Page 52 of The Unforgiven

So I waited, took my phone out. Dropped Vinny a message with my location, just in case. Then I opened the camera app and got ready to take a photo of my new friend.

“We can take a selfie if you want.” His gaze dropped purposely to my phone. “All I ask is that you don’t share it on social media or with your team. In fact, if you do, you’ll be putting me in a very difficult position.”

“But you’d trust me with a selfie?”

He nodded.

“A reverse image search then?”

“You won’t find anything. Ready?”

He moved in closer to me but didn’t touch, so I flipped the camera round and took a selfie of us, post-run glowing.

“Excellent. These are for you.” He extended what he'd retrieved from his car.

The envelope he gave me was A3 sized and unlabelled, no name on it, no writing. “Why are you helping me – or trying to help me?”

“Just doing my job. Look, have you been to the hospital in Leeds where the first victim might be from?”

“No. The focus is - ”

“On the incels. Go and check Leeds out. Speak to the nurse who was on the ward when he was discharged. His name’s Dave Beardsley and he’s a nice guy, worked there for years and holds the place together, or so he thinks. Just find out about him, rule it out if you think.”

I relaxed, some of the weight I’d been carrying lifted. “I will – but who are you?”

He’d started to back away to his car, the number plate artfully covered with mud. “I’m what every good little detective needs. An informant.”

I took the photos straight back to the office, handing them over to Nick, Wrigley doing a bit of leg work looking into Craig Watson, who still hadn’t been located along with Neil Hunt. We couldn’t find anything to tie either of them to Morgan, and Neil was definitely out of the picture for Brooke’s murder, but there was still the working theory that we had more than one killer, and they were working together in a calculated way.

“Stills,” Nick lay two photos out, side by side. “That’s definitely Neil Hunt, and it looks like he’s outside a pub. Hang on, what’s that next to him?” He pointed to a large box, one very similar to what I’d noticed in the hallway of my brother’s new house.

“It’s a TV. A really huge TV.”

“You’re right. Let me get these scanned in and I can find out a bit more about them, although I’m going to go out on a limb here and say the other bloke’s Craig Watson. You might want to give the boss a buzz.”

As it was, I didn’t need to. He walked through the door with his boss, looking like all of his annual leave had just been cancelled, which it might have.

“Sir, come and see these!” Nick gestured towards us an over-excited puppy.

Wrigley didn’t waste time. “What’ve you got?”

I gave him a brief run-down of how I’d come by them, half expecting a lecture on running by myself at the moment, but none came.

“What can you get from it?” Wrigley asked, the photos now scanned in and up on one of the big screens.

“Give me half an hour. There’s loads in here. Whoever printed these off has left enough detail on them to give us something here.” He went into Nick mode, intently focused on his screen, one of the tech team coming over to assist.

I left them to it, logging onto my machine to check my emails. There was nothing more there from Atlas, no further photos or cryptic messages. I looked back at the last one he’d sent, the four-one-five-two in his email handle bothering me. It followed the same pattern as the last email, seven-three-eight-four, the first number, then back by three, then one higher than the first, and back by three. In the second email it was just back by two. It was a deliberate choice, but I didn’t think it was connected to the three murders.

I was still lost in thought over who Atlas was when Nick called us back over.

The two photos were both up on the screens, both enlarged. One of the men was clearly Neil. He wore a cap and hoodie, hunched, mid-walk. The second man, stockier, was Craig Watson.

“And here,” Nick pointed at the screen. “Can you see the van in the window, reflected?”

“Not really.” He flicked open a second window, overlaying it with the first, the window now enlarged. “It’s a really good reflection. That’s a Luton box van, hired from a depot in Cheetham Hill the day before. I cross-checked the reg and it matches a recent BOLO — theft of multiple televisions from a warehouse. Twelve flatscreens.”

He tapped again, bringing up a photo from the crime report that’d been filed. "Same van. Probably the same night.”