’re wasting time. I have nothing to do with Liz’s disappearance and I’ve done everything I can to help. I’ve answered all your questions and let you take whatever you wanted from my house. But if you fixate on me, it will be no help finding Liz. Please, don’t do this.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Jaq said. ‘Talking to you is only one strand of our investigation. We are doing everything possible to find Liz, I promise you.’

‘We’ve made it a big strand,’ Darren said once they were clear of the interview room. ‘So far we have nothing else, and neither do the other teams.’

‘But I’m not feeling it with him either. Do you think we should send his clothes for DNA analysis?’

‘Not yet,’ Daren said. ‘Our budget for forensic services is tight. We’ll only send the clothes through if we can find something else to tie this particular suspect to Elizabeth Chadwick’s disappearance.’

‘Then I guess the next thing is his surveillance footage,’ Jaq said. ‘Why do you think he’s got cameras filming himself? That’s weird, isn’t it?’

‘Helpful for him in this kind of situation. It shows him coming home, checking his video feed and going to bed, every day without fail, and it shows that he never left his house on Saturday.’

‘Really? The whole day, what was he doing?’

‘Looks like he was painting,’ Darren said. ‘The only place his surveillance breaks down is at the point where his light goes off. If he had some way to switch it off the recording from his bed, he could easily get up in the dark and leave his house with nobody knowing.’

‘So not that useful. Just strange.’

‘I’ve got a couple of uniforms going right back through past recordings, just in case. Stranger than the cameras is that he doesn’t seem to have any visitors. The only people who come to his door are delivery men and even that isn’t very frequent, just the odd takeaway, or parcel delivery.’

‘Okay people, attention,’ Detective Chief Inspector Morris said, banging on the side of the board until everyone was looking his way. ‘I have great news. We’ve found Elizabeth Chadwick.’

Jaq let out a relieved sigh and rolled her head back, staring at the ceiling.

‘Thank God.’

‘Yeah,’ Darren said, grinning from ear to ear and barely paying any attention to what Morris was adding about where and how she’d been found. ‘If uniforms had done their jobs properly, we wouldn’t have landed up working through the night. Anyway, you’d best release our suspect. Or rather, ex suspect.’

‘With profuse apologies,’ Jaq said.

It wasn’t the first time she was having to say sorry to somebody they’d hauled in, and she never feel guilty about doing it. It was police procedure to bring in anyone remotely suspicious, and Simon fitted the bill. She also wondered about him and his background. Could he really be a law-abiding citizen with a past like his? It seemed unlikely and something that needed further investigation.