Page 7 of The Unforgiven

“You and Lachy can get over there. It’ll give you a break from combing through mispers reports.” Wrigley shot me a beaming smile. “You can stay out of the rain as a treat for not chucking your guts up at the postmortem this time.”

I saw Nick trying to do his best impression of me keeping hold of my protein shake and I shook my head.

“Bastards, all of you.”

Chapter Four

Lauren Mitchell – 29, marketing exec from Liverpool; last seen leaving work late on a Thursday.

Lydia Greenwood – 27, primary school teacher from Warrington; disappeared after a night out with friends.

Ella Richardson – 31, keen hiker from Bakewell; failed to return from a solo walk in the Peak District.

Chloe Davies – 25, university student in her final year at Huddersfield; last seen at a petrol station on the A62.

Bethany O’Neill– 33, part-time barista and artist in Salford; missed two therapy sessions and hasn’t been online.

There was a time when I considered moving to the department of Greater Manchester Police that specialised in searching for missing persons until I spent a lunch time in the canteen talking to one of the officers there. It was soul destroying, the successrate low, the heartbreak high, and she talked me into staying put in the murder investigation team, telling me I’d save more lives there.

Given how I’d spent most of yesterday and this morning, I owed her a drink and a thank you, because even teaching bottom set year nines history wouldn’t be as soul destroying as this.

The north-west of England, including Greater Manchester, had a higher volume of people reported missing each week than average, given its population density and the vulnerability of many of its residents. Over a thousand people a week were reported as missing in England. I had only a few characteristics to narrow down the search – gender, approximate age, range of height and skin colour. The list was long and the nagging doubt that our Jane Doe wasn’t yet a missing person was strong.

Jade Thomas – 28, shared a flat in Failsworth; flatmates reported her missing after 48 hours of no contact.

Hannah Brewster – 30, newly qualified solicitor from Chorlton; disappeared en route to a second-round interview.

Freya Cartwright – 26, seasonal worker who travels for music festivals; last confirmed sighting at one near Piccadilly Gardens.

Natalie Brooks – 35, self-employed web designer living alone in Todmorden; laptop left on, front door unlocked.

Amber Barlow – 32, full-time carer for her mother in Middleton; known to take regular walks by the canal, last seen five days ago.

I called the number on Amber Barlow’s file, her sister, who’d reported her missing seventy-two hours ago when she failed to turn up at their mother’s leaving her sister as the sole carer.

It was a blind alley. Amber had returned two days after her sister had filed the report, tanned and relaxed after a cheeky girls’ getaway to Palma, her sister swearing blind that Amber hadn’t told her.

A happy ending. Kind of.

“How’s it going?” Lachy took the chair opposite me. He’d been meant to be helping me go through mispers records, only his undiagnosed ADHD had finally tipped me over the edge with the constant shifting every two minutes and what I assumed were restless legs, so I’d sent him off to find lunch and pay a visit back to the Old Sailor, near to the spot where we’d found Jane Doe’s body. The bar staff who’d been working the shifts the couple of days before hadn’t been around the day before, and no one had been keen to suggest where we could’ve found them.

Jane Doe’s image had been shared in the media; Wrigley had done a stint on the local news asking for information from anyone who recognised her, and we’d had an influx of the usual misfits, well-meaning members of society such as Mavis Spanhower who was convinced it was her neighbour (a neighbour who turned out to just be avoiding Mavis), and weirdos who liked to tell us that Jane Doe was in fact their grandmother and they had her in their freezer.

We left that one for Vinny to check out.

“It’s going slowly and painfully.” I accepted the hot chocolate he handed over. “Thank you.”

“Welcome. Thank you for letting me get away from a desk.” He slid a hand through his surfer-boy hairstyle, complete with highlights because his locks weren’t getting sun kissed in Manchester any time soon.

“You’d have been the subject of a murder enquiry if I’d had to listen to that tapping for another five minutes.” I sent him a glare, then rolled myself away from my computer screen. “The bastard’s frozen.” The system had been playing up all day, intermittently freezing or throwing me out, so I had to go back and log in.

“Call it a day. Are you in Saturday or Sunday?”

“Sunday.” Wrigley had called us in for one day or the other to carry on following any leads that came in. ‘You?”

“Sunday, so we’re going out for drinks tonight. Well, everyone apart from Nick. His missus is going out so he’s on his own with the kid.” Lachy grinned. “Thank god that’s not me.”

Rain belted against the office window. It was due to ease off overnight, leaving us with dry weather over the weekend and into next week. There was even the tease of a promise of sunshine, although no one was holding their breath.