20
The sun rose on a frosty morning as Jack pulled his car into the car park at Mildenheath Police Station. For him, it was the perfect metaphor. As the cold and ice began to set into the ground, the investigation into the death of Matthew Hulford had started to slow down and freeze, too.
It was two weeks since the media briefing, and each of the calls they’d received had led them down a dark alley — sometimes literally. A number of the calls had referred to Matthew being involved with drugs, but it was impossible to know how many of those people had only heard that information second-hand from social media. Jack never ceased to be amazed at how often people touted hearsay and gossip as absolute fact on these platforms — as did those who read it.
As a rule, the public thought nothing of
