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quickest. I’d already dialled nine and nine on my phone. I was waiting for you to drop to the floor before pressing the final nine and calling an ambulance.’
    ‘It was all an act to get her off her guard. If she’d started to run again I’d have been right on her.’
    ‘If she’d started to run again I don’t think you’d have even noticed, considering you were bent over double trying not to throw up,’ Jessica laughed.
    ‘You’re obviously not familiar with how we trained athletes work.’
    ‘In perpetual agony by the looks of it.’
    The afternoon rush-hour traffic was beginning to build up as the two cars pulled into the station. The pair of uniformed officers took January through the front entrance to be processed while the two detectives went to move past them to set up the interview room. As they were walking, the desk sergeant held out a hand to catch Jessica’s attention. He was already dealing with a member of the public over the counter, so she waited as Rowlands carried on through.
    Once the sergeant had finished speaking, he turned back to Jessica and reached under the desk.
    ‘This arrived in the afternoon post van. Dunno who should open it really. I didn’t want to send it upstairs to the DCI but the inspector is out and he’s taken the new girl with him.’
    He took out a thick padded brown envelope and passed it to Jessica. The station’s address had been printed out and taped  to the front while it was simply addressed ‘Senior Detective’. Jessica turned the parcel over to see if there was any return address but there was nothing. It felt fairly light in her hand and she couldn’t make out the shape of anything bulky through the packaging.
    ‘Why didn’t you put it through to the mail room?’ Jessica asked.
    ‘It only came half an hour ago or so, I haven’t had time. You should be all right to open it, shouldn’t you?’
    ‘I guess…’
    Jessica tore along the strip at the top, placing the envelope on the edge of the counter as she opened the flap. She couldn’t see what was inside so turned the package upside down, emptying it onto the reception desk until an object dropped out and landed on the table top. Jessica looked at it and then glanced up to meet the desk sergeant’s horrified eyes.
    The neatly severed finger rolled along the edge of the desk and fell to the floor with a soft plop.
     

FOUR
     
    It seemed like an age before anyone moved. Jessica eventually put the envelope down on the counter then told one of the uniformed officers to get some evidence bags. The desk sergeant stood next to her, shielding the finger from January’s view. The girl was still on the other side of reception and had seemingly not noticed anything untoward.
    Jessica tried to keep cool. The finger itself was fairly shocking and she felt a little sick looking at it but she couldn’t react with other people present. Jessica knew she had made a mistake; her fingerprints would be all over the envelope, which was bad enough, let alone the finger being allowed to fall to the floor. Jessica crouched to look at the object, which had already attracted a few bits of grit and dust from the ground. It was hard to tell for sure without touching it but it looked as if it had been frozen, starting to thaw as it had gone through the mail. There were drips of a clear liquid she assumed was water that had a faint trace of blood in it.
    She stood back up and looked at the envelope. Using the end part of her sleeve to prevent getting any further fingerprints on it, she turned the packet over so she could see the front. The postmark was smudged and it was stamped, not franked, meaning there was a good chance it had been put into a post box, as opposed to being sent via a post office. The date was just about visible through the smeared ink and Jessica noticed it was yesterday’s. That meant it had been collected the previous day, so it could have been sent anytime between the night before that and roughly