Текст книги "Scarred for Life"

Автор книги: Kerry Wilkinson

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Photos of the victim had gone out to the media over the weekend but it had already been eclipsed in a tale of two blondes.

One: a pretty young Coronation Street actress had announced she was pregnant via her Premier League footballer boyfriend.

Two: a pretty young receptionist had disappeared and turned up dead in the woods a day later.

They were almost the same age, had gone to school a mile apart and had similar looks, except that Cassie’s nose was slightly crooked and her teeth weren’t as straight. One of them was splashed over seven pages of the local newspaper, and between three and five of the national tabloids; the other was worth a few paragraphs at the bottom of a page.

In the battle of blonde versus blonde, there was only one winner. If you were on telly, you were a someone; if not, you were a no one. Even in death, nobody would know who Cassie Edmonds was.

DC Archie Davey answered his phone with an agitated: ‘All right, I’m doing it!’

‘Good morning to you too,’ Jessica replied. ‘Here I was giving you a friendly Monday call to find out if you’d had a nice weekend at the football and I don’t even get a hello.’

‘Yeah, my arse were you. Anyway, I’m still trying to find the right former rowing club member to talk to. I’ve spoken to a couple but don’t have anything yet. How’s it going there?’

‘As you’d expect – we’ve interviewed the people who were at the rowing club party the other night and everyone says the same as Holden. Damon left midway through the evening. No one actually saw him go, of course, let alone saw him leave with anyone. They’ve all got the same story.’

‘There’s a surprise.’

‘Exactly. There are no cameras in the park and his flatmate says he didn’t go home afterwards.’

‘So he drank himself to death and put himself in the bin?’

‘Apparently so. We’re doing what we can – all we need is someone to say there were drugs at the party, or they saw him drinking to excess. Everyone there either didn’t see him, didn’t know who he was, or only saw him briefly. We’ve not even got confirmation that anyone saw him drinking. We didn’t find anything at the scene either. For now it’s a stand-off. Someone knows more than they’re letting on.’

‘We should nick the lot of them and sling ’em downstairs until someone talks.’

Jessica sighed. ‘Don’t think I haven’t thought about it. I’ll call you later, okay?’

‘Am I allowed to say “no”?’

‘Yes, I’ll still call but . . .’ Jessica paused, wondering how best to phrase it. In the end, she settled for the simplest way. ‘. . . thanks for working on your days off.’

Archie didn’t reply for a moment but when he did, he was laughing. ‘Stop being so soft or I’ll have to tell everyone you’re not such a cow after all.’

12

Now they had CCTV footage of Cassie from Thursday night, Jessica, Izzy and DC Dave Rowlands headed into the centre of the city for a poke-around. After a period where the three of them seemed to work together on everything, it was rare that happened nowadays. Part of that was down to Jessica’s promotion, but because of a scandal over policing standards that had been brewing through the summer, and a report that was due early the next year, anything that looked like it could be a clique suddenly seemed a dangerous thing. For once, Jessica thought ‘sod it’ and decided she wanted to surround herself with people she trusted.

Following the usual bickering over who was driving, Dave’s protestations that everyone was calling him Bin Boy, and Izzy’s explanation of how she hadn’t had time to look into non-permanent tattoos, they parked and walked the route Cassie and her friends had taken. After heading along Tib Street, they crossed to the cocktail bar and then made their way onto Great Ancoats Street, where Jade and Cassie had argued close to the taxis. The last image of the murdered girl had been crossing the road next to the comedy club and heading onto Oldham Road. The theory was that, with her Failsworth flat three miles down the road, Cassie had decided to walk.

Jessica tried to take in as much of the surroundings as she could: initially a row of slightly rundown shops and takeaways on the right and an elaborate Chinese on the left, then, a little further down, an elaborate six-storey red-brick building on the right, an Oriental supermarket on the left and roadworks.

In the centre of the road, red and white signs read ‘road ahead closed’, as if the row of knocked-over orange traffic cones, horizontal striped barriers and the hole in the ground stretching across four lanes didn’t give it away. Still, some drivers would likely try to follow their sat navs straight through the makeshift obstruction into the ditch.

On one side, there was a stretch of three boarded-up shops next to a billboard and a covered-over bus-stop sign, with a long red-brick building on the other. Mustard-yellow boards signalled a diversion, with an arrow pointing into one of the side streets. At night, the whole area would have looked particularly bleak, even for Manchester.

With it being a little after ten in the morning, Jessica wasn’t entirely surprised to see a group of workmen in bright jackets standing around chatting, drinking tea, flicking through newspapers and looking at their phones. They must have been working for at least half an hour, so it was time for a break, after all. Give it an hour and they’d be off for lunch.

Jessica left Izzy and Dave taking photographs and approached the one who looked like he was in charge – or, in other words, the fattest one. He was just starting to tuck into a sausage roll fresh from a Greggs paper bag when she interrupted him mid-bite. ‘Are you in charge?’

‘Mmmf,’ he replied, straightening up as flaked pastry tumbled from his lips. She waited as he continued to chew, squidges of pale pink sausage oozing between his teeth and sticking there. ‘Sorry, darling, we’ll be right back on it. Just a quick five-minute rest. Back-breaking stuff, this.’

Jessica held up her identification for him to see. ‘I’m from the police.’

A look of relief flashed across his face. ‘Oh, right, sorry – I thought you were from the council.’

‘How long have these roadworks being going on?’

Before answering, he took another bite of his sausage roll, whirring a hand close to his face as he chewed. Somehow a scrap of pastry had found its way into his nostril and it fluttered distractingly as he spoke. ‘This is the start of week three. We’re resurfacing the entire stretch.’

‘And what sort of hours do you work?’

9 a.m.: Arrive and chat.

9.30 a.m.: Unload equipment from van.

10 a.m.: Morning break.

10.30 a.m.: Start digging as long as it isn’t too rainy, windy, snowy, sunny, warm or cold.

11.30 a.m.: Lunch.

1 p.m.: Continue digging as long as it isn’t too rainy, windy, snowy, sunny, warm or cold.

2.30 p.m.: Afternoon break.

3.30 p.m.: Start packing up.

4 p.m.: Knock-off.

‘We normally start at around seven,’ the foreman claimed.

‘What about finishing?’

‘Six? Sometimes seven?’

‘Is there any night-working at all – say after ten?’

He spluttered: ‘You’re ’avin’ a laugh, luv. Council don’t want to pay for that.’

‘Weekends?’

Another munch of the sausage roll: ‘Nah, you’ve gotta have some time to yourself.’

‘So between six in the evening and seven in the morning, there’s no one here?’

‘Right.’

Jessica suspected that it was more likely between around four in the afternoon and nine in the morning but it didn’t make much difference – the key thing was that this area would have been unoccupied at the time Cassie walked past it late on Thursday. With all the shadows created by the boarded-up shops and surrounding barriers for the roadworks, it would have left multiple places where someone could have hidden before grabbing her. From where she was standing Jessica could see at least half-a-dozen spots. She thanked the man for his time and then returned to Dave and Izzy, who had reached much the same conclusion as she had. Behind and in front of them, there were bright street lights, through traffic, flats and shops; here it was gloomy and shaded.

Although they might never have it confirmed, as the workmen laughed at a joke she hadn’t heard, Jessica knew instinctively that this was the spot from which Cassie had been abducted.

With a narrow width of tarmac, Tib Street was a one-way, third-of-a-mile-long throughway connecting the centre of Manchester with the main road leading in and out. Tall buildings created long shadows and with boarded-up shops, graffiti, small bars, a chippy and a hydroponics shop that definitely didn’t sell wacky baccy, it was the type of place that chain stores didn’t want to be a part of, while entrepreneurs smelled the chance for an opening into a big city. A complex web of small side streets linked it to the Northern Quarter on one side and a shortcut to the Manchester Arena and Printworks cinema and restaurant complex on the other.

Metal-shuttered cubbies and an array of cheap flats provided the perfect haven for artistic types, meaning that as the three officers weaved their way back towards the car, they passed a pair of tattoo shops within a couple of hundred metres. By the time they reached the third, Jessica couldn’t resist the lure any longer, stopping and turning to Izzy. ‘Which one do you want to go in?’

‘What for?’

‘You know why. Pick one – there’s a bunch right here.’

‘What if I didn’t bring the photo of the robber with me?’

‘I know you did. If I had to guess, you’ve got half-a-dozen copies in the car just in case.’

Dave laughed as Izzy admitted that was the exact number.

‘Why don’t we pick a shop each?’ Dave suggested. ‘We can ask about non-permanent tattoos and what someone might have used to create something that can be rubbed off. If they seem like they know what they’re on about, we can show the photo.’

‘We’ve already had someone down here going into all the shops,’ Izzy said.

‘Yes, but that was to ask if they knew anyone they’d tattooed with that design – this is different,’ Jessica said. ‘It’s more about asking what techniques someone could use and then jogging their memory about the picture we do have.’ Jessica slipped her phone out of her pocket. ‘Anyway, Bin Boy, first roll up your sleeve.’

Dave glanced from Izzy to Jessica. ‘Why?’

‘Just do it.’

He narrowed his eyes but did it anyway. Jessica focused the camera on her phone and snapped a photo of the tattoo on his inner forearm.

‘What are you going to do with that?’ he asked.

‘I’m going to ask the guy in the shop what those symbols actually mean.’

Dave looked down at the Chinese lettering on his arm, scowled, then rolled his sleeve back down. ‘I told you years ago, they mean “warrior”.’

Izzy giggled: ‘Ten quid says they don’t.’

‘I want in on that too,’ Jessica added.

Thrusting his hands into his pockets, Dave muttered something about not having any money on him and how he didn’t gamble anyway.

Five minutes later, photos in hand, and they were back. Jessica naturally picked the dingiest-looking tattoo parlour, Izzy chose the one that had an impressive if slightly pornographic-looking drawing of a barely clad woman in the window, which left Dave with the shop that had a vast mural at the front containing images of straight swords, scimitars, a kilij, assorted knives, throwing stars and any number of other weapons. Jessica assured Dave he was unlikely to get himself stabbed, but if he did then he should keep the noise down because this was a quiet area.

The shop that Jessica had chosen looked far nicer on the inside than it did on the outside. Compared to the half-closed shutters that had ‘rachal takes it up the arse’ graffitied onto them in admittedly fancy letters, the bright cream of the interior and spotless floor was a surprising change. Lining the walls were row after row of artwork ranging from small black and white letters up to elaborate prints of safari animals. There were two doors at the back, with a bored-looking slim woman resting against a desk near the front. Her long, straight black hair and bright red lips were offset against extravagant red and green tattoos winding the entire length of both arms.

Jessica didn’t ask but mentally named the woman ‘Rose’ because it was etched onto her shoulder.

‘How can I help you, luv?’ Rose asked.

‘Do you actually do the tattoos?’

‘Not yet – only piercings.’ Without missing a beat, she screeched the word ‘Bones!’ so shrilly that it made Jessica wince.

From one of the rooms at the back a man emerged wearing an apron. Average height, average weight, mid-thirties, half-smile: everything about Bones seemed perfectly normal – except for the fact that his entire bald head was tattooed with an intricate, inter-connecting pattern of shapes, lines and symbols. Around his eyes there were crescent moons, with ripple-like markings stretching out to his ears. At least half-a-dozen small rings were pinned into his right nostril, with some sort of spike poking out from the other side. As he walked towards her, Bones interlocked his fingers, cracking his knuckles and showing off his bare arms.

‘A’ight?’ he asked, with a slight hint of a local accent.

Jessica showed him her ID and asked if he could spare a few minutes. With a shrug he said it was okay if she was quick. Considering his shop was teeming with hordes of invisible people, Jessica thought it was fair enough.

‘How much do you know about temporary tattoos?’ she asked.

‘I don’t do henna,’ Bones replied.

‘I’m not sure that’s what I mean. Is there any sort of ink you use that’s particularly easy to clear away? Perhaps in the shower? Something like that?’

‘Why?’

‘It’s something we’re working on.’

‘I think she means ballpoints,’ Rose called across.

Jessica turned to Rose, who hadn’t looked up, and then back to Bones. ‘Like a biro?’ she asked.

Bones shook his head. ‘It depends on the artist. Generally, you’d use a regular tattoo gun that was slightly modified. You’d be putting the ink onto the surface of the skin, rather than puncturing it. I’ve heard of some lads who do it with an actual pen but you’d have to really know what you were doing – and trust whoever was inking you.’

Jessica thought of the tattoos she’d seen on a few prisoners over the years who had used needles or blades and a biro. They were nothing like the intricate markings on the arm of their robber.

‘How elaborate can a ballpoint tattoo be?’ she asked.

Bones shrugged, indicating the images on the walls around the room. ‘You could turn any of these into a ballpoint tattoo if you wanted – it’d cost you a lot, though.’

‘Is the ink expensive?’

He scratched his head, just below a wide arc that dipped towards his eyebrows, and glanced towards Rose. ‘It’s the time. It takes the same length to create as a real one but only lasts a few days.’

Jessica was confused. ‘So why would you get one?’

‘People rarely do. Perhaps if you were in a play or on television, something like that. If you’re doing a movie with a huge budget, then the cost doesn’t matter.’

She paused for a moment, thinking that it would be a lot of expense if you were simply going to hold up a few off-licences. Jessica took the folded photograph out of her pocket and showed it to Bones, asking what he thought of it.

He stared closely and shrugged. ‘One of your lot came around asking about this the other day.’

‘I know, but we believed it was a real tattoo then. Now I’m thinking it could be one of your ballpoint ones.’

Bones took another look but shook his head. ‘Not my thing. There are a few places around here, perhaps try them?’

Jessica was about to ask how long it might take to create when Bones started scratching at his crotch. ‘Sorry, I really need a slash. Been on the water all morning.’

Charming.

As he scurried into the back room, Jessica approached Rose again. ‘Have you ever seen anything like this?’ she asked, holding out the photo.

The woman took it. ‘Not as something temporary but it’s fairly common stuff. If you were good, you’d be drawing lines like those pretty much every day.’

‘How long would it take to come off?’

Rose shrugged and handed the photo back. ‘If you did nothing to it, it could be there four or five days, maybe longer. But you could make it really temporary by washing it off yourself.’

‘Could you smudge it by accident?’

‘Maybe. The ink’s on the skin so I suppose.’

Interesting.

Jessica put the photo away and then remembered Dave’s arm. She held up her phone, showing the photograph. ‘Any idea what this says?’ she asked.

Rose peered closely. ‘Is that Mandarin?’

‘No idea. He claims it says “warrior”.’

With a smile, Rose climbed off the stool and led Jessica to the far wall. ‘People always come in wanting things like that – “king”, “general”, “prince”, “ninja”, any old shite.’ She pointed to a string of Far-Eastern-looking characters. ‘That’s Mandarin for “warrior”. We have some steroid-freak in every few weeks asking for it.’

Jessica compared the characters on the wall to the ones on her phone. Although the design seemed similar, the exact characters were completely different. Jessica grinned: if only she could find out what the tattoo actually said.

She packed her phone away, ready to give Dave the good news, when she had one final thought. Showing Rose the photo of the robber again, Jessica asked: ‘If the ballpoint tattoos cost roughly the same as a regular tattoo, how much would this be?’

‘A few hundred?’

Definitely not worth it just to hold up an off-licence then.

Rose chewed on her tongue for a moment, before adding: ‘Well, unless you did it yourself, of course.’

Jessica glanced down at the photo, taking in the scene: balaclava, bare arms except for the drawn-on tattoo, normal height, normal weight . . .

Oh. Shite.

13

‘He’s got to be bloody somewhere,’ Jessica yelled into her phone, trying to run at the same time. ‘His head’s covered in tattoos – it’s not like he’s going to be sitting on a park bench twiddling his thumbs. I only saw him two minutes ago.’

She reached the end of the alleyway at the back of the row of shops and looked both ways. Aside from a short man shuffling along with a bin bag, there was no sign of anyone.

‘There’s no one out here.’ Dave puffed back from the other end of the alley, trying not to sound out of breath.

‘All right, keep looking; call Iz.’

Jessica hung up. This would’ve been a lot simpler if they’d had their radios with them; easier still if Jessica had noticed the signs around Bones a couple of minutes earlier. She continued out of the alley into the street, heading towards the man with the bin bag. ‘Did you see a bloke with his head tattooed come this way?’ she asked.

It was hard to tell if the man was homeless or simply taking his rubbish out because his glazed stare gave him the look of someone who had spent more than a bit of cash at the hydroponics shop. ‘What’s the tattoo of?’ he asked, gazing through Jessica.

‘I don’t know; it’s all sort of squiggles, suns and moons. You’d know it if you saw it.’

The man dropped his bag and scratched his head. ‘Why would you tattoo your head?’

Not bothering to answer, Jessica spun in a circle, hoping for any sign of Bones, just as her phone rang: Izzy hadn’t seen him either – and with that, their chief suspect for the shop robberies was gone.

With a name like ‘Dougie Harrison’, it was perhaps no surprise that the tattooist chose to call himself Bones. Rose told them where he lived and Jessica, Dave, Izzy and her piled into the pool car and barrelled across the city. Izzy requested a tactical entry team, uniformed officers and anything else she thought she might be able to get her hands on. For a moment, Jessica thought she was going to ask for a helicopter.

While that was going on, Rose told them that Bones owned the shop, but with the abundance of competition nearby, he’d been complaining about money for a while. The previous week he had laid off the third person who worked in the shop, with Rose claiming the only reason he’d kept her on was because ‘he liked looking at my tits’.

Whoever Izzy had threatened at the station had got their act together because, as they pulled up outside a grungy-looking semi-detached around the corner from the Belle Vue speedway stadium, a van full of suited and booted tactical entry officers screeched to a halt too. Some went around the back, the others around the front; one, two, three – go, go, go. Bang, slam, crunch.

When it was clear their man wasn’t home, Jessica left Rowlands with Rose in the car, giving him the raised eyebrow treatment about not chatting up a witness – even though she’d probably eat him for breakfast – and then headed into the house with Izzy. The first sign that Bones’ house was going to be a shrine to motorbikes should have been the rusting engine in the garden. If that wasn’t enough of a clue, then the bus-stop-sized Harley Davidson logo pinned to the back of the first door on the right as the officers poured in definitely gave it away.

In the living room, there was an impressive airbrushed mural of a biker riding into a sunset along a road so straight that it could only be in America. It certainly wasn’t Manchester – for one thing the sun was out, secondly you’d be lucky to drive a few hundred metres in the city without having multiple sets of red traffic lights.

Officers hauled away electrical equipment to be checked over as Jessica and Izzy picked through anything that looked remotely interesting.

‘At least you know who your robber is,’ Jessica said, trying to sound optimistic.

‘Not much good if we can’t find him, is it?’

‘His head looks like someone’s been trying to fill in a crossword with a crayon – there can’t be too many places he’ll be able to hide without being spotted.’

‘If it gets out we’d already visited him once, then we’ll be a laughing stock. That’s before the fact that we were confused by a fake tattoo.’

‘Anyone could’ve been taken in by that. I’ve never heard of ballpoint tattoos. Besides, I wouldn’t worry too much – there are too many pregnant soap stars out there for anyone to pay attention.’

Aside from the motorcycling keepsakes there wasn’t much else to see downstairs, so Jessica and Izzy headed upstairs. Inside the first door, they were greeted by a black carpet, deep red walls and thick dark curtains they had to open in order to see anything.

Bones’ bed had a pair of handlebars in place of a headboard, with an impressive, if rather creepy, skull that Jessica hoped wasn’t human in the centre that stared into the room.

‘Imagine coming back here after a first date,’ Izzy said.

‘Do you often go back to blokes’ houses after a first date?’

‘Only the ones who don’t have their entire heads tattooed.’

‘No wonder he needed a few quid – between running the shop and collecting all this stuff, you’re talking thousands.’

As Izzy headed for the bedside table, Jessica opened up the wardrobe. Underneath a set of outfits more suited to a night out on Canal Street, she spotted a battered white shoebox. As she crouched to remove the lid, all Jessica could think was: ‘Surely it’s not . . .’ Except that it was: bundles of ten– and twenty-pound notes had been neatly stacked into thousand-pound bundles. For someone who had cleverly planned the tattoo side of the scam, Bones really was as stupid a criminal as so many others. Now they just had to find him.

Back at the station the investigation into Cassie’s murder was ticking along as well as could be expected considering the lack of evidence at the crime scene. Rose gave them a statement about Bones and his apparent financial problems, while Dave hadn’t taken the news that his tattoo definitely didn’t say what he thought it did particularly well.

All of that by midday – not bad for a morning’s work – which is why Jessica phoned Archie to start annoying him.

‘I’m busy,’ he said by way of answering his phone.

‘Good, what have you got?’

‘Some local lad, a good ol’ Urmston boy – worked his balls off to make the Salford team for the national rowing finals, then it all went to cock when he got dropped for some Yank. I had a word this morning. He has nothing to do with any of them now. He didn’t want to say anything at first but we got chatting about United and he invited me over.’

‘When are you going?’

‘Soon.’

‘Want some company?’

Archie laughed. ‘Haven’t you got other things to be doing?’

‘I was thinking he might want a sympathetic female ear.’

It was nonsense and they both knew it – Jessica had a stack of things to be signing off but she wanted to be doing something. In the old days, she might have been narrowing down the list of people who had a history of violence against women for the Cassie case, or handling the interview with Rose for the tattoo robbery one. Now she was supposed to take an overview of it all. If she ended up sitting around the station for much longer, she’d end up being called into a meeting before she knew it.

Perhaps picking up on the hint of desperation in her voice, or maybe because he didn’t want to annoy her, Archie replied with a not entirely convincing: ‘Aye, perhaps he might appreciate a woman being there; don’t want too much of a testosterone overload.’

After initial apprehension, Liam Withe turned out to be the exact kind of person they were looking for. Archie turned on the Manc charm, spending ten minutes talking Manchester United and how they were going to win the league that year – or, at the absolute least, finish above the ‘bitters’ and ‘bin-dippers’ – then he gradually brought him around to the topic of being a student and part of the rowing club.

Liam told them that when it came to the elite races, culminating in the national championships in which they raced against other universities, the teams were almost always dominated by post-graduate students. He’d studied for three years doing a finance undergraduate degree, before staying on for an extra year for the post-grad course specifically because he wanted to take part in those races. After working his way through the fourth-, third– and second-string teams, over the course of three years, he’d been eagerly awaiting his chance with the elite squad. He had rowed in some of the preliminary races but was then dropped for an American third-year student who was only going to be there for nine months.

‘And he was called fooking Corey,’ Liam fumed. Despite the fact he was an apparently successful sole trader working from home, it still enraged him.

After Archie had brought Liam’s annoyance to the fore, it was Jessica’s turn to steer the conversation. Given the conspiracy of silence from the rest of the club members, this might be their only chance for an insight into what really went on when the clubhouse doors were closed.

‘I suppose you read about the death of Damon Potter,’ Jessica said.

Liam was tall and lean with short dark hair, dressed casually in loose jeans and a shirt. On the arm of his chair was perched a laptop that he kept checking, saying it was for his trading job.

He nodded without looking up.

‘We’ve been having increasing problems with the club in the past few years: rape allegations, public disorder complaints, someone ended up in hospital with hypothermia . . .’

A hint of a knowing smile crept across Liam’s face but he still didn’t look up. ‘Training accident, was it?’

‘So we were told. I realise almost all of this comes after your time, but I couldn’t help but notice that when you were in your final year with the university, the person who is now student president was in his first year.’

‘Holden Wyatt?’

Jessica made a show of checking her notes to ensure she didn’t seem quite so keen on him as she was. ‘Do you know him?’

‘There were always one or two a year – first years who already knew people. Sometimes their parents had been to the university, or perhaps they were keen sportsmen. For some, the social side of university and joining the club is far more important than what you study.’

‘Was it like that for you?’

Liam finally looked up from his laptop, fixing Jessica with his bright blue eyes. ‘I just liked being fit and it seemed fun. I’d never even been on the water before university.’

‘But Holden was different?’

A knowing laugh: ‘He’d been doing it since he was a kid but wasn’t good enough to get into Oxford or Cambridge, either for rowing or academically. I think his dad knew a few of the Salford alumni and they come from somewhere around here. From day one, he was in with the post-grad students and the elite team. Usually when that happened, they’d get slapped down – but he had something about him.’

‘Did you ever talk to him?’

‘Not really. As soon as you drop off the team, suddenly the younger lads aren’t interested in you any longer.’

‘When I brought up the hypothermia, you seemed to indicate that perhaps it wasn’t an accident . . .’

Liam glanced down at his laptop and tapped on the tracker pad but the atmosphere had changed. ‘I suppose what happened to that Damon kid was only going to be a matter of time . . .’

‘How do you mean?’

At first, Liam didn’t reply, tapping away at his computer before sighing and finally closing the lid. When he looked at Jessica again, his eyes had lost some of their blue. ‘Obviously I don’t know for certain, but . . .’

Jessica said nothing, hoping Archie wouldn’t fill the silence either. He didn’t, and Liam was left to do so himself. ‘The big November party they have is more of a congratulations to the students left standing who still want to be members after “hell week”.’

‘Hell week?’

Liam took a deep breath, perhaps wondering if he’d said too much but there was no going back now: ‘It happens in the final week of October leading up to Halloween. If you’re a first year and want to become a full member, then you have to have a series of tests. It’s usually only the elite lads involved after-dark in the clubhouse. At first it’s something simple, like drink a few pints in a row, but the tasks get more intense as the week goes on.’

He shivered slightly and Jessica felt it catching as a chill rippled along her spine. ‘It can move on to things like taking a beating from the team. They’ll hit you with paddles but every time you take it, the next day it’s worse.’

‘What happened to you?’