To Mum and Dad, thanks for being nothing like the O’Malley parents!

THE O’MALLEY & SWIFT CRIME THRILLERS

Corn Dolls

Foxton Girls

We All Fall Down

The House of Secrets

The Uninvited Guest

Deadly Games

One Last Breath

Still Waters

Vanishing Act

Chill Pill

Bleeding Hearts

CHILL PILL

Copyright © 2024 by K.T. Galloway

Published worldwide by A.W.E. Publishing.

This edition published in 2024

Copyright © 2024 by K.T. Galloway. The right of K.T. Galloway to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

All characters and events in this book are entirely fictional. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Kate Smith

Edited by GS & LW

CHILL PILL

AN O’MALLEY & SWIFT NOVEL

BOOK 10

K.T. GALLOWAY

Healing Hides a Deadly Secret

Annie thought she was prepared to see her father after years of believing he was missing. But nothing could have braced her for what awaited.

What starts as a tense reunion quickly spirals into chaos when her father is arrested outside the secure hospital where he works. Soon after, he’s found unconscious under mysterious circumstances.

Two patients are dead, and all signs point to Annie’s dad. Accused of supplying illegal drugs, he lies unaware, unable to defend himself. Time is running out, and Annie knows she must uncover the truth behind the patients’ deaths to clear her father's name.

But as she and Swift delve deeper into the investigation, dark secrets about her family and the hospital begin to surface.

And the team discovers there’s more at stake than just one man’s innocence.

Can they untangle the web of deceit before someone else gets hurt? And will she uncover the long-buried truths about her parents before it's too late?

Chill Pill is the tenth instalment in the O’Malley & Swift Thrillers. KT Galloway weaves a tale of family, betrayal, and the relentless pursuit of the truth that will leave you breathless.

MAILING LIST

Thank you for reading CHILL PILL

(O’Malley & Swift Book Ten)

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FOREWORD

Well, here we are at Book 10! Thank you for still being with me on my journey and the journey of Annie and Swift.

If you have picked this book up and it’s the first book you will have read in this series then STOP NOW! I wouldn’t normally say this, as they are all stand alone reads, but this one is slightly different. Go ahead and try this one instead - Corn Dolls!

And for the rest of you, read on and enjoy some O’Malley family history!

PROLOGUE

Sarah Mitchell tapped her fingers in time to the ticking clock. The clock that determined her entire life. Tick tock. Wake-up call. Tick tock. Breakfast. Tick tock. Meds. Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock. It was a constant irritant. A fly at a window. The sound of a car alarm. Other noises that Sarah remembered from her time on the streets before she was torn from the belly of the family she’d gathered around her and thrown into this hellhole. She’d been promised help, told she wasn’t safe. But how much safer was she here than out on the streets? Locked away with her own thoughts every second that stupid clock ticked.

Two hundred and forty taps to go before the hatch doors opened and the doctor gave her a paper cup of water and a handful of pills. Sarah’s fingertips were worn down, calloused with the beat of time but even the pain didn’t stop her from doing it. It was her ritual. Something to beat away the monotony of the white walls, tiled floor, lukewarm drinks, and blunt cutlery. Sarah wanted the pills to give her life back the colour it once had. She wanted to step back out into the humid rush of Camden and be hit by the smell of weed and cookie dough, where the voices of a million strangers bartered in a million languages. Instead, she was caged in a box, sterilised to within an inch of its life and void of anything that made the urges bubbling inside her disappear. And the pills didn’t give her colour. They just made her sleepy and dulled the monotony.

“Morning Miss Mitchell.” Dr Reynolds appeared as Sarah stood at the front of the queue and tapped out three, two, one. “How are we this morning?”

“Great,” she lied, tucking a strand of greasy hair behind her ear.

Her consultant, Dr Reynolds, had a fan club by his side this morning. There was no way Sarah could compete with Pippa Broadbent, the receptionist and trainee psychologist who looked like a Disney cartoon with her huge eyes, and Nurse Rebecca Martinez, head nurse who was a ringer for Eva Mendes. But she liked to think that Dr Reynolds could see beneath the soulless exterior that burdened all the patients to the bright young woman she used to be. She liked to think he could picture the bright young woman she’d be again one day.

“There’s a new one in here for you today,” the doctor said, passing her the pills. “Nothing to worry about, it’s a new pharmaceutical company but the same old ingredients and the same old wonderful effects.”

Sarah gave him a tight smile. She didn’t like to be reminded of who she was and why she was locked up for her own good. What was wrong with just being handed the meds so she could take them and imagine she’d requested them. Wasn’t it enough that she arrived at this little hatch every day? Some of the others in the unit had to have their meds injected because they refused to swallow the little white pills. Sarah wasn’t one of those. She’d never be one of those because in a few short months she wanted to be back out on the streets with all the freedom in the world. And those injectors didn’t have a release date. They were locked up indefinitely. The thought made Sarah’s skin prickle with cold sweat. She drew her smile wider.

The pot the pills were in reminded Sarah of McDonald’s and pumping her own ketchup. She took them and her cup of water and peered into it. No ketchup. But the collection of meds was brightened up with a blue pill poking out between a couple of SSRIs. Round, it looked like an aspirin. Chalky though, not easy to swallow. And set in the centre of one side was a large stamped C.

Sarah threw them all in her mouth and washed them down with a bitter slug of water.

“Open wide.” Martinez had no tact. The young nurse leaned closer to the hatch opening, her arm brushing Dr Reynold’s.

Sarah’s blood boiled as the young woman’s eyes turned hungry, not just for recognition from the handsome Dr Reynolds but for the chance to usurp power over the women lined up for the same reason Sarah was.

Somewhere behind her a fly buzzed against a window, trapped in the airless room. The heat magnified through the glass enough to dull the fly’s efforts from frantic to the lazy, repetitive noise of a toy running out of batteries. Sarah tried to block it out, picturing the litter of dead flies trapped between the window and the metal barrier designed to keep everyone safe. They hadn’t stated whether it was everyone inside or everyone outside the compound they were worried about.

People in the line were getting restless so Sarah opened her mouth and lifted her tongue to show the three professionals it was empty. It was degrading and made her feel like a naughty school child who couldn’t be trusted with the milk round. It wasn’t the first time she’d had the thought, but the hatch was large enough that Sarah could bolt through it and wrap her hands around the young doctor’s neck. Her fingers squeezed in a proprioceptive memory of a different lifetime but still she stayed on the right side. Her side. With all the women beside her who Sarah could not align herself with. She wasn’t that lost. Not yet.

“Move,” the next in the queue shoulder-barged Sarah out of the way with a heavy weight and the stale scent of sweat.

Sarah’s fingers twitched again. It was no good though. The patient’s throat was too well protected in fat, her hands wouldn’t be able to wrap around tightly enough to do any damage.

Stepping aside, Sarah took herself off to the plastic-coated sofas that formed a U-shape around the large television. Something inane blared across the room from the screen. Some daytime show or other. Sarah had never been too fussed about TV, she’d not had one at home and there were no plug sockets out on the streets. But in here there was no getting away from it. It was on from the moment they woke to the moment they were allowed back in their rooms.

The clock ticked on. Sarah looked at it, just over three hours until lunchtime. Calculating quickly in her head, Sarah started the countdown, tapping her fingers. Ten thousand eight hundred and ninety. Ten thousand eight hundred and eighty nine. Ten thousand eight hundred and eighty eight.

Something weird was happening. The clock wasn’t keeping time with her taps. Sarah adjusted her fingers to no avail. The clock was morphing, its steady beat now the buzz of the almost-dead fly. Sarah couldn’t tap to that beat. It was too slow, too random. Panic began to rise in her chest. Her heart was as erratic as the new clock.

Loud, brash voices echoed around the room, bouncing off the white walls. A group of women came to sit beside her. Sarah blinked once, then twice, squeezing her eyes shut and rubbing them so hard she could feel the gelatinous liquid flop about under her knuckles. But when she opened them again, white spots did nothing to block out the colours kaleidoscoping around the other women’s’ clothes. They were a mess, their skin slick against their bones, their heads ballooning like they’d been overinflated with helium.

“Hey,” one of them yelled towards Sarah. “What are you staring at?”

Sarah twisted her head this way and that, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. Everything was vying for her attention. The noises were louder. The colours brighter. The furniture moved towards her like it was in a Disney movie and Sarah knew this couldn’t be happening because everything was bolted to the floor.

Someone pushed at her, knocking her back onto the sofa with a thud. Sarah hadn’t even realised she’d gotten up in the first place so was twice as shocked at finding herself back where she’d started.

“I said, what are you staring at?” The woman’s voice was as mutated as her face was. Slow, warped words blending into each other. An angry hum vibrating around them.

Sarah felt herself lift back upright, weightlessly. Nothing was an effort anymore. Nothing ached in her the way it used to, stopping her from being able to move freely. Sarah felt like Superwoman. If only she could get rid of the annoying flies that were swarming around the room, then life would be perfect.

The buzzing grew louder. Closer. It was coming from the woman who had pushed her. Sarah stuck her fingers in her ears to block out the noise, but it was no good. Reaching out she prodded those same fingers into the flesh of the other woman’s face, moving around her giant features. The woman’s eyes were bulging out of the sides of her face, bulbous and orange. Hairs sprouted up from her forehead and her mouth shrank to a puckered hole. The woman darted a tongue over her lips. The buzzing grew. Sarah shook her head, trying to rid herself of the noise.

The flies were trapped.

Glancing at the window, Sarah saw more of them gather near the glass. Giant flies, almost as big as she was. They were swarming. Bashing their heads to escape. But there was no escape, was there? Sarah knew this. She knew that the flies would burn to death before they figured out the glass was impenetrable. Sarah had to do something. Anything. Even if it meant saving just one poor fly, she knew she could do it.

There was a fly between her hands. Sarah frowned. Something wasn’t quite right. A past, almost too long ago to remember, spoke of women pushing her and a white room filled with fear. The fly struggled against her palms. Sarah pressed harder, trapping it, or else this fly would end up burned alive too. The fly didn’t know she was saving it, and it jerked its hairy, glistening face away.

“No!” Sarah cried, lunging forward.

A cacophony of noise filled the air. The flies were turning, starting to swarm towards her. And Sarah had an epiphany. She was going to save them all. Only, an alarm bell rang in her head that there was no way out of here. That they were all trapped. No window to open to free them. No door to prop wide so they could make their own way out. So that left one option to free the poor creatures from a death worse than Sarah could imagine where their skin would blister and peel away and their wings would shrivel to nothing.

She chased. Running after the one that got away. Catching it with ease because everything was easy for Sarah now. Palms wide, Sarah caught the fly between her hands. She could taste metal and the tang of a breakfast returning too long after it had been consumed. But that was what flies do, wasn’t it? They tramp old food down into new food.

Sarah shook her head again. Thoughts swirling around each other with a confusing speed. The other flies were gaining on her. With only a few seconds to make a decision, Sarah did what any caring human would do to a creature so destined for pain. She squeezed.

“It’ll only hurt for a second,” she said, as though that made it okay.

The fly squirmed, its face hot under Sarah’s hands. Hot and sticky and wet. She pressed harder, the buzzing behind her morphing into the same sounds Sarah remembered from her past. Screams of joy? Happiness? She shook her head again, her face pinched. It hadn’t been happiness, had it? The screams from her past. Her fingers twitched once too many times and the fly went limp beneath them.

“I only did it because I care,” Sarah said, watching as the fly collapsed to the ground. “I only did it to stop you from suffering.”

Sarah wanted to add that she was sorry, but a heavy force landed on her back and forced her to the floor. This was it. This would be the way she would exit the earth. Trampled by flies because she hadn’t been able to save them all.

Sarah closed her eyes and took herself back to Camden and the smells of weed and cookie dough as the buzzing faded around her.

ONE

Annie O’Malley awoke to the sounds of birds chirping and the feeling that someone had zip-tied her ankles together. She paused for a moment, eyes firmly shut, working out her situation. She was sitting upright, the seat under her felt soft and secure, yet she couldn’t move her legs. Or her arms. Something was wrapped around her whole body, cocooning her in a position that wasn’t uncomfortable necessarily, but still her mind went to all of the dark places it could find. And who could blame it?

Ever since Annie had joined forces with the Major Crime Unit at Norfolk Police, she’d had her fair share of close calls. From murderous cults, to fighting the plague, to being taken hostage in Spain, to their last case that saw Annie pit her wits against the world of magic. If she thought too hard about it, Annie would question her motives for staying in the team. So she didn’t. And she stayed.

Peeling open an eye, the late summer sun pierced her pupil like a knife. She snapped it shut again and wriggled her body, trying to see how tightly she was bound. Too tight to free herself. Snuffling her face down with the notion she might be able to chew through any bindings, Annie caught a whiff of another, very important reason she’d stayed in the MCU. DI Joseph Swift. The guy in charge of the MCU. And a man playing a very different role than that of her boss over the last few weeks. But why was Swift’s aftershave sprayed liberally on her shackles? And why did the shackles feel soft to her cheeks as she rubbed her face against her shoulder? Suspiciously like cashmere, soft.

“Ah, welcome back to the land of the living,” Swift said, and Annie felt a waft of summer air stroke her skin before the unmistakable sound of a car door closing.

Annie felt the blush creep up her neck and focussed on her actual situation. One that was flooding back to her now she was out of the scary world that inhabited her when she slept. She was in the car with Swift. And now, with her eyes well and truly open, Annie could see that her shackles were in fact Swift’s jumper wrapped around her torso, and her own handbag strap that had gotten caught around her ankles. She wriggled free of both and stretched to the roof of Swift’s 4x4.

“Here,” Swift said, handing Annie a take-out coffee once she’d wrestled her limbs back into shape. She sipped the latte, marvelling at how Swift always knew exactly what she needed. “You were wrestling all sorts of demons back there. And I thought navigating the M5 had been scary, but that was nothing compared to the way you were lashing out in your sleep around about Bristol. I wrapped you in my jumper, so you didn’t accidentally kill us both.”

Flickers of running from a killer clown filtered through Annie’s awakened state like a slide show. That was a new one, maybe she could be adding that to the mix soon too. She laughed and sipped some more coffee, wanting to stay awake for the rest of the trip down to Devon.

“Sorry,” she said, circling her neck and listening to the complaints from her spine. “It won’t happen again. I promise to be the perfect passenger until we reach Haling Cove.”

Swift chuckled. “That’s very good of you. Look out the window.”

Annie looked up from her paper cup and peered at the glistening water through the windshield. They were parked up on a cliff, a small coffee van at the other side of the car park, the great sight of the English Channel stretching as far as she could see in front. Dotted down the gentle slope of the hillside were white houses like perfectly uniform teeth. They curved around the bay and reached the sands so close to the edge, Annie knew they must be licked by the waters at least twice a day.

“We’re here?” she asked, a different fear settling in her belly.

“We’re here,” Swift replied, softly.

Haling Cove wasn’t just a beautiful place with a beach that begged to be laid on and waters that begged to be swam in. The homes looked like they were straight from a Country Living magazine and even the coffee was a tiny notch above the best she’d had in Norwich. Despite all of this, Haling Cove held a story that Annie had been trying to piece together since she was a teenager. Goose bumps prickled her skin.

“Where’s the hospital?” she asked, wide awake now.

“We passed it on the main road in,” Swift replied. “I didn’t want to wake you. It looks like any other hospital in any other place in the UK. But I’m sorry, maybe I should have.”

“No, no.” Annie was quick to reply. “It’s okay.”

If she’d slept for the five hours it had taken Swift to drive from Norfolk to Devon then she must have needed the sleep. And Annie wouldn’t have learned anything about her Dad staring at the brick walls of the building he worked in.

“Let’s go and find our Airbnb and settle in,” she said, ignoring the pit of dread growing in her stomach and trying to think of something happy to quash it back down. “We can FaceTime the others and show them what they’re missing.”

“I’d like that,” Swift said, finishing his drink and turning over the engine.

Annie felt the dread being replaced with a swirl of happiness. Swift was excited about their first trip away together. Together, together. They’d travelled before, but this was different. This time Swift was with Annie as a friend, support for the difficult task she had looming in front of her. And, now officially, her boyfriend. Annie suppressed a giggle at the idea of a fully grown man being called a boyfriend.

Swift tapped a postcode into the satnav. “Yeah,” he continued as they drove slowly away from the cliff edge and back out onto the road. “I feel a bit antsy about leaving Tink in charge and it would be good to touch base.”

And they say romance is dead. Annie turned her attention away from Swift and looked out the window at the stunning view there instead. The hill swept away from them towards a sandy cove where Annie could see the bright colours of swimming costumes dotted on the sand and popping up through the turquoise waters. Three stand up paddle boarders moved slowly across the bay, their boards like glossy fins underneath their feet. The sea was calm and probably warm from the months of summer sun they’d had. Annie was glad the schools had just gone back or this little cove would be teeming so hard with people that the sand wouldn’t be visible.

“Tink is more than capable of holding the fort for a week.” Annie wound down her window and felt the warm, salty air on her face. “She’s probably having a field day with the state of the paperwork on your desk. You know that’s a violation of GDPR, right? Have you not done the online training? She’ll be reporting you to the ICO so she can take your job permanently if you’re not careful.”

Swift laughed and Annie joined him. Tink loved Swift like a brother and she would do anything to protect him, and Annie too. With her cut-glass cheekbones and her white blonde pixie hair, Tink’s nickname stemmed from her resemblance to Peter Pan’s sidekick. And she was smart, astute, kind, and the most incredible detective too. Their small team was completed with DC Tom Page, a young man who Annie had grown fond of over the years they’d worked together. His work ethic put them all to shame, and then he looked after his gran when he wasn’t solving crimes. Page had been studying hard for the sergeant’s exam which was taking place while Annie and Swift were in Devon. Page had batted away Annie’s insistence that they could cancel their trip and stay to support him, citing that his nerves would be greater with everyone fussing.

Swift looked at Annie with a raised brow and a better sense than to reply. So they carried on in a comfortable silence along the coast road until the SatNav told them they had arrived at their destination.

Annie whistled long and low as they pulled into the drive. The Airbnb advert had stated it was a four bed, sea view cottage and that was looking to be the understatement of the century. She opened the door and was out on the shingle drive before Swift had even brought the car to a perfect standstill.

“This is insane,” Annie said, stepping back to take the house in fully.

“This is a treat,” Swift replied, walking around beside her and throwing a casual arm over her shoulder. With his free hand, he dialled the DS, switching it to video when she answered. “Tink, how’s things?”

Annie waved at the DS through Swift’s phone, but her eyes couldn’t be drawn from the home that was theirs for the next five days. Set at the foot of the cliff, deep in the circle of the cove, their cottage was a two-story building made of more glass than Swift’s conservatory. A huge panoramic window ran along the front, sea views for miles, tinted so people walking past could only see their reflections in a colour that looked like pool water. Whitewashed walls hugged the glass and a steel railing wrapped around the terrace where Annie knew she would be sitting drinking her morning cuppa every day, whether or not the sun was shining.

“Swift, this is a surprise.” Tink was echoing through the speakers. “Don’t tell me you’ve just arrived and you’re already checking up on me? It’s twelve noon on a Friday, I am capable of not burning the station down in three hours.”

“No, don’t be silly,” Swift cleared his throat and looked to Annie for help, shifting the phone so Annie took up most of the screen.

“We know you’d only set the station on fire if it was a deliberate act,” she grinned. “We just wanted to show you this.”

Annie pressed the camera switch button so Tink could see what they were looking at.

“Bloody hell, Page, come and look at this,” Tink said, whistling much like Annie had.

“We’re getting an invite next time,” Page said, his face squashing in next to Tink’s.

“Ew, no thanks,” Tink replied. “I don’t want to be anywhere near those two smooching.”

Annie blushed and Swift took his phone back.

“Yes, well, this is a holiday, sort of, not a work thing so you weren’t going to get invited. And who uses the word smooch anymore, we’re not twelve?” He shifted the phone to his other hand and lifted the piece of paper with the key lock code from his pocket, handing it to Annie. “So, how are things? Anything new come in? Let me know if you need any help, I can be useful even this far away.”

Annie took the code and left Swift to it as Tink started swearing at him lovingly down the phone. She took the white stone steps up to the veranda and the front door, tapping the code into the lock on the door, Annie turned the handle and let herself inside.

It was cool. A welcome break from the midday sun. Slipping off her shoes, Annie walked through the entrance hall and into the main belly of the building. The window was as stunning inside as out. Running along the whole wall, Annie was afforded a view across the bay, only partly blocked by Swift still on the phone. There was a scattering of comfy looking sofas set into a dropped section of the room. Past those was a pool table and beyond that the kitchen. Steel and brass and a generous helping of marble. An open creamy, stone staircase led up to the bedrooms and Annie took them slowly, one at a time with a sense that all the stress from the past few months was lifting from her shoulders with each ascent.

Upstairs was just as luxurious, though much cosier than down. Thick, cream carpets lined the floors and a handful of doors led in different directions. Behind each one was a bedroom laden with sumptuous bedding and views to die for. A bathroom with a claw foot bath and a shower cubicle that circled around on itself was a treat. But when Annie opened the final door and stepped into the master suite her jaw dropped to the soft-pile.

Drawn straight to the window, the view was similar to the ground floor but up here it was as though they were in the sea. Annie pulled open the sliding door and stepped out onto a balcony. The heat enveloped her, the sea air invigorating and welcome. The turquoise sparkled like a jewel, reflecting on the white walls of the room behind her. Annie sat down on a lounger, tilting it slightly first so she could still see the waves through the glass rails. She took a deep breath and smiled as Swift pulled up a lounger beside her.

“Do you think we could forget about Mim and my dad and just pretend this is a real holiday?” Annie said, closing her eyes and feeling the sun on her face.

She felt Swift wrap his fingers around hers and squeeze.

“If that’s what you want to do, O’Malley, then we can spend the week swimming and sunbathing and sightseeing…” he said. “But I think this is an opportunity you won’t be able to resist once we’ve unpacked and had some lunch. You’ve waited nearly twenty years to meet your dad again.”

Annie hummed.

“I’m here for you, whatever you decide,” he added.

Annie opened her eyes, the world a blanket of blue, and looked at Swift. “Thank you.”

“But I do have to say that if you change your mind, Mim is likely to throw you off this balcony and feed you to the sharks.” Swift shrugged.

Annie barked out a laugh. “Why don’t we make the most of the empty house before Mim arrives?”

“You read my mind, O’Malley, “Swift replied. “Now come here and give us a smooch.”

TWO

Mim arrived as the setting sun was casting watercolour pinks across the water. Annie watched out the bedroom window as her younger sister dragged a carryall from the boot of her car and set it in the driveway next to a hard-shell case.

“She’s staying the same length of time as us, right?” Swift cupped his hands against the glass to see past the low rays.

Mim was backlit in red, her limp ponytail the only sign she’d had a five-hour drive. Otherwise, she was the glowing epitome of youth.

“Kids these days need more stuff than us oldies,” Annie joked, pulling the sliding doors open and stepping onto the balcony. She shouted down to her sister, “you made it.”

Mim looked up, squinting. Her eyes caught Annie and her face opened in a smile. Waving, Mim grabbed the smallest of her bags and waved back.

“You’d better not have bagsied the best room already!” she shouted. “I need a lot of hanging space.”

“You snooze, you lose, sis,” Annie laughed. “Besides, there are two of us. We need more space than you and your million bags.”

“Well tell the extra guest to make himself useful and come help me with those million bags, would you?”

Swift barrelled out the front door and down the stairs. “Way ahead of you, Mim. Go and get yourself a drink, I’ll take your bags to your room.”

Annie watched the exchange from the balcony. Mim’s eyes narrowing suspiciously before she relinquished her carryall to Swift, gave him a quick squeeze about his shoulders, and headed up the steps to the house.

“Furthest room from yours,” Mim called back over her shoulder. “I need my beauty sleep.”

Annie felt herself blush and snuck inside before anyone saw. She slid the doors shut behind her and ran down the stairs to her sister, gathering her up in a big hug. Things might be strained between them, but Annie still couldn’t get over the excitement of being able to wrap her arms around her sister after years of thinking she’d never see her again.

“Why don’t you take a bottle out to the garden, and I’ll start on dinner as soon as I’m done with these?” Swift said, as he traipsed past them, laden like a pack mule.

“You don’t need to tell me that twice,” Mim said, blowing him a kiss. “Lead the way.”

Annie lifted a hand in thanks at the DI who was wobbling precariously under the weight of Mim’s baggage. He blew her a kiss in return.

The kitchen was at the far end of the house. Annie walked silently in her bare feet along the cool tiled floor, past the pool table and a little nook under the stairs where a games console and chair was set up.

“This place is amazing,” Mim said, her head in the fridge behind a large island. “They’ve got a wine cooler.” Her smiling face popped up over the countertop and she brandished a bottle in each hand. “A stocked wine cooler. Pink or white?”

“Pink,” Annie replied, searching the cupboards for some glasses. She gave them a rinse at a sink that was bigger than her flat with a tap that was on an extendable hose.

Bifold doors spread wide from the kitchen table to a patio at the rear of the house. Annie stepped out and was hit by the September heat. Warmth and salt and sea embraced her, and she felt like a few glasses of wine would finally relax them both enough to broach the subject that had torn them apart so many years ago. Annie blamed their dad for leaving and taking Mim with him. Mim blamed their mum for not giving him any other choice. The middle parts of the story were what Annie and Mim needed to sort out between them. Each of them living their own version of a tragedy that was out of both of their hands.

The gentle pop of the fizzy rosé cork had Annie pulling up a sun lounger next to Mim and accepting a rather full glass. The spray of the bubbles fizzed onto her fingers and the first sip went down a little too easily. Mim let out a happy sigh.

“Yep,” Annie agreed “Yep indeedy.”

They sat in silence for a while, savouring the start of a holiday and the last of the sunshine. As the natural light disappeared, solar powered fairy lights flickered on around the patio and up the garden path to as far as Annie could see. Swift had closed the bifolds and was working his magic in the kitchen behind the girls. Their glasses were low on drink. Annie sat up and reached over for the bottle to top them both up.

“Did you see the hospital on your way in?” Mim asked as Annie filled their glasses.

“No,” she shook her head, propping up her lounger to a better position to see her sister. She figured the question was a way into a conversation they needed to have. “I was sound asleep.”

Mim nodded, quietly. “It’s not much from the outside, but I’ve heard that there are airlocks between the wards, so people don’t escape.”

“Escape?” Annie asked, frowning.

“Yeah,” Mim went on. “It’s not a regular hospital, it’s a place for the crazy people. Locked up because they’ve committed crimes.”

“Mim! That’s not nice. These people are still poorly, don’t call them crazy.” Sometimes Annie forgot what it was like to be in her early twenties. Mim was young, but that was no excuse for dehumanising people who had fallen on hard times. They should both know how close they were to it themselves.

“Well, you know what I mean,” Mim huffed. “It’s exciting though, isn’t it? Our dad working security somewhere like that? Who knows who he’s rubbing shoulders with on a day-to-day basis. Probably people I’ve seen on CrimeTok.”

Annie wasn’t sure if exciting was the word she’d use or what on earth CrimeTok was when it was at home, “You’d be surprised at how dull it probably is. I’ve seen my fair share of criminals with mental health issues and there are a lot of drugs involved… legal ones, I mean, to dampen the ‘difficult’ behaviours. Dad’s probably sitting drinking coffee most of the time while he plays Candy Crush.”

“You look like him, you know?” Mim said, quietly this time. “You’re strong. You’ve got his eyes.”

Annie ran those eyes up across her sister’s face, taking her in. Remembering the way Mim would follow her around like a ghost, her big green eyes always watching what she was doing. Drinking her in like she held all the answers to her three-year-old questions.

“We’ve got the same eyes,” Annie said, smiling. “You and me.”

Mim smiled at that. “Yeah, I guess we do.”

“I do remember snippets,” Annie went on, her stomach like a washing machine. “I was seventeen when you left, definitely old enough to remember how much you loved to watch Peppa Pig, who as an aside is the most annoying cartoon pig ever.”

Mim snorted as she laughed. Annie wasn’t sure if it was deliberate, but it made her giggle nonetheless.

“Hey, she was my hero, she had such a normal life I drank it in. I watched Peppa Pig until I was far too old to be watching it. It was my comfort blanket.” Mim sipped her drink, her eyes glistening.

Annie felt her heartstrings tighten. “I think I watched it after you disappeared too. I used to hide in my room, away from mum and the stresses of the police visits and the social workers and listen to Peppa moan about how hard life was. I’d forgotten about that until just now.”

Mim contemplated her, her brows pinched. “You were a difficult age to be going through what we did. I was so young that I don’t really remember home, but you were going through your A levels would it have been?”

“Yeah,” Annie nodded, chuckling. “And I did as well as can be expected given the circumstances.”

“But you’ve got a good job now,” Mim prompted, lifting her glass to the surroundings and the man behind them cooking them dinner. “And a good life?”

Annie hesitated, wondering whether to tell Mim about her failed attempt to get into the police straight from scraping a pass in her Biological Sciences degree. How she’d broken down during training with the thoughts of abandonment of a father who’d done it all before her. How could a man who was supposed to uphold the law and be a role model himself, chose to leave her? Could Annie bring herself to talk about the way she was living hand to mouth for such a long time because all her income was being paid to a private investigator she’d hired to find her lost family. Annie still lived in her office down a cobbled street above a pizza place, but she had grown to love it so much that even now she could afford to move, she chose to stay.

“I have,” Annie agreed eventually. “I am lucky. There were a few blips along the way but I’m doing okay. What about you, Mim? You love to travel, you’re an artist, is it as idyllic as it all sounds?”

Mim took a moment. Her eyes glazed as she chewed on her bottom lip. The scents of the dinner Swift was cooking had started to filter out of the window beside the closed doors and it was making Annie’s already tightly wound stomach feel like it was twisted in hunger. Mim started to reply, covering the noises from Annie’s digestive system.

“I think that I’m lucky,” said Mim, nodding slowly. “Yes. I think lucky is probably the word for it. Dad always instilled in me a sense of adventure and we moved around a lot. I’ll let him go into where and when and why, I was a baby, and I can only remember the later years. And now I feel like I can go anywhere I want to. I’m not tethered or tied down to a place.”

There was a sadness behind Mim’s words that made Annie’s throat sting.

“And that is an adventurous way to live, Mim,” Annie agreed, carefully. “Do you ever wonder about putting down roots?”

Annie couldn’t imagine a life in her twenties without her flat and her pot plant and her best friend Rose. And now she was older she had Sunday the cat too. Not to mention a team of work colleagues who had grown to also become her friends. And Swift. Without those things Annie knew she would have drifted out into space and become lost. But she also knew that people are different and perhaps Mim didn’t want the same things as most others. She had to respect that.

“I think,” Mim replied. “When I find a man who looks at me the way Swift looks at you, then and only then will I consider putting down any roots.”

Annie glanced over her shoulder at where Mim was looking. Swift had donned an apron and was swaying his hips in time to the music that was filtering out through the window with the smells of the food. In one hand he held a wooden spoon as a microphone, belting out the words to Barry Manilow’s ‘Mandy’, swapping the titular character for her own.

Annie felt Mim’s hand on her knee, cool and damp from her glass, and drew her attention from her partner to her sister.

“I am so sorry,” said Mim. “I knew how you and Swift felt about each other and I still tried to seduce him. I wasn’t thinking. I need you to know it wasn’t about how attractive I find him or how safe he made me feel when I was with him. The only reason I did it was because I needed information.”

Annie knew the information Mim had been after was the police file on their mum. She thought of it tucked away in her own suitcase like a ticking bomb but the words clogged in her throat as she tried to respond.

“When you got back in contact with me my whole world imploded,” Mim went on. “Dad told me about you, of course, but he never spoke about Mum. I needed to know more about her. I needed to know why I’d grown up without a mother. I couldn’t find anything online about her and I wasn’t sure how either of you would react if I’d just shown up at her door and announced I was back. Dad told me to stay away, but he didn’t tell me why.”

The blood pumped so hard in Annie’s chest she could feel it pulsing in her neck.

“Why did Dad tell you to stay away?” she said, trying to keep her voice even. “That’s so cruel.”

“I’m sure he wasn’t doing it to be cruel.” Mim was quick to defend him. “He was looking out for me, that’s all.”

Annie couldn’t stop her eyes from rolling and Mim’s mouth drew into a thin line.

“No, you’re right,” Annie said, quickly, not wanting another argument. “We don’t know his reasons and that’s why we’re here.”

“Thank you,” Mim said. “And thank you for understanding about the whole Swift thing.”

Annie wasn’t sure she was all that understanding about it yet, but anything to keep the peace until they’d sat down and talked to their dad.

“And, just so you know,” Mim went on, standing from her lounger and giving Annie a twirl. “Swift must really love you, because he was pretty quick to turn all this down, and that’s a first.”

THREE

“Are you sure you’re ready?” Swift was fussing about Annie like a new mum sending her kids off to their first day at school.

He’d already made her bacon and eggs for breakfast with hash browns and avocado. And Annie had still been quite full of his previous evening’s offering of Mediterranean fish and tomato stew. Swift was a culinary genius though, so she wasn’t about to pass up anything cooked by his fair hands. Plus, he was doing it because he cared about her, and Annie was able to relish this feeling while she chewed the most delicious crispy bacon and buttery scrambled eggs.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be ready,” she confessed, running a brush through her hair, and tying it up in a ponytail. “But if I don’t do it now I’ll never do it. And Mim has set up this meeting which I’d be a fool to walk away from now.”

“Who’s walking away?” Mim appeared at their bedroom door, peeking her head around to check the coast was clear before heading on in. “It was open, so I assumed you were both decent. Who is walking away? Not you, I hope Annie?”

Mim hadn’t been awake for breakfast, but she looked okay with a green juice in one hand and a pastry in the other. Annie ignored the crumbs flaking to the floor.

“I’m just a little nervous, that’s all,” Annie said, giving Swift a peck on the cheek and following her sister out onto the balcony. “Are you sure Dad knows we’re coming?”

Mim was looking down over the driveway and all the way out to the sea. It was choppier this morning, a wind blowing in from the channel made the tips of the waves white and frothy. It was a warm wind, though, so Annie had opted to wear light clothes so she didn’t overheat with anxiety sweats.

“Of course he does,” Mim replied, tapping her fingernails on the metal railing.

Annie sidled up beside her.

“And he definitely knows that I’m coming?” Annie asked. “I don’t want to turn up out of the blue and make it seem like he has to talk to me. That wouldn’t be fair. You know maybe we should phone him and double check that he’s still okay to meet up with us. I mean he is at work I suppose, and we can’t go and talk to him at…”

“Annie if you don’t stop talking, I’m likely to push you over the edge.” Mim gathered Annie up in her arms as she spoke, squeezing her in a hug. She smelt like freshly cut strawberries. “I haven’t had my morning coffee yet and I can’t be held responsible for what I do before my caffeine hit.”

“Sorry,” Annie said, muffled in Mim’s short hair. “There’s some in the pot.”

They broke apart.

“Dad is almost finished his night shift,” Mim said, tucking a stray hair behind Annie’s ear. “And he knows it’s today. He’ll be expecting people in person, not a phone call. And he’ll be tired so we don’t have to stay with him long. It’s just a good way to slowly ease us all back into some form of family. We’ll go for coffee, catch up on the last fifteen years and then make arrangements for a longer get together afterwards. Trust me, Annie. It’s going to be okay.”

That was Mim’s mantra as they loaded themselves into the car. It was Mim’s mantra as Swift offered to join them to make sure they were okay. She also politely turned him down. Mim said it at least three times on the thirty minute drive between the Airbnb and the main road where the hospital was located. And Annie knew it was coming as they rounded into the car park and Mim switched off the engine and the car stilled.

“I know it is,” Annie agreed, nerves jangling. “It’s just been such a long time since I saw him that…”

A flood of emotion burst through Annie’s chest and stopped her words halfway up her throat. She couldn’t remember the last time she saw her dad. Had she known that the goodbye would be the last one in over a decade, Annie would have ingrained it on her memory forever. As it was, she couldn’t even picture what was happening when she last hugged her dad. Her mum had said Annie had been in a huff as she’d left for school, so she’d thrown the goodbye as carelessly as a discarded shoe. But Annie chose not to believe her. She couldn’t picture anything real, so she imagined a scenario full of love and kisses and hugs and kind words like a Disney movie ending.

Only it can’t have been like that, can it? That’s the thought that had kept Annie’s mind whirring into the small hours for years after her dad and Mim went missing. If it had been a Disney movie then they all would have vanished together.

“Let’s go on in before you give me the wobbles too,” Mim said, reminding Annie she was in the car.

The hospital building wasn’t anything great to look at from the outside. Swift had been right not to wake her on their trip down. It was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it white façade. Squat and wide, easy to ignore from the road. It was only the nine-foot steel fence with razor wire at the top that made Annie look twice.

“Is it a bit weird that he wanted us to meet him at work?” Annie said, faltering at the front doors.

“Nah,” Mim replied, her voice a little too high. “He probably wants to show us how proud he is for holding down a job for so long.”

They stepped up to the doors and Mim pushed them open, much to Annie’s surprise. That wasn’t very secure, was it? Inside was a different story. The reception area was small, cocooned by thick walls and a metal detector leading to a locked door. It felt claustrophobic.

“Did he not have very many jobs after leaving the police?” Annie asked, checking out the reception desk hidden behind glass and thick metal. Sitting at the desk was a woman who couldn’t have been much past a teen herself, with giant eyes made to look even bigger by her lack of hair.

“Not really.” Mim sounded distracted. “Put his hand in where he could. Little bit of this. Little bit of that.” She strode up to the reception glass. “We’re here to see Officer, er I mean mister O’Malley, please.”

“I’m not able to give you any information on who may or may not work here.” The woman behind the glass looked nonplussed.

Annie felt her stomach drop to her Converse trainers. But wasn’t that what she wanted? To escape without the awkward reunion after all? Only now she was here, Annie was itching to see the man she’d grown up with.

“But can’t you just tell him we’re here?” Mim pleaded.

“The staff details are under strict security protocol, and I am unable to share any names with you. Our doctors and nurses and assistant practitioners work very hard and if I were to give out details to everyone who walked through those doors then I’d be putting them at risk.”

“Well, for your information, he’s not a doctor or a nurse, he’s security and well able to look after himself,” Mim replied, squaring her shoulders.

Annie put a gentle hand on Mim’s arm, and her sister took a breath.

“Right,” the receptionist sat up straighter too, her huge eyes homed in on the sisters. “Mr O’Malley could be the cleaner or the security or the consultant or the dinner lady, whatever his role may or may not be, I am not able to give you any information. I apologise, but that’s the way it is here.”

Annie could tell this woman was well versed in bringing down the temperament of people she talked to. And in a place like this, she probably had to be. Housed behind the locked doors were patients who’d committed crimes that even the MCU would find disturbing. Patients who were walked through the reception on their way in. Patients’ families worried about their loved ones. Quite possibly victims’ families too, if they managed to twist the system and find out where the perps had been taken. Annie imagined this woman had seen it all, safely tucked behind toughened glass and steel.

“We’re his daughters,” Mim replied, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Then you can contact him yourself and let him know where you are. I am able to neither confirm nor deny if Mr O’Malley works here at Edgewater Clinic. Now if you’ll excuse me?”

She swung around in her chair and tapped away on her keyboard. It wasn’t a question. They were dismissed.

“Come on, Mim,” Annie said, tugging at Mim’s arm. “Let’s go back outside and wait for him there.”

Annie felt like the walls of the reception were closing in on her head like a vice; she needed fresh air and to feel the sun on her face. Mim studied her, her brow twitching.

“You okay?”

Annie shook her head and stumbled through the door back out into the car park. She gulped down the fresh air and sank to the bonnet of Mim’s car, perched so she wouldn’t fall.

“What happened to you?” Mim asked, dropping down on her haunches in front of Annie and peering up at her.

Annie could feel the weight of Mim’s stare. She didn’t want to revisit the part of her past that she thought she’d left long behind her, but that was a pretty extreme reaction.

“I wasn’t totally honest with you last night,” she said, her head still in her hands. “When I said there had been a few blips, the blips were less bumps in the road and more great hulking canyons.”

Annie lifted her head, her hair was escaping her ponytail and tracing the sides of her hot cheeks.

“What do you mean?” Mim asked.

“I tried out for the police,” Annie confessed, feeling her heart race. “I thought if I could do something that would make Dad proud then maybe he’d come home again. Only, I couldn’t do it.”

Annie straightened, wiping her hands down her face and puffing out her cheeks. They were alone in the car park, but it felt to Annie like the whole world was listening to her failures.

“I was broken,” she said, sadly. “Literally. I had a breakdown during training one day. It was sunny and warm and we were all supposed to be doing our first shift out on the beat with our partners. Only as soon as I pulled on my boots, I had this image of Dad leaving for work when I was younger. I must have been four or five when he got promoted so these were old, old memories. My fingers stopped working. I wasn’t able to tie my own stupid laces. Apparently, a few of my team went to get help because they thought I was having a stroke.”

Annie took a deep, shuddering breath. Mim gave her the space to keep talking.

“They took me to hospital and though I was out of it for a long time, words filtered in.” Annie could feel hot tears on her face. “They were going to have me sectioned, Mim. Somewhere like this. For my own good. I wasn’t eating or drinking, and they thought I was a danger to myself and wouldn’t be able to cope out in the real world again.”

“Sectioned?” Mim’s voice echoed around Annie’s head.

“I don’t know what Mum did to stop it happening, she kept on telling the doctors I wouldn’t be safe. It’s weird, but maybe she couldn’t stand to lose the only person she had left to a secure hospital wing.”

“What… what did you do? What happened to you?”

“I took pills that helped, and I left the UK, travelled around Europe for six months and eventually had enough counselling to show me that what Dad did wasn’t reflected in how I behaved. Of course, it wasn’t as simple as all that, it took hard work and a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. But I’m okay now, and I’m not as fragile as the way you’re looking at me makes me feel,” Annie finished, her brow raised.

“Sorry.” Mim straightened out her face.

“It’s why I don’t like to tell people. I don’t want them thinking I’m about to break again.”

“I’m not just people though, Annie,” Mim said, pointedly. “I’m your sister.”

Annie nodded. She wanted to tell Mim that perhaps that made the confession worse when they were both interrupted by the sound of the hospital door opening. Turning their heads, Annie watched as a man appeared. Not as tall as she remembered him being, but by the shape of his shoulders, the way his auburn hair curled down over his forehead, and the way he carried himself as though he was ready to take on the world, Annie knew it was her father.

The man shielded his eyes from the sun, staring directly at the two women.

“Mim, he shouted across the car park. “What are you doing…”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence as his eyes fell on Annie and the ruddiness from his cheeks dropped away to a frosty white pallor.

“Annie?”

Annie could hear his intake of breath from where she stood at least fifty feet away. Not one of them moved. The world stood still as the sisters and their dad formed a trident of lost time and emotions.

It was only the beep of the siren and the flash of blue lights that stopped between them that broke the spell. Two uniformed officers bundled out of the van and sped towards the now gaunt looking shape of their father.

“Robert O’Malley?” One of them asked. Their dad nodded, his forehead crumpled. “You’re under arrest for the supply of illegal substances and the resulting death of at least two patients here at Edgewater Clinic.”

The other man read Mr O’Malley’s rights to him as they bundled him into the back of the police car. Annie and Mim watched on in disbelief as their dad pressed his hands to the window.

“You need to leave,” he yelled through the glass, his face twisted in anger. “I don’t want you here.”

FOUR

The silence left behind after the police car sped off made Annie feel like she was underwater. Her pulse pounded in her ears, the sun beat down on her head.

“What just happened?” Mim sounded like she was miles away and not standing right next to Annie, clutching her hand as though it was a life preserver.

A bird sang above their heads, soaring high in the sky with not a care to be seen. The song was incongruous with how Annie was feeling. Her dad had seen her and the anger on his face had been palpable. For the first time in years, Annie felt that anger too. She was done being sad and upset about everything that had happened, she wanted to join that bird and scream from the top of her lungs how angry she was.

“You didn’t tell him we were coming?” Annie turned to Mim. “You promised me he knew.”

I don’t want you here.

Her dad’s words were on repeat in her head.

“I’m sorry,” Mim replied, quietly. “I thought it would be best if we just showed up and surprised him. What do you think those police officers meant?”

Annie flapped her arms and started pacing back and forth across the tarmac.

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe that our dad has been supplying dodgy drugs to the very people he’s supposed to be looking after? Quelle surprise.”

“Hey,” Mim shouted. “Our dad is a good man. There is no way he would do that.”

“He was just arrested right in front of your own eyes, for that exact crime,” Annie shouted back.

Mim slammed her hands down on the bonnet of her car, the metal reverberating across the car park. “What happened to innocent until proven guilty?”

Annie spun around and narrowed her eyes. “That went out the window the moment our so called father left me. He’s never been innocent. He’s a coward.”

Mim looked like she could have taken Annie down with the way she was glaring. But before she had the chance, the door to the hospital flew open and the receptionist marched out.

“You two are acting like an episode of Jerry Springer,” she said. She wasn’t shouting but her words were like cut glass.

Annie felt her blood pump around her veins, spurred on by the sheer force of her anger. Mim looked as though she felt the same. As the receptionist approached, a sense of shame washed over Annie instead. Out in the light of day the woman looked older than Annie had first thought. Not a teen girl, but late twenties, perhaps. Her skin was dewy, but her lack of hair made gauging an age pretty hard. She also had the dark circles of someone who worked too hard for too little money, or someone undergoing treatment for an illness that Annie didn’t want to think too hard about. Annie felt all at once ashamed of the scene they were causing for this poor woman.

“Sorry, Pippa,” she muttered, reading the name tag on the woman’s shirt. “We’ll take this somewhere else.”

Pippa looked over her shoulder. Heading out of the clinic was a patient flanked by two guards. Annie glanced too, a wave of recognition flooding her at the patient’s dark hair and eyes, the way he held himself. Like a long-forgotten dream coming back. Pippa’s shouts jarred through her memories.

“Good, just see that you do, we don’t need this kind of energy around our hospital,” the receptionist warned them, loudly enough for the guards to hear. But as she edged closer to the two sisters, Pippa dropped her voice so that she was barely audible. “If you need to go to the police station, go now. Do you know where you’re going? Take the first left then the second right and the road will take you straight there. Go and be there for your dad.” Pippa looked back to the hospital again, her eyes darting, before shouting. “Now get on your way before I call the police on the pair of you.”

Mim was already shutting the car door by the time Pippa’s words had sunk in.

“Come on, Annie,” Mim called, turning over the engine.

Annie took one last glance at the patient being ushered into a mini-van but she couldn’t quite place him. Pulling open her car door she dropped into the seat and Mim was out on the road before Annie had buckled her belt.

“I thought this day was going to be hard,” Mim said, biting her lip as she took the tight corners. “But I didn’t have Dad being arrested for drugs charges and a cowbag of a receptionist coming to his aid on my bingo card.”

“I’m going to call Swift,” Annie said, grabbing her phone from her bag.

“Why?” Mim squeaked as they hit the crest of a hill and bumped over it. “Sorry.”

She slowed the car a fraction.

“Because I need to tell him what’s happened,” Annie answered, hitting dial.

Mim grabbed the phone from Annie’s ear and ended the call, throwing the handset to the back seat with a thump.

“Mim!”

“You don’t need Swift’s help. We’ve got each other. We just need to talk it through. Swift will tell us to come back to the house so he can make a plan. We don’t need a plan.” She stopped talking as another hill crested into a sharp right turn.

“We don’t need a plan?” Annie asked, holding onto the sides of her seat. “Just like we didn’t need a plan to go and see Dad?”

“Don’t start this again.”

“You heard him, Mim. He said he didn’t want us there.”

The car bumped over a pothole and a bundle of kirby grips flew up out of the middle console.

“He was probably just embarrassed about getting arrested.” Mim tried to corral them back into place and keep her eyes on the road. “You would be too, especially when he’s innocent.”

“Or he doesn’t want to see us. Mim, slow down, do you even know where you’re going?”

“Err,” Mim muttered something else under her breath and pulled the car to a stop in a lay-by. “I forgot what the receptionist said after turn left.”

Thirty minutes later, and with the helpful guidance of a Sat-Nav with the voice of the Cookie Monster, the two sisters pulled up at the police station in a large town a few miles away from Haling Cove and Edgewater Clinic.

The station was newly built from the look of the gleaming brickwork, and as they walked through the sliding doors there wasn’t even the hint of the scent of stale coffee. With double-height ceilings and a glass front, Annie felt like she was in a shopping mall and not a police station.

“This is your domain,” Mim said, giving Annie a nudge towards the reception desk.

Back in Norfolk, Annie’s best friend Rose was the keeper of the station. She was approachable and friendly and only ever took her eyes off the prize when she was fishing for gossip. Here it was different. Two immaculate women and a man who looked like he’d walked off the pages of a Gucci ad sat behind the long desk. The man was busy on the phone and one of the women was talking to an old lady with a tweed skirt and matching neck scarf.

“What?” Annie looked at Mim. “My domain is a nineteen-sixties concrete jungle with orange chairs and a coffee machine that dishes out cups of watery mud.”

“Well, you know, this isn’t all that different,” Mim whispered, pushing Annie further toward the reception and the unengaged receptionist. “Semantics and all that.”

“Not sure this counts as semantics.” Annie took a breath and walked up.

“How can I help you today?” the receptionist asked, smiling widely.

“Why are there three of you?” Annie blurted. “Do you get a lot of crime here in Devon?”

The woman laughed, seemingly surprising herself.

“We cover a large area,” she said, not really answering Annie’s question.

Mim’s elbow found Annie’s ribs and she remembered that wasn’t the question she had meant to ask. She leant in, embarrassed at the idea of her dad being arrested. “I was wondering if you could tell us where Mr Robert O’Malley was taken, please?”

“Mr Robert O’Malley?”

Annie nodded, waiting for the receptionist to type something into her computer to shed some light on what had happened. But the woman didn’t move.

“He’s our dad,” Annie pressed. “He was… um… picked up from his work a little while ago and we think he was brought here.”

The receptionist sat back a little and crossed her arms over her chest. Mim huffed and shoved her shoulder in front of her sister.

“Our dad was arrested, and we want to know if we can see him, please?” she said, as though she was talking to a naughty toddler who wasn’t tying their shoelaces quickly enough.

“And have we called you to let you know your father is detained here?”

Annie answered no, as Mim shouted yes. The receptionist raised a neatly pencilled brow. Out of the corner of her eye Annie saw the Gucci ad spin in his chair and head in their direction. He was shorter than she’d pictured.

“Mr Robert O’Malley?” The man didn’t beat around the bush with formalities. “He was booked in by our custody sergeant and the only reason I can tell you this is because he was taken into Haling Infirmary shortly afterwards. Are you his next of kin?”

Annie’s stomach lurched. There was never a good reason to ask for someone’s next of kin when they’d been taken into hospital.

“I am, yes,” Mim replied. “And she’s my sister.”

She didn’t feel like her father’s next of kin, though. Annie couldn’t get the image of him out of her head. The way he’d looked at her as though he could have gone another twenty years without laying eyes on her. She bit down on her lip, drawing the pain away from her chest.

“What’s happened to him?” Annie asked, clearing her throat. “He looked well when we saw him get arrested.”

Annie knew that sometimes people’s hearts couldn’t take the stress. But not their dad, surely not their dad. He was as strong as an ox. At least he had been nearly twenty years ago.

Gucci ad and the woman who’d been helping them glanced at each other. Their look telling a thousand unspoken words.

“He had a fall and hurt his head,” the man said. “We don’t know any more information than that, only that he was accompanied in the ambulance by an officer.”

“Ambulance?” Annie said, her mind shifting. “So, it was a bad fall then? What did he fall on? How did he fall?”

“We’re not at liberty to tell you that.” Gucci ad crossed his arms over his chest and stood up straight.

“What is it with gatekeepers today?” Mim said, her lips pursed. “You’re all we can’t tell you this and we’re not at liberty that. Well can you at least tell us how far Haling Infirmary is, maybe they’ll be more accommodating.”

Mim’s phone buzzed in her hand, and she huffed some more, taking herself away from the reception to answer it. Annie looked between the two young people sitting behind the desk.

“Thanks for your time,” she said, dully. “I’d say you’ve been helpful, but…”

She turned on her heels and walked away without finishing her sentence, scouting out the space for Mim. Something felt off-kilter, and it wasn’t just the way her dad had looked at her or the lies that Mim had fed her. Annie’s spidey senses were twitching and she knew she needed to talk it through with someone who would listen without judgement.

“Swift, it’s me,” she said when Joe picked up her call. “Listen, it’s all gone a bit pear-shaped.”

“Annie, two ticks, I’m just out of the sea,” he replied, and Annie heard the calmness of the waves in the background. “Let me grab my towel and I’m all yours.”

Annie took her time walking out from the station into the sunshine. Though the building may be shiny and new, a bone chilling coldness seeped in through its walls and had cast Annie in a shroud. She was glad to be under the sun’s rays again, and glad of the warmth of the station that she called home. She’d take stale coffee and sticky orange chairs any day. Over in the distance Annie could see Mim talking animatedly on her own phone, her arms gesticulating wildly.

“Right, fire away,” Swift said. “What’s happened?”

Annie gave him the rundown. From the secure hospital to the police station and everything in between. She was going to leave out the part where her dad told them he didn’t want to see them, but Annie felt okay talking to Swift and she wanted him to know. She finished talking and waited for Swift to tell her everything was going to be fine. But when he left a silence that lasted just a smidgen too long, Annie knew her hope was misplaced.

“Swift?” she said, knowing he was still there.

“Annie, listen to me,” he replied, and Annie’s skin rippled with goose bumps. “Nine times out of ten, people don’t just fall over when they’re booked into the custody suite. You say your dad was accused of supplying drugs and this led to the death of who exactly?”

“I don’t know, I can’t remember. I’m not even sure they said, to be honest.” Annie started to walk towards Mim, her heart pounding.

“Okay. Why don’t you get yourself to the hospital and I’ll do some digging from here.” Swift was walking now too; Annie could hear it in the shortness of his breath. “And be careful Annie. Don’t talk to anyone you don’t trust.”

With Swift still on the other end of the phone Annie looked up at her sister who’d turned as white as a sheet.

“Mim?” Annie asked, taking her sister’s free hand with her own. It was like marble.

“That was the hospital,” Mim stuttered. “Dad was so badly injured they’ve put him in an induced coma, and they want us to go straight there.”

Tears rolled down Mim’s face and Annie pulled her in for a hug.

“Annie, I’ll meet you there,” Swift said over the phone as Annie’s arm dropped to her side.

It had been almost twenty years since Annie had seen her dad and maybe she’d been just five minutes too late to hug him too.

FIVE

Running through their third reception area in a little under an hour, Annie hoped this one would be more helpful than the previous two. They gave their dad’s name and were directed to a small family room to wait until someone could come and talk to them.

Annie paced the room, her trainers squeaking on the linoleum. The yellow walls were giving her a headache and she squeezed her fingers either side of the bridge of her nose to stem it. A lingering scent of hospital breakfast made the air feel thick and heavy with eggs and toast.

“Why are we in here?” Mim asked, patting the seat next to her.

Annie dropped down into it and let out a sigh. “I guess everyone who has seen Dad is too busy to come and talk to us at the moment.”

“Yeah, I get that, but why here? What’s wrong with the giant waiting area we passed through on the way in?”

“Maybe that’s for the sick people.”

“Or maybe he’s really unwell?” Mim ran her hands through her hair, fluffing it up on top. “On Casualty they only use the family room if there’s bad news.”

Annie couldn’t comprehend the idea that their dad was sick enough to warrant a bad news room.

“I called Swift, while you were on the phone to the hospital,” she confessed instead.

“I’m glad,” Mim replied, puffing out her cheeks. “I feel like we’re a bit over our heads now. What is going on, Annie?”

“Swift told me that people don’t normally slip and fall in custody.” Annie got back to her feet and went to the window, the sunshine making her squint. “He didn’t say it overtly, but I think Swift meant that what happened to Dad wasn’t an accident.”

“Someone did it to him?” Mim’s eyes widened. “Why would they do that?”

“When was the last time you spoke to him?” Annie turned to face her sister, white dots blurring her vision.

Mim shrugged. “I can’t remember.”

“You can’t remember the date exactly, or you can’t remember as it’s been too long?”

Mim chewed her bottom lip and looked as though she was going to cry. “Do you remember the village up north? Ethlake?”

Annie wasn’t going to forget Ethlake in a hurry. She’d travelled there with Swift to find Mim and had stumbled upon a village full of lies and deceit and murder. She had found a lead to Mim eventually, but she’d nearly fallen from a water tower in the process. Or rather, she’d nearly been pushed to her death from a water tower in the process.

“Yes, I remember Ethlake.” Annie nodded.

“I was looking for him then,” Mim said into her chest.

Annie felt her jaw drop.

“But it was almost three years ago you were there, wasn’t it? What do you mean looking for him? I thought you kept in touch. I thought you were on good terms. Don’t tell me the last time you spoke to him was over three years ago.”

“We’ve messaged. We still message. It’s just… we kind of lost touch over the years. No one’s fault, it’s just how it is sometimes, isn’t it?”

“What?” Annie felt the blood race up through her neck, pulsing in her cheeks. “You’ve been defending him so staunchly and all this time you’ve had no idea what he’s been up to because he’s ghosted you too? Why did you make me feel so bad about the feelings I have for our dad when he’s treating you exactly the same way he treated me?”

Mim got to her feet, her hands on her hips.

“He is not treating me in any way, Annie,” she said, her voice high. “He’s just busy.”

Annie flopped back onto the chair, exhaustion seeping into her bones. “Busy dishing out drugs, seemingly.”

Mim looked as though she was squaring for a fight when the door wheezed open and a man in scrubs walked in.

“Are you here for Robert O’Malley?” the man asked, propping the door open with his foot.

Annie felt the energy in the room shift, much like it had in her moments before. She nodded and went to stand but the man motioned for her to remain seated. He pulled up a chair in front of her. Mim sat down silently beside her, anger radiating from her like sonic pulses.

“Is everything okay?” Annie asked, her words sounding stringy.

“I’m Steve, one of the registrars in Resus,” he said, leaning his forearms on his thighs.

Annie’s brows shot skywards. This wasn’t a simple fall if their dad was in the trauma department in A&E.

“Your father came in with some serious injuries to his head and chest. He had an intracranial haemorrhage, a bleed on his brain and a couple of broken ribs. We carried out an emergency craniotomy and the pressure on his brain has been relieved. But, what we’re not sure of yet is the extent of the damage to the tissue.”

Mim’s face was devoid of colour and Annie knew her own looked the same.

“What does that mean?” Annie asked, quietly. “The extent of the damage to his brain tissue?”

Steve shuffled upright in his chair and tilted his head. Annie feared the worst. Head tilts were a precursor to more bad news.

“When we bleed into our brain, the space taken by the blood is where the oxygen and nutrients normally pass. This basically means that our brain is starved of what it needs to survive. Once brain tissue dies there’s no bringing it back. So, we’re not sure how much, if any, tissue in your dad’s brain has died, but what we do know is that the area that was affected is where speech and motor function control is located.”

The room spun around Annie in a sickening kaleidoscope of colours.

“So he might not be able to talk?” she stuttered. “Or walk. Or is it worse than that? Might he not have any faculties left?”

“We’re not sure of anything yet, we’ve put your dad in an induced coma to help him recover and as soon as his body starts to heal we can reduce the sedative and see how he responds.”

“Can we see him?” she asked.

Steve nodded. “He’s being moved to ICU, you can go and see him as soon as he’s settled. I will warn you that he’s got a lot of tubes and wires around him, but they’re just making sure he’s safe. And he has an armed guard with him too.”

“That’s not to keep him safe, though,” Annie muttered. “Can’t see why he needs that now. He’s not exactly going anywhere is he?”

“Doctor,” Mim interrupted. “This part of the brain, where is it located?”

“The Broca’s area? Left-hand side of the head.”

“And would a slip and a fall cause this kind of damage to that area?”

The doctor steepled his fingers.

“It’s not an injury we see a lot from a fall,” he conceded. “But it can happen. If he fell at an angle and hit the side of his head on something hard, perhaps a curb side or a table, then this kind of damage would be noticeable.”

Annie spotted the tell-tale signs of a lie. The way the doctor’s eyes darted to the window, the nibbling of his lips. What else wasn’t he telling them, and why?

“What normally causes these kinds of injuries?” she asked. “Broken ribs too? How would he get those in a fall?”

Steve nodded, his intake of breath audible in the family room. “Oh, broken ribs often happen during a fall,” he said.

“But at the same time as a brain injury?” Annie pressed.

“Possibly,” Steve looked defeated. “Mostly from falls from height or…”

He looked between Annie and Mim.

“Or?” Mim asked.

Annie already knew what was coming. She’d seen enough of it at work, back when she was a psychotherapist in the probation service and even more so now in the MCU.

“Look, we don’t know what caused your dad’s injuries.” Steve had gotten to his feet. “It was an unwitnessed fall. But I’ve seen these types of injuries together before, mostly on the weekends when people get handsy when they’re drunk.”

“Handsy?” Annie asked. She wasn’t about to let the doctor leave without him saying it outright. “We know you’re not police and you can’t tell us exactly what happened, but you can treat us like adults.”

“Fair.” Steve nodded. “It looked like your dad had been attacked, possibly with a weapon of some sort. The shape and position of the bruises and the head injury look more likely to be inflicted by someone while he was standing than through a fall. I have, of course, told the police my thoughts. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to Resus. One of our patient liaison team will be here shortly to escort you to see your dad.”

“Thank you, doctor,” Mim said, standing and shutting the door behind him. She looked down at Annie. “He was in custody when he got those injuries; if the doctor tells the police he thinks he was attacked what are they going to do about it other than hide the truth? You saw him, Annie, he was fine when he was arrested.”

Annie sank her head into her hands, raking her fingers through her hair. She tried to picture the man in the car park, her thoughts whirring with the possibility he had been attacked before he’d left work. But the look of horror in his eyes when he caught sight of his daughters was etched on her memory. There had been no injuries, just fear.

The door creaked open again, sucking the blinds from the open window into the room. Swift was a welcome sight, but only for a brief moment before Annie spotted the look on his face. He took the seat Mim had just vacated.

“So, I did some digging,” he said, bypassing straight past the formalities. His hand on Annie’s arm was all the comfort she needed. “I logged into the system to try and find your father’s arrest form or some info about the crime he had supposedly committed.”

“And?” Mim dropped onto her knees in front of Swift.

“Nothing,” Swift shrugged.

“Nothing at all?” Annie asked. “Do you think it’s a closed account given that dad used to be in the force?”

“Maybe, but if that was the case then I’d still have been able to see something. His name, at least,” Swift said. “There was a custody number for a man matching your dad’s description and as soon as I clicked on it, I was thrown out of the system.”

“Weird.” Mim whistled through her teeth.

“What’s weirder is the email I received almost immediately afterwards telling me to stick to the force I work for and not to go poking my nose in where it’s not wanted.”

“What?” Annie scoffed.

“Yeah, well, it was worded more professionally, but that was the gist.”

Annie shuffled in her seat, angling herself so she could see Swift better. “So, in essence, looking at it from an outside perspective, we have a man who was arrested at his workplace for dealing drugs and somewhere in between being arrested and arriving in custody he was beaten so badly he is in a coma in Resus.”

“Pretty much, yes,” Swift nodded, moving his hand to take hold of Annie’s. “But we’re not going to get answers about how and who and why from the local police.”

Swift’s grip was warm and comforting. He made Annie feel safe despite their location and the reason behind it.

“We need to find out who our dad is supposed to have dealt drugs to, and what happened to them,” Mim said. “Maybe the hospital, Dad’s work hospital I mean, maybe they have some information.”

“Way ahead of you there, Mim,” Swift smiled. “I’ve called Tink. She and Page are going to look into Edgewater Clinic and let me know what they find.”

Annie frowned. “Don’t they have their own work to be getting on with back in Norfolk?”

“A lost seaside donkey pales in comparison to a father who’s potentially been attacked by the police,” Swift said, the corner of his mouth lifting.

Annie knew that Tink and Page would be busy with important work that didn’t include stolen equines. And Page would be doing some last-minute cramming for his exams. She felt warmth in her stomach at the idea they were happy to help her even though she was miles away and their own lives went on.

“I’m sure between them they’ll have it solved before we’ve even managed a dip in the sea,” Annie said, softly. “There’s got to be a straightforward reason for all of this.”

Swift made to reply when the door wheezed open and the three of them looked at the woman who’d stepped in. She was young, almost too young to be dressed in a nurse’s uniform. The way the dress hung from her bony shoulders gave the impression of a fancy dress party.

“Are you Mr O’Malley’s daughters?” she asked, wide eyed. Annie nodded while Mim dragged herself up from the floor. “Please come with me, he’s ready for you.”

And for the second time that day, Annie wasn’t sure she was ready for this at all.

SIX

When Annie remembered her dad, it was a picture of strength and power. He was the man who had lifted her onto his shoulders without a second thought, who had swung her round and round by the arms until she was crying with laughter. Robert O’Malley may not have been tall but, in Annie’s mind, he’d had the strength of a thousand bears.

So as she walked into the hospital room and saw him lying prone, covered in a thin blue blanket with tubes and wires keeping him alive, it was all she could do to not turn and run in the opposite direction. The emotions of reconnecting were hard enough to process, but Annie hadn’t been expecting the additional heartache that thumped in her chest at the sight of him.

“Do you think he can hear us?” Mim said, edging tentatively closer to the bed. “I’ve read that sometimes people in comas can hear what their loved ones are saying, and they remember and everything.”

Annie couldn’t answer. She was paralysed with fear that the first thing her dad would remember her saying after all these years was something wrong. Swift stepped up to Mim and put a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“I think if you talk to him it will help,” he said, quietly. “Why don’t you tell him what it was you actually came here for.”

Mim’s brows furrowed. “You think asking him for answers while he’s in a coma is a good idea?” she whispered, her lips curling upwards. “I think that might have the opposite effect. He’ll fake sleep until we’re long gone.”

“Fair point,” Swift conceded, smiling. “I just meant that you’d come to surprise him, that’s all, maybe leave out the rest.”

Mim nodded and perched on the edge of the bed, taking her dad’s hand in hers. Through the echo in Annie’s ears, she could hear her sister telling him that they’d travelled all the way from Norfolk and he wasn’t even awake to see them. Mim was making light, but there was a crackle in her voice that broke Annie’s heart a little more.

“You okay?” Swift asked, nudging Annie softly with his shoulder.

“Not really,” Annie admitted, her eyes on her dad. “It’s not gone quite how I imagined. Did you know that Mim hasn’t seen Dad since before Ethlake?”

Swift’s eyes widened. “I thought they were in regular contact.”

“You’re not the only one,” Annie said, humming.

He stepped back and Annie joined him.

“I wonder if that’s why she was so desperate to get her hands on your mum’s file,” Swift said. “Maybe she needed to find out more about their past so she could find out where he’d gone.”

“Maybe,” she replied.

Annie’s stomach churned like a washing machine. They both knew what Mim tried to do to get their mum’s file and neither of them was going to bring it up. It was history. Annie looked past Swift to the young woman her sister was turning into as she bent her body over their dad and started to cry.

“Do you think he’ll be okay,” Annie said, putting the question out there, knowing none of them knew the answer.

She went to Mim, offered her a hand of comfort on her back, trying and failing not to stare at the man in the bed. His eyelids were blue, twitching as his eyes moved beneath. A large white tube was taped to his mouth and the top of his hands were pierced with life-saving IVs. Annie looked closer, her interest piqued by the shape of the bruise that was blossoming around her father’s eye.

“Swift, look at this,” she said, ushering the DI over to the hospital bed. Mim looked up from her chair as Swift leaned in. “Tell me I’m imagining that mark.”

Annie pointed her finger at the red circle under her dad’s left eye. It was hidden in a patch of purple bruise, but up close it was unmistakable.

“That’s an imprint of something, isn’t it?” Annie looked to Swift.

He nodded, leaning in further. “Looks like it.”

“From when he fell?” Mim asked, scooting her chair away from the bed to let her sister and Swift get closer. “You think that could tell us what he landed on? That could give us a clue as to where he fell and what happened.”

“I think it’s telling us a lot more than that,” Swift said, straightening up and pulling his phone from his pocket. “Mim, watch the door for me. Cough or something if the officer guarding the door looks like he might start to earn his keep.”

Mim frowned, but she got up and headed to the door, peering out the window. “You’re okay for now, he’s nursing a very weak coffee.”

“Swift?” Annie looked at him, her thoughts dark. “That looks like the imprint of a signet ring.”

Swift nodded again. “That’s my thinking too.” He angled his phone and started taking photos of the bruise and the red mark, using his hand in the shot as a measure.

“But this is proof that he was beaten somewhere between being arrested and getting to the custody suite. This is proof that the police here did this,” Annie said, her voice getting louder with each word.

Swift placed a cool finger across Annie’s lips, silencing her.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said, seeing how furious she was. “I shouldn’t have done that, but you need to keep your voice down.”

He gestured to the door, where Mim was keeping guard and Annie winced. “Right, yes, I’m sorry too. But we can’t let them get away with it. Even the doctor thought this wasn’t a fall.”

Annie looked back at her dad, seeing with fresh eyes the bruises that were forming. His head was bandaged where he’d been in surgery, but peeking out under the white gauze was a mess of blood and cuts. Even if he wasn’t in a coma, Annie thought he’d have difficulty opening his eyes as they were swollen to the size of oranges.

“But we can’t go ahead and blame the local force, not yet, not when we don’t know what’s happened,” Swift said, puffing out his cheeks. “That’s a sure-fire way to get immediately stonewalled. There might be a totally innocent explanation and we’ll both lose our jobs if we go in heavy-handed.”

“Innocent explanation?” Annie scoffed. “What, he fell out the back of the police car onto the officer’s clenched fist? More than once.”

Swift grimaced. “I know, it’s unlikely, but we need to keep an open…” His sentence was cut short by the beep of his phone. He glanced at the screen and tapped to answer. “Tink, hi, that was quick work.”

Annie heard the tinny voice of Tink on the other end of the phone, but Swift moved away from the bed to take the call, leaving her with the beeps and whirrs of the machines attached to her father.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” she whispered, picking a loose thread from the blanket. “I’m sorry this has happened to you before we had a chance to talk.” She leant closer. “Are you sorry too?”

Sorry for being arrested. Sorry for not being able to talk to her. Sorry for abandoning her as a teen. Annie wasn’t sure what she was asking an apology for. She bit her lip, feeling her throat close with emotion as Swift ended the call.

“That was Tink,” he said. “She and Page have done some initial digging and their findings are more than interesting.”

Annie cleared her throat and nodded to her dad.

“Do we need to take this somewhere else?” she asked.

Swift shook his head. “This is something I think your dad will want to hear too. Maybe not right now, but if there’s good news then it might help his healing.”

He motioned for Mim to join them and the three of them gathered near the window, away from the door and any chance the officer could overhear them.

“Your dad was arrested for supplying drugs that led to the death of two people, right?”

The women nodded.

“I thought that meant two people had taken those drugs and died following complications,” Swift went on. “But that’s not what happened. Apparently, the drugs were given to a patient at the hospital, Sarah Mitchell, who then went on to kill the two women in an unprovoked attack.”

“What?” Mim’s brows disappeared into her hairline. “How can they arrest Dad for that?”

“They’re saying he supplied the drugs to Sarah Mitchell.”

“Yes, so being arrested for supplying makes sense,” Annie said. “But not for the death of the two women.”

“Sarah killed them while on drugs supplied by your father,” Swift added.

“But presumably this Mitchell person still had free will?” Mim spat. “Even though she’s locked up for being doolally.”

“Mim,” Annie said, her voice strained. “Stop calling these patients crazy.”

Mim crossed her arms and slouched. “Well, did she or did she not have free will to kill those other women?”

Annie looked to Swift. “And how did the security staff let her do that in a place that’s supposed to be safe. How did she get hold of makeshift weapons?”

Swift glanced towards the door, wiping his hands on his jeans.

“She did it with her bare hands,” he whispered. Annie gaped at him. “She killed two people with her bare hands while the rest of the ward watched on.”

“What the…?” Mim whistled through her teeth.

“Apparently she was screaming something about killing the flies,” Swift nodded. “It was pretty intense.”

Annie stretched her arms to the ceiling, feeling her bones pop and realign with being hunched for so long.

“What was the name of the women she killed? Do we know anything about them?” Annie asked.

“Ruby Crooks and Olivia Addison,” Swift said. “Both under a section 37 which means they have been convicted of crimes and the courts sent them to Edgewater rather than prison due to mental health reasons.”

“And Sarah Mitchell?” Annie asked. “Was she a Section 37 too?”

“She was a Section 3,” Swift said, his face twisted in confusion.

“But that’s admission for treatment,” Annie blurted. “So she hadn’t even committed a crime outside of Edgewater?”

“And that’s not all,” Swift said, glancing again at the door. “There has been a raft of suspicious deaths this year and last. Tink and Page are finding more details and will let us know as soon as they have any more info.”

Mim threw her hands up and walked away, puffing out air like a steam train.

“What is it with you two?” she said, peering out the glass in the door. “Does crime just follow you wherever you go?”

Annie barked out a laugh, taking herself by surprise.

“It would seem so,” she giggled, aware that it was totally inappropriate given the circumstances and wondering briefly if she was on the verge of something herself.

The door pushed open and the officer who’d been guarding the room poked his head in, his mouth twisted. Annie snapped hers shut and took a deep, steadying breath.

“I’m going to need to ask you to leave now,” he said, his eyes passing over all of them in turn. “If he’s going to be charged pretty soon, then Mr O’Malley needs some rest.”

Annie glanced at her dad and nearly burst out laughing again. He was in a coma, there was nothing that any of them could have done to wake him from the rest he was already having. If being in a coma was restful in the first place. Swift could have danced with castanets and still her dad would have slept through it. She nodded at the guard, her eyes watering with the force of holding in a laugh. Hopefully he’d take it as sadness and not the hilarity of picturing Swift in a flamenco outfit.

“How can he be charged?” Annie asked, deep breathing to ward off the fits of giggles. “He’s in a coma.”

The officer rolled his eyes like what he was about to say should be public knowledge.

“Under section 11 of the Criminal Procedures Rule, a court can pass a custodial sentence in the defendant’s absence if required. And it’s required here. Please leave.”

“Annie,” Mim grabbed her arm and dragged her out of the room as Swift stayed and talked to the guard. “I know it’s sad, but I’ve just had a thought, can you pull yourself together and listen to it?”

“Ever the comfort, Mim,” Annie replied, wiping her face on the backs of her hands, and trying not to think about what the guard had just said. “What is it, I’m all ears.”

There were no windows in the corridor, making it cooler and Annie’s arms broke out into goosebumps. Stale coffee and the start of the lunch trolleys permeated the air.

“We need to go and talk to that woman in the hospital,” Mim said, chewing the inside of her cheek.

“Sarah Mitchell?” Annie asked. “She’ll not be having visitors except her solicitor for a long while yet. They’re not going to let in two strangers to talk to her.”

“No, not the cra… not the patient,” Mim corrected herself. “The woman at reception. What was it she said to you?”

“Pippa?” The voice of concern came flooding back. “She wanted us to go after him, didn’t she?”

“Then we need to find out why.” Mim grasped at Annie’s arm. “You heard what that officer said. They’re going to charge Dad and put him in jail and he’s not even able to defend himself. He needs our help.”

Annie leant against the sticky hospital wall, her hands in her hair. Her dad hadn’t been there to help Annie when she’d fallen so far she wasn’t sure she’d be able to get up again. He hadn’t been there when she was paying a private investigator all her money to find him and her sister. He hadn’t been there when she had to move into her office to live because she couldn’t afford anything else. She let out a groan which echoed off the yellow walls. Annie couldn’t hold anything against her dad, she knew that; she knew she was going to help him as much as he needed her to because at the end of the day he was still her father.

SEVEN

While Swift started his research on the information that Tink and Page had discovered, Annie and Mim headed back to Edgewater Clinic. Pippa Broadbent looked like a child playing dress-up when Annie and Mim walked back in. She’d been in the middle of what looked like tidying the leaflet stand and didn’t have the safety of the desk booth to escape behind. Her wide eyes and freckled button nose irked against the smart skirt suit she was wearing. She visibly paled as she clocked the sisters, her eyes darting to the airlock between the reception and the wards behind, as though working out if she could get there in time.

“It’s okay,” Annie said, smiling as widely as she could. “We’re not here to cause any more trouble.”

“We didn’t cause any trouble the first time around,” Mim interrupted.

Annie gave her a steely look and went back to Pippa.

“Sorry,” Annie continued. “I was wondering if you had a moment to talk to us, please Pippa? Privately if needed.”

The young woman bit her lip, eyes darting back to the airlock. Annie leaned in, moving the carousel of leaflets around and pretending to look at information on the justice system and what to do if you’re worried about your child’s mental health.

“You said we needed to go and help our dad, right?” Annie whispered, closely inspecting a leaflet on the etiquette of hospital visits when the patients were locked up for their own safety. The happy cartoon faces on the front page made Annie want to scrunch it up in her fist. “We went to see our dad and somehow between him being arrested out in the car park and getting to the station, he’s had a brain injury so traumatic the doctors aren’t sure if he’s going to have long-term damage. Or even if he’s going to wake up. Please, Pippa, we just want to talk to you.”

Annie took a breath, her chest tight with the stress of saying the facts out loud. It made them more real somehow, as though they weren’t just living in her head anymore.

Overhead tinny speakers played out an instrumental version of Love Shack, a strange choice for the setting. In fact, the whole get-up in the reception was strange. Annie looked around, giving Pippa time to digest what she’d just heard. The plush seating, the rack of leaflets, even the paintings on the wall were giving off expensive vibes. This was a hospital, designed to look after the most vulnerable people in the community, and Annie felt like she was in a showroom for Porsche.

“What happened?” Pippa stuttered, grabbing back Annie’s attention. She held a shaking hand to her lips.

“We don’t know, and the police are being anything but helpful.” Annie reached out and stroked a comforting arm down Pippa’s shoulder, feeling her flinch under the touch. “Sorry. Sorry. But can you see why we need to talk to you now? I hadn’t seen my dad in nearly twenty years and now I might not get the chance to…”

Annie’s voice cracked and she felt hot tears trickle down her cheeks.

“I could get into so much trouble talking to you,” Pippa said, her voice small.

“I don’t want you to lose your job,” Annie whispered. “All we want to know is any information you have on the women who died. The incident. Who they were. Info on Sarah Mitchell. Anything that we can use to exonerate our father.”

Pippa’s brows knitted together. “How do you know Sarah?”

Shit, Annie hadn’t meant to give that away. An anxiety induced headache was forming behind her eyes, she could see her pulse beating in her vision and felt a wave of nausea rise in her stomach.

“The officers who arrested Dad,” Mim cut in. “They let it slip about Sarah. Said Dad had been to blame even though Sarah Mitchell was the one who did it, something like that.”

Annie mouthed a quick thank you at her sister as Pippa visibly relaxed.

“Please, just sit down with us now for five, ten minutes and tell us what you know.” Annie said. “Time is running out for Dad, and we just want some answers.”

Pippa shrugged her shoulders, the skin on her face slackening making her look ten years older.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll tell you what I know and do what I can. But please, if anyone asks what you’re doing at the clinic, you’re here researching an article on Dr Reynolds, Dr Michael Reynolds. He’s the lead psychiatrist here at Edgewater and one of the shareholders. He’s a bit egotistical like that, won’t ask you to leave if he thinks you’re writing about him and his revolutionary work.”

Pippa dipped her fingers in inverted commas at the last two words.

“Thank you so much, you’ve no idea what this means to me… to us.” Annie felt her chest expand. “We’ll make sure we’re as quick as we can be and don’t worry about us giving away why we’re here. We’re both used to keeping secrets.”

Annie regretted the words as soon as she’d said them. Mim’s face looked like thunder. But Pippa didn’t seem to notice.

“Come with me.” The young woman led them through the reception to a locked door away from the airlock to the wards.

“Can we see inside?” Mim asked, pointedly.

Pippa shook her head. “No way. That’s more than my job is worth. We’ve got a meeting room just down here. It’s used for press, some MDTs when Reynolds doesn’t want the meeting held in the belly of the clinic. Sometimes we rent it out for TV and film studios if they need a prison or hospital setting.”

Pippa was on a roll now, hidden behind the locked door and walking the corridors she knew well, she’d come out of her shell and was talking freely. Annie wondered what it was about the reception area that had made her so afraid. Because Annie had never felt as claustrophobic as she did now, walking these windowless, locked corridors. And Annie had been in her fair share of small spaces.

“Is it much further?” she asked, interrupting Pippa’s stream of conversation about the perks of working somewhere like Edgewater.

Mim gave Annie a side-eye and encouraged Pippa to finish what she had been saying about the free canteen.

“You know, when I first started my job here, I didn’t like the idea that I was locked in either,” Pippa said, stopping at a door and turning to Annie. “But the more I thought about it, the safer I felt. At least here we know who we’re with and that we’re safe if anything was to happen. There may be murderers and rapists and abductors sharing these corridors with us, but they’re not going anywhere, and we have a team of security who will come running if I pull this.” She gestured to the alarm attached to her key belt. “Out there no-one knows who they’re walking next to on the street. It could be someone lovely, it could be someone ready to stab your eyes out with a pen or throw you into the back of a van and drive off, never to be seen again. Then where’s the team of burly men waiting to come running to your rescue? Here, that’s where. You’re safe here.”

She pulled her keys from the belt, their elastic chain reaching the locked door. Unlocking it and pushing it open for the sisters, Pippa stood back and let them go first, her keychain snapping back to her belt. Annie felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck walking past Pippa and into the room. It was comfortable and thankfully there was a window. But she was putting all her trust in a woman who could slam the door and lock her in this room forever.

Pippa sensed Annie’s reluctance and gave a soft laugh.

“You’d soon be found,” she said, almost reading Annie’s mind. “Dr Reynolds likes to use this room to have secret meetings with his nursing staff because there’s no CCTV. Get in the way of Reynolds’ trysts and you’d be thrown out quicker than they can drop their knickers.”

“Nice,” Mim whistled ironically. “And he passed his DBS did he?”

She was walking around the surprisingly large room, her fingers trailing on the backs of the leather chairs tucked under a glass table. At the side of the room was a small sofa and on the opposite wall a side table replete with a coffee machine and a row of glasses next to a water filter. It wasn’t like the police interview rooms Annie was used to. In comparison to the hospital family room she and Mim had been ushered into earlier, one that looked and acted like a hospital room, Annie thought this one looked more like something she’d see in one of those tall buildings in Canary Wharf.

“Is Edgewater Clinic a private setting?” she asked, following Mim into the room and pulling out a leather chair from the table.

The only giveaway that this wasn’t a finance bro’s office was the bars on the outside of the windows. Almost cleverly disguised by the patterned glass, their vertical form was a stark reminder of where they were.

“What do you mean?” Pippa asked, flicking the switch on the coffee machine.

“Not NHS, I guess,” Annie replied, giving a nod to the offer of a drink. It was only now she was sitting in a very comfortable chair, that Annie realised how exhausted she was. “Is it run by a private company? Do people have to pay to be here?”

Pippa’s mouth twisted, she took her time to answer, pressing the buttons on the coffee machine and watching as frothy white foam topped delicious-smelling coffee. She brought three cups over to the table and set them down with as little noise as she could muster on the glass top.

“We get a lot of funding from NHS Special Commissioning budget,” Pippa said, taking a seat opposite Annie and Mim. “That’s for the patients who are involuntarily sectioned, those who’ve committed a crime or sectioned for their own safety. My last place was purely NHS, and it was in dire need of a facelift. But we are running a business with shareholders and partners here, and so we do take private patients who have forensic needs whose family would like us to look after them until they’re better. That’s where we’re different from other secure hospitals around the country.”

Annie felt her mind whirring.

“Someone’s family can do that?” she asked, sharply. “Isn’t that going against the Human Rights Act?”

Pippa smiled nicely at Annie, the kind of smile a teacher would give a child who was trying their best but just wasn’t landing on the right answer.

“We nurture people and help them in a way that’s just not possible in the real world.” Pippa took a sip of her coffee.

Annie bit her tongue and smiled back. She wanted answers about the situation her dad was in, not to have a discussion about the rights and wrongs of a family being able to lock up a loved one when they were too hard to handle.

“Our partners are mostly wonderful people,” Pippa went on, wanting to make her point. “I’d trust them with my life. With the exception of Dr Reynolds of course. I thought I’d seen a lot of bad treatments at my last place. Do you know, they used heat treatment to try to cure patients there? Did nothing but singe their skin and make the corridors smell like my nan’s BBQs. But Dr Reynolds is something else.”

She gave a little laugh that echoed around the room. Annie wondered how many of Dr Reynolds’ nurses had been given supervision in here and how much work had actually been done.

“So, your dad, Robert O’Malley,” Pippa said, veering away from the topic of money and morals. “What do you want to know?”

Mim sat up straight, speaking before Annie could.

“We’d love to know when he came here and what kind of work he did,” she said.

“Do you guys not talk?” Pippa frowned.

There was no way Annie was going to go into the history of the O’Malley’s, they didn’t have time. Their dad’s time was ticking, and the threat of a custodial sentence was looming over him.

“We haven’t for a while,” Mim replied. “But we wanted to get back in touch, which is why we’re both here. Him and I travelled a lot when I was younger, so we know what he’s like at losing touch.”

Mim gave a little laugh, brushing off the years of hurt that Annie had experienced. She knew Mim was only doing it to play down what had happened to keep Pippa talking, but that didn’t mean it hurt any less.

“Well, that’s sweet of you both,” Pippa said, cupping her coffee and drawing it to her face. She took another sip and peered out over the top of her cup with giant eyes. “He came here about two years ago, from memory. I could find out an exact date if that’s important?”

Annie shook her head.

“He is a fab guard, he’s so caring and he’d never push around the patients like some of the security do. They have a rep for thinking they’re brought into Edgewater to keep the peace, but actually they’re really only here to protect the patients and the staff. We try to get rid of the ones who want to play God, and your dad was definitely not in that category. Although…”

Pippa looked thoughtfully out the window, chewing her bottom lip, still cradling her coffee.

“What?” Mim prompted. “Although, what?”

“Well, there have been some weird things happening,” Pippa said, quietly. “Like, they only seemed to start after your dad arrived.”

“Like what?” Annie asked, leaning forward, her own cup long forgotten. “Weird how?”

“Like this whole thing with Sarah, you know, the woman who killed those two patients,” Pippa went on. “We’ve had more things like that happen. Someone took themselves onto the roof and jumped. They must have had help to get up there.”

“Do you get a lot of patients trying to kill themselves?” Annie asked.

Pippa nodded. “Of course, it’s the nature of this setting. But the weird thing about this patient was that they weren’t trying to kill themselves, they actually thought they could fly. And this was a woman who had no prior psychosis or delusions.”

Annie felt herself frown.

“You seem to like our dad,” Annie asked. “But why? Given that you’re now saying there have been other unexplained deaths since he arrived in post.”

“He’s too nice.” Pippa shrugged. “There’s just no way he could have done it. But I’ve been wrong before.”

This whole meeting was looking to be a waste of their time. Pippa didn’t have any solid proof about their dad, just a hunch based around him being nice. Could a nice man abandon a daughter? Annie opened her mouth to ask for more, but was stopped by the opening of the door and the face like thunder of the tall, broad man who’d walked in.

EIGHT

“Dr Reynolds,” Pippa exclaimed, pushing her chair back and getting to her feet.

“What is going on here?” Dr Reynolds’ voice was as imposing as his physique. “You don’t have this room booked out and there are certainly no visitors in the logbook. Explain yourself, Philippa. And it had better be good.”

He stretched himself up to his full height and towered over the young receptionist. Annie dragged herself to her feet, not wanting to sit and watch this imbalance of power on display. But Mim beat her to it, batting her eyelashes and giving the doctor a sweet smile.

“Dr Reynolds,” she said, her voice dripping with sugar. “The very man. Hi, I’m so excited to meet you. My name is Mi… Miranda, and this is my colleague, Fergie. We’re from a national press and we’d love to talk to you about the amazing work you’re doing here.”

Mim sidled up to the doctor and stroked his arm, playing the act of simpering muse so well that Annie had to remind herself it was just an act. She could picture the way Mim would have done this very routine with Swift to try and get their mum’s file from him and it made her feel nauseous.

“Oh, right, I see,” Dr Reynolds said, a faint blush creeping up his cheeks.

Pippa sat back down, a smile etching the corners of her mouth. She had known this man well enough to give Annie and Mim a get out, and it was working.

“Pippa here was giving us the lowdown on how things work, but we’d love to hear it straight from you, if you have time of course. You must be a very busy man.” Mim peered up through her lashes at him and blinked slowly. “And we happened to arrive at a very unfortunate time. There was a ruckus in the car park and someone was arrested. Can you believe it, it was a staff member too.”

A cloud passed over the doctor’s face and Annie could see him quickly calculating how much an arrested staff member would damage his reputation and what he could do to smother it before it surfaced.

“Well, of course, I’d be happy to talk to you both.” Dr Reynolds’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Leave your bags and phones here, hospital rules I’m afraid and then follow me and have a tour of my fantastic facilities. And I can talk you through some of my cutting-edge technology. I’d not normally engage with press without a proper schedule in place, but I’m more than happy to make this an exception. Where did you say you were from again?”

“We didn’t, it’s embargoed until we have the story, I’m afraid,” Mim skirted the question, a finger on her lips.

She slipped an arm through Dr Reynolds’ and guided him back out through the door, turning and motioning for Annie to follow.

“Thank you, Pippa,” Annie called back as she skipped after her sister and the doctor.

Pippa lifted a hand in farewell, but the shadow cast over her face made Annie’s blood run cold.

Catching up to Mim and Dr Reynolds as they power walked down the corridor back to reception, Annie overheard her sister asking questions that would have sounded rude were it not for the way she twisted the words.

“How awful to have a member of staff arrested, and right outside too, you must have been so shocked?” Mim walked on the balls of her feet to keep up with the doctor. “Was it someone close to you?”

Dr Reynolds slipped his arm out of Mim’s to unlock the door and usher them through. Annie wondered if they were about to be turfed out on their ears but, to her surprise, Dr Reynolds headed straight for the airlock door to the wards.

“It was a shock, yes,” he said, opening the first of the locked doors.

They all shuffled through into a tiny space between the two doors. It was carpeted and smelt nice, and each of the doors had a window so Annie could see both the reception area and the corridor ahead. Up close, Dr Reynolds smelt of expensive aftershave and hair products, with not a whiff of the man underneath. He pushed past the women and turned his key in the lock of the next door.

“You know we have these mini chambers to make sure our patients don’t get out.” He turned back to face them, the door still closed. “They could make it through one of these barriers, but our staff would be ready to catch them on the other side. It’s a measure I put in to keep people safe.” His eyes dropped to the floor, almost comically. “But I couldn’t keep them safe from one of our own.”

Annie grimaced, quickly rearranging her face before the doctor saw it. “What can you tell us about him?”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you girls were only here for juicy gossip.” Dr Reynolds’ fake smile was back. “Hey, you don’t write for some godawful left-wing girly crap, do you? You’re not here to chain yourselves to our railings and throw soup at our walls?”

He let out a meaty guffaw and pushed open the door, finally letting in some fresh air. It was all Annie could do to not elbow him out of the way to get through.

Though the façade of the building had been posh office blocks, the inside felt oppressive and claustrophobic. Despite the fresh paint and the clean floors, there were no windows in these corridors and the air felt still and thick. The silence was heavy in Annie’s ears, the music playing in the reception blocked out by two airtight doors. She pulled at the neck of her top and tried to tune in to what Mim was saying.

“Of course we’re not, do we look like smelly losers to you?” Mim joked, leaning against Dr Reynolds’ arm. “We’re just wondering the best angle for the article, that’s all. Do we go with a sensationalised story about how a criminal was allowed to be security for the vulnerable? Or should we stick with our original story about the innovative works of Dr Michael Reynolds?”

Dr Reynolds looked at his watch. “I’ve got an hour before rounds, why don’t I give you the tour and you can decide how you’d like to frame your story afterwards? This is very unconventional for me, you must understand. But I am working on a new type of treatment at the moment and we’re looking for more patients who would be willing to try it. You have come along at a very opportune moment.”

The last sentence was directed at Annie, the doctor’s eyes penetrating her skull. She hugged her arms around her body, staving off the chills, and nodded as enthusiastically as she could muster. They had stopped halfway along the next corridor, up ahead was a closed door with no windows and a turn to the right. Annie couldn’t see past either and she was starting to feel like this hospital was a maze, deliberately designed to confuse its inhabitants. A trickle of sweat ran down between her shoulder blades and soaked into the waist band of her trousers.

“What I will say, though,” Dr Reynolds went on, leading the sisters along the corridor to the door at the opposite end. “Is that I was duped into giving that man a job here.”

Annie’s attention piqued.

“He came highly recommended to me by the board.” Dr Reynolds puffed out his cheeks. “In fact, he had been headhunted by the sector to work in security, and that’s not something that happens a lot. He was a good guard. It’s such a shame what has happened.”

“What do you mean?” Annie asked. How did the doctor know about their dad’s condition, unless he’d been a part of what happened.

“Oh, you know, just that he was found with illegal substances when he should have been one of the responsible ones.” A flush crept up his neck, mottling the stubble rash even more than it had been already.

“What kind of illegal substances? Do you mean he was dealing inside Edgewater?” Annie ignored the stare she was getting from Mim and pressed on with her questions. “Only, you know, there’s a lot of hurdles to jump to do that, and I’m assuming you have rigorous drug screening, given how… um, great you seem.”

Annie had never been the best at sucking up to people and it was showing. Mim cringed but Dr Reynolds seemed to take her lack of tact in his stride.

“We are great, here at Edgewater you’re never safer,” he spouted like an advert. “And we have regular screening and spot visits from the drug dogs. But you know those kind of imbeciles who deal drugs often don’t take them themselves. They prey on the vulnerable and get them addicted instead. Anything for a quick buck.”

Pot and kettle came to mind, but Annie smiled sweetly.

“Anyway, enough of that riffraff for now,” Dr Reynolds went on. “Let me talk to you about my latest treatment plan. Come with me.”

Mim shot Annie one last glance that could have frozen over the Sahara and skipped up to walk with Reynolds. He led them past the closed door and around the corner. Ahead, the corridor widened into a quadrangle with a closed door on each side. Dr Reynolds cleared his throat and started to unlock the door dead ahead. While he was distracted, Annie took the time to look in the small windows of the other doors. Through one was a large empty room with a table in the middle. Set out on the table were crafting items, paper, glue sticks, safety scissors. The windows were replete with tissue paper stained-glass, and the walls were hung with paintings made by patients, Annie assumed. The sun streamed through the tissue paper and cast rainbows on the walls. Annie felt happy just looking at it.

The last door had a smaller window and Annie had to step closer to see inside. She peered into the void, holding her breath. This room was smaller, walls and floors the same off-white colour as each other, making it hard to differentiate where one ended and the other began. It seemed empty of everything. No furniture. No windows. Just a single strip light sunk into the ceiling. Annie leaned closer, her heart hammering in her chest.

The face appeared like a vision at the glass. Pale, ghostlike, their body wrapped in white bandages. Annie stumbled backwards, crying out. She trod on her sister’s foot and backed right into the side of Dr Reynolds.

“Jeez,” she said, her heart in her throat. “Who is that?”

Dr Reynolds grabbed Annie roughly by the shoulder and moved her through into the next airlock space, slamming the door shut as Mim followed. Annie’s body fizzed with energy, she shrugged out of Reynolds’ grip and peered back to the quadrangle they’d come from. The face was still at the window, staring at her with dead eyes. Dr Reynolds unlocked the door to the ward and the three of them entered into the large open space.

“Welcome to Ward 13,” Dr Reynolds said, straightening his shirt. “Sorry about that. Please excuse Sarah there. She’s currently in isolation to keep her safe.”

Sarah?

Annie tried to take some deep breaths to reset her adrenal system.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have been looking. Isolation you say. Is she okay?”

Annie would have bet her last pound that this was the same Sarah who’d killed those other women. The one their dad had supposedly sold drugs to.

“She’s fine,” Dr Reynolds said. “She had a bad turn yesterday and is being isolated so we can regulate her medication and make sure she’s all better in no time.”

He was skirting the facts. If Sarah had been locked up all on her own in a room with no windows except a small view out into the corridor, if she’d been being treated to make her feel better, then why was she trussed up like Hannibal Lecter in what could only be described as a straitjacket?

NINE

Ward 13 was like no other place Annie had ever been before. It was a large room. A narrow corridor ran directly away from them, with open doors leading to single berth bedrooms with en-suites. Off to their right was a comfy seating area where a group of women were watching daytime TV on a large screen trapped behind plexiglass in the wall. Before that was a booth where a couple of women in nurses’ uniforms sat at a desk sorting paperwork. The booth had a door, that Annie guessed would be locked. She also guessed that the glass they were sitting behind would be toughened to provide a safe space just in case. In case of what, Annie wasn’t sure. But the tension in the air was palpable, and though the women all looked to be getting along, she imagined that something quite small could ignite the touch paper between them.

One of the younger, more agile patients ambled over to the group and eyed up the new faces. She bounced on the balls of her feet, darting back and forth like a puppy wanting to play.

“You’re spoiling us today, Dr Reynolds,” she said, her tongue darting over her dry lips. “New cell mates?”

Annie had to physically stop herself from taking a step back. She didn’t want to show this woman how scared she was. Not of the women herself, though it was wise to be cautious, but of the idea that she and Mim were going to be locked in here with no way of getting out. Dr Reynolds gave a deep laugh and guided the young woman away from Mim and Annie and over to the booth. He knocked on the window and one of the nurses slid open a hatch.

“Yes doctor?”

“Martinez, can you take Molly, and get her ready for her treatment?” The doctor had one arm up on the glass of the booth, leaning casually as though at a bar. He turned to the sisters. “Nurse Martinez was the best decision I made when it came to staffing.”

Nurse Martinez’s tanned cheeks flushed a pretty pink, making her eyes dazzle even more than they had been before. The other nurse in the booth, and older woman busy organising the drug charts gave him a glance before getting back to work.

“It’s not Molly’s day for treatment, Doctor,” Nurse Martinez said, faltering. “Are you sure you want her? Why not take one of the others and leave Molly here, she’s been acting up all morning.”

Both the doctor and the nurse were talking as though no one else was in the room. As though Molly and the rest of them were figments of their imaginations, or more likely, that their feelings didn’t matter so they could say what they wanted. Molly shifted, scoffing at the idea she’d been acting up. Dr Reynolds had her thin arm in his grip, the skin around his meaty fingers turning a deep shade of red.

“Now now, nurse,” Dr Reynolds said, his voice even, but his fingers gripped Molly’s arm a little tighter. “You know better than to question my judgement, especially in front of our press guests. Molly here will do as she’s told. As will you.”

“Yes doctor,” Nurse Martinez replied, her white teeth shining out from a forced smile.

“Good, off you pop Molly, see you in five,” Dr Reynolds said before turning back to Annie and Mim. “Now then girls, I’d like to get you set up before the treatment starts so you can observe the master at work. That’s me.”

He chuckled and gestured for them to follow him. Annie looked at Mim with disgust and was relieved to see her sister’s feelings mirrored her own. She had been getting worried that Mim was being taken in by the imposing figure of Dr Reynolds. Really, she should give her more credit.

They walked on past the booth and across the room towards the TV area. The sun shone through the windows onto the women, casting them in an ethereal glow. The glass was barred again, but this time no effort had been made to obscure the metal restraints. Annie took in the view, a postcard-sized concrete courtyard and a wall so high that all the women could see was the brickwork and the sky. It made her brain itch in a way that tightened her fingers.

“This is the main living space in Ward 13,” Dr Reynolds was saying. He’d stopped right in front of the TV to talk. “As you can see, our patients have a large space in which to go about their daily lives. We have state of the art television. There’s an abundance of windows. Each of the bedrooms is en-suite and the girls are allowed to use their bedrooms and facilities at any point throughout the day. Just so long as you keep your doors open, right girls?”

There was a general murmur of agreement. Annie wondered if she and Dr Reynolds were standing in the same ward, because the place he’d described had sounded friendly and warm and comfortable.

“Onward, ho,” he said, waving his arm as though leading a pack of tourists around an old historical site.

He took them through another locked door at the back of the ward. Another airlock space. Another corridor that looked identical to the last five hundred. Until he stopped at a dead end. Two locked doors in front of them.

“I hope you’re not going to make us find our own way out?” Mim joked, her voice tense.

Dr Reynolds boomed out a laugh. Annie could do nothing but try to keep her breathing steady. She had no idea where they were in the building. Her sense of direction completely skewed with the lack of windows and the rat-run corridors.

“Now there’s a good idea.” Dr Reynolds winked at Mim. “Then you’d have to stay here with me forever.”

“What do we have here?” Annie asked, feeling bile rise in her throat, hot and stinging.

“This, my dears, is my treatment room.” Reynolds’ gaze flickered over to Annie before landing heavily back on Mim. “You girls can sit in here and watch.”

“Are you sure that’s ethical?” Annie asked. “I mean, are we allowed to watch a patient being given treatment without their permission?”

Dr Reynolds stopped, his key hovering over the lock of the door on the right.

“That’s a very good question, Fergie,” Reynolds replied, and it took Annie a split second to work out he was talking to her. “And one I’m very glad you asked. Obviously as national press journalists you know I will have final read-through of anything you write. And you know to keep names anonymous. But, let me tell you this, all our patients sign a waiver form when they’re admitted. Or their next of kin does. They’re free to change this at any time, though no one ever does. We like to keep things flexible for this very reason, especially when it comes to donor runs, if you get my meaning?”

He turned and unlocked the door. Flicking on the lights, illuminating the small room with a desk and two chairs pushed up against a half-glass wall. Annie recognised it as one-way glass, the treatment room on the other side. It reminded her of a posh version of the interview rooms back at the station and despite their stale coffee smell and ancient furniture, she’d much rather be there than here.

“I’ve got a funding bid out for the treatment you’re about to witness. I think it could be revolutionary and the more press the better. So, you could say your visit is rather perfect timing. Sit.” Reynolds pulled out a chair and motioned for Mim to sit down. “I’ll just be next door, but please try not to interrupt, it can be very detrimental to the patient.”

He left them alone, the door clicking locked behind him. The sound made Annie’s skin crawl over her bones, shifting like an animal with a mind of its own.

“He’s locked us in?” she hissed at Mim who was sitting calm as anything waiting for the window to show its secrets.

“Sit down, Annie,” Mim said, patting the chair next to her. “You’ve been wound-up like a toy ever since we got inside. The doors automatically lock when they close. It’s a safety thing.”

“Can you blame me?” Annie said, wondering if Mim had totally forgotten that she was moments away from being locked up in a place like this. “Do you think he’s onto us?”

Mim shook her head, patting the seat again. Annie sat down with a thump, her heart beating so loudly she could barely hear her sister’s reply.

“Hush,” Mim whispered. “We don’t know what kind of recording equipment or intercom system is between these two rooms and my guess is Dr Reynolds likes a bit of voyeurism as well as casual sexism and blatant narcissism.”

“I don’t want to be here,” Annie said. “Why are we doing this?”

Mim scraped her chair on the floor and turned to Annie, steely eyed.

“To help Dad,” she shrilled. “We need to know more about what he was doing here, and this is the perfect opportunity.”

Annie felt deflated. She hadn’t meant why were they in Edgewater Clinic, she’d meant that room in particular. Reynolds had spoken of their father and then he’d stonewalled the subject completely. They should have left there and then.

“Did you see the stain on the floor by the television back there” Mim asked.

Annie shook her head.

“I was too busy trying not to hyperventilate at the view from the window. Why were you bothered by a stain?”

“Just because the whole place is so spotless, it stood out that’s all. And it looked like blood.” Mim stopped talking as the lights flickered on in the adjacent room.

Dr Reynolds walked in, shoulders back. The room was empty, much like the isolation room where Sarah had been locked. Annie’s stomach dripped with ice-cold fear as she saw that the walls and floor were padded. Dr Reynolds ran a hand through his hair and then turned to the one-way mirror and waved.

“Don’t worry, girls, I can’t see you,” he said, adjusting his shirt. “And I can only hear you if you press the button by the glass. But I ask that you don’t do that unless it’s an emergency.”

Annie clocked the switch to the left of the window and relaxed a little. If she needed to get out, she could call for the doctor, no matter how annoyed he would be.

“Molly is on her way and I will leave the speakers on for you to hear what’s happening. I’d love for you to give me honest feedback about how wonderful you think Molly’s treatment was when we’re all done. It should take no longer than an hour.”

An hour? They were going to be trapped in this room for sixty whole minutes.

“Best sit back and get comfortable then,” Mim said, shuffling down in her chair.

Annie couldn’t get comfortable. The hard chair dug into her legs and her back, and the table was just too low to lean her elbows on. She shifted around trying to find a position where it hurt less until Mim hissed at her to keep still.

There was a knock at the door and Reynolds marched over to open it. Nurse Martinez ushered Molly inside, gave a hard stare at the mirror, and left, slamming the door behind her. Molly looked like a completely different woman from the one in Ward 13. Gone was the mouthy grin and the attitude, replaced by a wide-eyed fear. Her arms wrapped around her body making her seem small and vulnerable.

Dr Reynolds gripped her shoulders and gave her a smile.

“Young Molly,” he said, his voice tinny over the speaker. “How excited are you for today’s treatment? We’ve got some special guests who are here to help me help you, isn’t that fun?”

Molly nodded, her eyes rolling back in her head.

“What has she been given?” Annie whispered to Mim.

“It’s a psychotropic drug.” The voice made both Annie and Mim flinch.

Annie spun her head around. Nurse Martinez stood in the corner of the room by the door, quiet as a mouse.

“You scared me,” Mim said, hand on her heart. “Here, you’re on your feet all day, do you want my chair?”

She went to stand but the nurse stopped her.

“I won’t be staying,” she said. “I just wanted to see the start of the treatment and make sure Molly is okay. I’ve got work to do.”

Mim nodded, eyeing the nurse carefully. She stood as still as a statue, arms by her side, no fidgeting or shuffling.

“Can you tell us what it is Dr Reynolds hopes to achieve with his treatment?” Annie asked. She could have used the moment to find out some more information about her dad, but curiosity got the better of her. “What kind of treatment is it?”

Nurse Martinez narrowed her eyes.

“He likes his audience to go in with fresh eyes. He thinks the shock factor helps with the funding.”

“And does it?” Annie prompted, aware that Dr Reynolds was giving Molly instructions that Annie herself should be listening to.

The nurse shook her head.

“Dr Reynolds believes that if specific memories are wiped out and replaced with new memories then we can be better people.”

Annie’s eyes widened. Nurse Martinez continued talking.

“He administers psychotropic drugs and, alongside sensory deprivation, he carries out what he calls Manipulation Therapy. In Molly’s case, he’s trying to replace the memory of slicing her mum’s throat with a pair of kitchen scissors with a happier memory he’s made up specifically for Molly. He believes that if the memory is erased then so will the feelings of hatred and the possibility that it will happen again. Dr Reynolds hopes to rehabilitate the majority of patients this way so they can be released back into the community.”

Annie felt sick. She pushed her chair back and stood up, feeling her head spin. With her hands on the table to stop herself from collapsing, she tried to gulp down enough air to fill her lungs. But it was no good, they were contracting as quickly as the walls were coming in.

“Annie?” Mim started. “Are you okay?”

But before Annie had a chance to scream get me out of here the rooms fell into darkness. Through the thick black cloak, the voice of Dr Reynolds started to chant. Deep and strong.

“Remember. Remember. Remember.”

Annie felt her knees buckle and she dropped back to her chair. And that’s when Molly started to scream.

TEN

The sun burned Annie’s retinas, but she didn’t care. The pain reassured her she was back outside. All she cared about was filling her lungs with fresh air and staring at the blue sky until she’d regained control of her faculties. Which was hard to do when her little sister was garbling at her at a million miles an hour.

“What the hell happened back there?” Mim said, grabbing Annie’s elbow and leading her through the car park.

“It’s barbaric,” Annie agreed, blinking the white spots from her eyes.

Pippa and Nurse Martinez watched them leave from the front door, both shielding their own eyes from the fierce midday sun.

“No, not that,” Mim said, her fingers digging in painfully to Annie’s funny bone. “You.”

Annie wiggled her arm free and shook it out.

“Me?” Annie scoffed. “I… what do you mean? We left. The nurse helped us out. I didn’t want to stay and watch a woman being tortured in the name of pretend science.”

“Urgh, god, you’re so judgy.” Mim beeped her car unlocked and flung open her door. “Get in.”

“I’m sorry I have a heart and care about other people,” Annie muttered, sliding into her own seat. “But you have to admit that brainwashing isn’t the best way to cure people.”

Mim stayed silent. Annie wound down her window and leant into the warm breeze. Edgewater Clinic was not somewhere she wanted to return to in a hurry. Was their dad involved in the dangerous treatment? Did he force the women to forget what they’d done in order to rehabilitate? Annie hoped his job in security would mean he was far removed from the barbaric treatment, but she couldn’t say for sure.

She fished her phone from her bag and saw missed calls and messages from Swift.

“Head back to the Airbnb,” she told Mim. “I’m going to call the hospital and see if there’s any news.”

Mim nodded, her jaw gritted tight. Annie left her to it. There was no arguing to be had with a person in their twenties who had no idea how scary it felt to be on the brink of losing her freedom.

There was no news from the consultant looking after their dad. He was stable and comfortable but until the extent of the trauma damage to his head was known, they couldn’t get any more answers. He told Annie that they would keep him sedated for 48 hours and then try to bring him round and see what happened and then ended the call. But not before reminding her that the police presence was constant and as soon as he was able, their dad would start his custodial sentence.

Annie thanked the doctor, swearing quietly under her breath as Mim pulled into the driveway of the Airbnb.

“Thanks,” Annie extended to Mim.

She jumped from the car, keyed the code into the lock, and raced into the house. She was out of most of her clothes before she reached her room, pulling away her top and trousers and throwing them into the corner of the room in case they somehow brought the stench of Edgewater Clinic home in their threads.

Pulling on a sundress from the wardrobe, Annie raced back down the stairs. She re-tied her hair back up in a messy bun, shouted goodbye to Mim and ran out the door, almost forgetting to push her flip-flops on.

Swift was exactly where he told Annie he would be, sitting at the water’s edge directly opposite their holiday home. Annie paused as she caught sight of him. He was a picture of calm, the sand rucked up around him, the crystal water lapping at his toes. She felt her panic melt away the closer she got. And when she dropped down on the sand next to him and he planted a kiss on her cheek, Annie could pretend she was away on holiday and hadn’t just experienced the horrors of the clinic.

“How was it?” Swift asked, wiggling his toes as the waves lapped higher.

Annie let out a laugh. Half through the idea she had to talk about it, half through disbelief it actually happened.

“Well, the receptionist, Pippa, told us that the unexplained deaths had started not long after Dad’s arrival at the clinic.” Annie slipped her feet out her flip-flops and stretched her toes out to the waves too. “And then we had a tour of one of the wards from an egotistical doctor who thought we were writing press on him.”

Swift whistled through his teeth.

“Clever,” he said.

“That was Pippa’s idea, in case she got caught talking to us. It worked. This doctor is actually insane. He should be locked up.”

“Because he’s egotistical?”

“Because he is experimenting on his patients.”

“What?” Swift looked at Annie, brow furrowed.

“Yep, he drugs them with psychotropics before plunging them into the darkness and chanting crap at them to make them forget one particular memory and replace it with sunshine and fairies. Apparently, it will rehabilitate them so they can be set free.”

“Jeez.” Swift blew out a long stream of air.

“It was awful, Joe,” Annie went on. “Really awful. The place is clean and tidy, but it was all show. Those women are drugged to keep them quiet. They’re experimented on. And it didn’t seem to be governed by any particular body. No CQC, no regulations. It’s privately funded by families who want to have their loved ones sectioned.”

“How the heck are they allowed to offer services?” Swift lifted his hands and brushed the sand from them, hauling himself to his feet. “Walk with me?”

Annie took Swift’s offered hand and jumped up. They walked along the water’s edge, heading towards the lip of the cove where a rocky crag jutted out into the blue seas. The sand was white as the Caribbean, the water just as clear. The smell of suntan lotion and salty waves filled the warm air, the sounds of children laughing and splashing an antidote to Annie’s morning.

“Anyway, enough of the macabre,” Annie said, stepping to walk through the water. She lifted her dress, so the hem didn’t get wet. “How was your morning? Did you get anything else from Tink and Page?”

Swift nodded.

“Page’s exam is in two days, so he had to excuse himself; actually scrap that, Tink had to force him out of the room and back to his books. He was so keen to help, Annie, but his exam is important to the whole team.”

“He’s a trooper,” Annie laughed. “He’ll pass. The amount you’ve had him do over the last couple of years is enough to fill the boots of a DI, let alone someone wanting to be a sergeant.”

“He just needs to keep his head about him,” Swift said, diplomatically. The voice of a boss. “But you’re right, he’ll sail it.” That was the voice of a friend.

“And did you and Tink dig anything else up about Dad and what’s happened?” Annie asked.

“Yes,” Swift replied. “We knew already that Sarah Mitchell was in Edgewater under a Section 3, and what we did find out tallies with what you were saying about the clinic having private patients. Sarah was admitted a year ago by her family.”

“A year?” Annie was stunned.

“Her family wanted her to have treatment for the urges she had been expressing. Apparently, she’d been hearing voices that were telling her to strangle others. She attempted to do it to the pet dog and that’s when the family cracked.”

“But why didn’t they see a doctor? Have her sectioned through the NHS?”

“They did,” Swift said. “They saw their own GP who said there was a wait for an assessment and that they should call the crisis team in an emergency. Which is what the family did. They said the medical professional who came to their house told them about the clinic and they booked her in the next day.”

Annie whistled.

“Wow, that’s disturbing. I’m glad they were trying to keep her safe, and all, but it all feels a bit gross.” She stopped and turned to the horizon, walking further out into the small waves. “I saw her, you know? At least I think I did.”

Swift stopped beside her, his arm warm against hers.

“She was in what the doctor referred to as isolation, but it was torture. She was all on her own in a tiny room with one window out into a soulless corridor. She was in a straitjacket, Swift, couldn’t move her arms or have access to her hands. What if she had an itch or got cramp? What will happen to her?”

A larger wave lapped over their feet, splashing up to Swift’s knees and wetting the hem of Annie’s sundress. It stuck to her calves with a coolness she relished.

“She’ll have already been arrested and the police will have deemed her to be in the best place,” Swift said. “She’ll go to trial like anyone out in the community, and probably stay where she is, but her Section 3 will change to a Section 37, probably. I guess the isolation might be to keep her safe from the friends of the two women she killed, but I have no idea about the restraints. Did you find out if Sarah was involved in your doctor’s experimental treatment?”

Annie shook her head. “I have no idea. How can we find that out? Surely if that’s the case then we can point blame at Dr Reynolds rather than Dad?”

“That’s a tricky one,” Swift hummed. “Dr Reynolds will have gone through ethics committees and all sorts to prove the treatment is safe, so we might not have a leg to stand on in that case.”

“We need to find out?” Annie asked. “If he did go through ethics committees then the process will have been recorded somewhere, yes?”

“Yep,” Swift replied. “We can look into that. Have you heard any news about Mr O’Malley?”

“No change,” Annie replied, quietly. “Tell me about these other deaths. I need to keep busy.”

“Let’s keep walking, I think the tide is coming in,” Swift said, and they sucked their feet from the wet sand and started back towards the Airbnb. “Okay, so what we do know is that just after morning medication 48 hours ago, Sarah Mitchell—incarcerated under a Section 3 for her own safety and treatment—killed two women with her bare hands. These women were Ruby Crooks and Olivia Addison. Both women were long-time residents of Edgewater under Section 37s. No prior bad blood between them as far as we know, but we need to check this.”

“How did she do it?”

“I put a call in to Evans,” Swift said, talking about the pathologist who worked back in Norfolk. “He checked and the injuries were consistent with gouging.”

Swift cleared his throat and Annie felt bile swirl around her empty stomach like an untamed ocean.

“Gouging?” she asked, not really wanting to know the answers.

“It’s hard when we can’t formally interview people, and when we’re getting all of this information second-hand, but yes, gouging.” Swift ran a hand through his hair, sticking it up with the salty beach air. “Sarah pressed her thumbs into their faces so hard she went right through their eyeballs and into their brains.”

“Jeez,” Annie said, taking a deep breath. “She must be strong, that’s not easy to do.”

Swift looked at Annie with his brow raised.

“You know,” she added quickly. “So, I’ve heard. And according to physics, and all that. Eyeballs are stronger than they look.”

“That’s why they’re saying it was drugs, specifically the drugs from your dad,” Swift said. “She wasn’t in her right mind.”

“When did Dad give her these drugs? Was he working that morning? How did he do it during medication rounds?” Annie felt lost at sea, there were so many questions that were going to be impossible to find out without breaking the law or her dad waking up.

“Let’s stick with what we do know, for now,” Swift said, tapping the sand from his feet and slipping on his trainers as they reached the steps back to the road. “Earlier this year a Rebecca Skervin died by throwing herself from the roof of the clinic, supposedly because she thought she could fly. And last year so far we’ve found the suspicious death of a Mia Clough who died from exhaustion after spending four hours straight running on the treadmill in the clinic’s gym. She had a heart attack.”

“That doesn’t sound that suspicious,” Annie added. “If I ran for four hours straight, I think the same would happen to me.”

“But that’s why you wouldn’t run for four hours straight,” Swift said, waving them both safely across the road. “And Mia was days away from being released. A star patient, apparently, and before that day had never set foot in the gym in the three years she’d been an inpatient.”

“I don’t get it,” Annie said, pressing the code into the locked door of the Airbnb. “Why are these women suddenly acting out of character and doing dangerous things?”

Swift shut the door behind them, keeping the coolness of the house inside. Annie walked to the kitchen and ran the tap, waiting until it was too cold to touch before filling two glasses. She handed one to Swift and drank greedily from her own. It wasn’t until she set it down that she realised how hungry she was too.

“The police think that it all stems from drugs,” Swift said, setting his empty glass on the marble worktop. “Drugs that your dad has somehow smuggled into the clinic. But, Annie, I did some of my own digging and it seems your Dr Reynolds started at Edgewater around the same time as your dad. And in my mind, that makes him equally as likely of drugging these women as your dad is. In fact, more likely, as he is the one with easy access to the drugs.”

ELEVEN

The house felt quiet. Too quiet.

Annie slipped down from the kitchen stool and called out for her sister.

“Mim,” she shouted. “Where are you, we need to talk?”

Swift had gone away to shower, promising to make lunch when he was done. Annie wanted to do the same, her feet and legs were itchy with dried sand, and she smelt like a mixture of Edgewater Clinic and sweat.

Running her hands under the kitchen tap, Annie soaped them again, wiping them across the back of her neck. It helped to settle her mind, running at a million miles an hour since she’d left Edgewater Clinic.

There was no reply, so Annie called out again, walking through the downstairs of the house and checking all the nooks and crannies. There weren’t many places to hide downstairs, given the property was open plan. But Annie checked the gaming area and the downstairs toilet just in case. Both were empty. She stuck her head out the patio doors and checked the garden. Nothing. It was only when she was heading back inside that Annie spotted the note, the corner tucked under the vase of flowers on the kitchen table to stop it blowing away. She grabbed at it, heart hammering.

Annie, Joe,

I’m heading back to the hospital to sit with Dad. I’ll be on my mobile if you need me.

Mim x

It was innocuous, but Annie still felt sick. The idea of finding a note put the fear of god into her because she’d grown up with the experiences that she had. The note may have been a quickly jotted whereabouts from her sister, but it could have been an I can’t do this anymore or an I’m leaving again, please don’t try to find me. Annie’s heart was slowing back to a normal rate, but the fear of abandonment was forever ingrained in her very being. So long had she shut out those thoughts that each time they reappeared the reactions were visceral. Her body’s way of telling Annie that she could only ignore the feelings for so long before they broke her.

Annie placed the note gently back on the table and walked with purpose through the house and up the stairs. She needed to be with someone who understood how she was feeling. Not to talk to him about it, just to know she wasn’t alone. It wasn’t until she burst into the bedroom that she realised he was probably still in the shower.

Half an hour later and with both Annie and Swift showered and dressed in casual joggers and t-shirts, they sat at the table eating a lunch of cold meats, cheeses, and salads. Swift was trying to do the day’s cryptic crossword in a local paper he’d picked up from the newsagent; Annie watched over the table trying hard not to give away some of the answers she’d worked out while piling brie and salami on top of a cracker and washing it down with a perfectly brewed cup of tea.

“Do you want a clue?” she asked, tapping her forefinger on the wood.

Swift looked up over his reading glasses and clicked his tongue.

“As if you can do this upside down and I can’t even think of the answers when it’s staring me in the face,” he said, smiling.

“It wouldn’t be the first time something obvious has slipped right on past you,” Annie teased, and as she said the words a thought crossed her mind. “Hey, something has just occurred to me. Do you think we could get the autopsy results from the dead women at Edgewater? They’ll show what kinds of drugs they’d been taking, wouldn’t they?”

“Did that obvious piece of evidence slip your mind, O’Malley,” Swift asked, smiling and setting his paper and glasses down on the table. “It’s a good job you’ve got me or else who knows where we’d be, hey?”

“You’d have been demoted to constable years ago if it wasn’t for me, Swift,” Annie laughed. “You and me both know I solve the crimes. You just go around flashing your badge.”

Their laughs echoed off the glass from the patio doors and when Swift sat up and cleared his throat, Annie could tell he meant business. She pushed her plate to the side and finished her tea.

“Evans is going to see what he can find out,” Swift said, steepling his fingers. “I asked him the same question you just posed, and he said he’d try to fly under the radar and see what he could do. No promises, mind, but you’re right. If your dad, or someone else, was giving these women drugs it would hopefully show in their post-mortem. And the more information we have, the better chance we have at fighting this ridiculous charge against him. But, Annie, you might have to prepare yourself for a truth that you don’t want to hear. Because there is a chance he was dealing at the hospital. And there’s also a chance that the officers who arrested him found out about his undercover past and let him know what they thought about his new lifestyle choices.”

Annie furrowed her brow and shook her head. She knew that was a possibility. She also knew that it had been too long since she and her dad had talked that he could be a completely different person to the one who had left her. But Edgewater Clinic had her nerves wrought and there was a reason for that.

“I just need to know why my Spidey senses are on high alert,” she told Swift. “There is something going on at Edgewater and everything in my blood is telling me to dig deeper.”

“Then that’s what we do, we dig as deep as we can,” Swift agreed. “And to start with, we need to make a list. Because no one can be organised without a list.”

Swift got up and collected their lunch plates while Annie gathered together what stationery she could find. She’d brought a fountain pen and a couple of new notebooks with her, but both were too good to use for police work, so she kept them tucked away in her suitcase for another time. By the front door, in a small console table, she found some personalised flip top paper stacks and a couple of scratchy biros.

“Here we go,” she said, putting them down on the clean kitchen table. “We can have one sheet for victims and one for suspects.”

“Not quite an incident room, but looks perfect enough to me,” Swift said, passing Annie her phone as it beeped from the countertop.

Annie swiped and read the messages, smiling.

“Pete says Sunday swiped a BBQ Chicken pizza from a customer last night,” she grinned. “Even though he’s being fed.”

“Cats never lose their hunting instincts, especially ones who’ve been out on the streets for such a long time.” Swift sat back down next to Annie and tore two pages from the notepad.

Annie pictured Sunday lounging on top of her pot plant and thought that he’d certainly left his street cat persona behind pretty quickly. Even if Pete the pizzaman said otherwise. She typed out a quick reply to her downstairs neighbour and turned her focus to the task in hand. On one of the sheets she wrote SUSPECTS in block capitals, on the other she wrote VICTIMS.

“Sometimes I feel like police work is one of those logic puzzles, just real life,” she said, looking up at Swift. “Have you read Murdle? It’s like that, only we’re playing with actual people and not an imaginary cast of characters.”

“I stopped doing Murdle when I got to the second level of difficulty,” Swift grimaced. “Somehow, I feel like real life is easier. I can do logic when there’s a bit of instinct added in for good measure.”

Annie nodded, not adding that she finished the logic puzzle book in a record time and had started on its sequel.

“Right, victims.” Annie started at the top with the most recent.

Ruby Crooks

Olivia Addison

Rebecca Skervin

Mia Clough

“Those are all the suspicious deaths in the last 24 months,” Swift added. “Tink is looking in to other, explained deaths too. Maybe some have slipped under the net.”

“Suspects.” The tip of Annie’s pen brushed the paper, but she didn’t make a mark. “Have we really only got the two, Dad and Dr Reynolds?”

It was true, the team normally had a whole heap of suspicious people on their incident whiteboard by now.

“That’s not a logic puzzle, it’s more of a… I don’t know.” Annie tapped the pen against her lips.

“It’s not as cut and dry as it seems,” Swift said, taking the pen from Annie and writing the names. “And I don’t think it’s just a 50-50 chance it’s your dad who’s totally to blame for what’s going on at Edgewater.”

“You think there’s more to it too?” Annie looked at him, his dark blue eyes like the ocean.

But before Swift had a chance to answer, his phone vibrated across the table. He picked it up and tapped to answer.

“Hey Tink,” he said. “Tell me you’ve got something good for us. We’re out on a limb here. And something’s not adding up. Hold on, let me put you on speaker.”

“Pop the video on while you’re at it, boss,” Tink said. “So I can see your lovely faces. It’s quiet here without you all and I don’t want to harass Page just because I’m lonely.”

“You’d be more than welcome here, Tink,” Annie said, waving through Swift’s small phone screen. “There’s a free bedroom going spare.”

Tink laughed. “I’ve not got any annual leave left and my boss is a whip cracker.”

Swift raised a brow but didn’t rise to the bait.

“Anyway, glad to see you’re all settled in, but do you ever go anywhere and trouble doesn’t follow? Sorry about your dad, Annie, how is he?”

“No change there, though Mim is with him so she’ll probably talk him back to consciousness just so he can tell her to shut up. Please tell us you have something that will help to exonerate him?”

“Maybe,” Tink replied; she tapped on her keyboard just out of sight, her face lit up by the light of her computer screen. “I spoke to the Mitchell family earlier today.”

“Err,” Swift interrupted. “This isn’t our case. How did you do that?”

“I have my ways,” Tink winked and carried on before Swift could moan any more. “Actually, I found their phone number the old school way and just called them.”

Annie saw Swift puff out his cheeks from the corner of her eye but if they didn’t bend the rules slightly then her dad was going to be hung, drawn, and quartered before he woke up.

“Thanks, Tink,” she said.

“Hmm,” Swift added, diplomatically. “So, what did they say?”

“The family are distraught,” Tink went on, a slight lag to the call making her look like a ventriloquist’s dummy. “If they’d known what was going to happen, they said they would never have had Sarah committed. They feel cheated by the hospital and by the service as a whole.”

“Quite rightly. A hospital is supposed to protect its patients, and Sarah has been seriously let down.” For a split second, Annie forgot her dad was possibly the reason, she was too busy feeling angry for the Mitchells.

“I agree,” Swift said. “But that gets us no nearer to clearing Mr O’Malley’s name.”

“I’m getting to that bit, just needed to set the scene.” Tink cocked her head. “When the Mitchells found out how long the wait was for Sarah to be seen by the mental health team, they looked at going private. And, get this, two people from Edgewater Clinic somehow knew this and they turned up at their house to do the hard sell. Sarah’s mum told me that it seemed too good to be true. That she was promised treatment for Sarah that would allow her to return home and no longer be a risk. Apparently, there was a medical professional there and a patient! It just seems off to me, that’s all. Not very compatible with giving the best care for free or putting the patient first.”

“Sounds to me like Edgewater Clinic were recruiting people for a clinical trial they had no idea they were signing up for.” Swift stood up, taking the two lists they’d made and pinning them to the fridge door.

“Do we think that’s enough to put a stop to the police’s urgency to charge Dad while he’s incapacitated?” Annie asked, chewing her bottom lip.

“Does he still have a guard watching his door?” Swift asked and Annie nodded in reply. “Then I say we gently prod that guard for a few answers before we go all in. Maybe we can use the angle that your dad was once one of them? Good work, Tink, I need you to have a look to see where Dr Reynolds worked before he joined Edgewater and see if the suspicious deaths followed him.”

“On it, like a car bonnet, laters guys.” Tink ended the call and the kitchen fell quiet.

There was a renewed hope in the air, Annie felt it in the way her shoulders dropped and her jaw relaxed. But time was running out for her dad and so far it seemed the only people on his side were virtual strangers and Mim. And if he didn’t wake up, it would be up to them all to clear his name. And Annie would need to get answers from her mum instead. Which would never happen. Her mum had had twenty years to tell Annie the truth and all that had come from her mouth had been lie after lie.

TWELVE

The low sun made the drive back to the hospital a little more adventurous than earlier. Even with the visors down and sunglasses on, the bright rays were at the perfect angle to blind any driver or their passenger and cast the tarmac into a shimmering mess. With the twists and turns added in, Annie wasn’t sure if the rest of their journey would be made in the back of an ambulance rather than the front seats of Swift’s 4x4. She gripped the sides of her chair and hoped for the best.

“Do you think the guard will talk?” Annie asked, as Swift pulled into a space in the hospital car park and Annie’s fingers cramped as she relaxed them.

“I think if we ask the right questions we might get some information out of him,” Swift replied.

“What questions are those?”

“I’ll tell you when I know.”

They made their way across the foyer and through to the intensive care ward. Annie heard the machines before she saw her dad, his door propped open with the guard sitting looking bored beside it. He straightened his shoulders as he saw them approaching, standing from his chair, and stepping in front of the door.

“Hi,” said Annie, hoping he’d recognise her from that morning and nodding towards the DI. The thought struck her, had it really only been a few hours ago her dad had been attacked? “He’s with me. Can we head in?”

The guard nodded and stepped to the side.

“Bodes well,” Swift whispered as they shut the door behind them. “Sometimes you have to give all sorts of answers to get in.”

Robert O’Malley was still lying prone on the bed, his blanket outlining his lean body, the only movement the steady rise and fall of the mechanical oxygen pumps filling his lungs. Annie faltered at the closed door.

“I think that’s probably because they’re more worried about Dad hurting people, than people getting in to hurt him.” Annie sighed, the lack of change in her dad made her heart ache. “Hey, Mim.”

Her sister had pulled a chair up to the hospital bed and was resting her head on the mattress by their dad’s arm. She didn’t stir.

“I think she’s sleeping,” Swift whispered.

“It’s been a very long day,” Annie murmured, moving a little closer. “I don’t blame her. The bruises are turning.”

Whereas earlier, the red marks on her dad’s face had looked like patches of sunburn, now they were starting to turn a deep purple. New blemishes had appeared, and his eye looked even more swollen than it had before, the circular imprint more defined. There was no doubt in Annie’s mind they had been caused by a ringed finger. She snapped another photo and sent it to Tink, hoping the further definition would help. If it was a well know signet, then there might be some information on the system. Annie tugged gently at the hospital gown to see how far down the bruises reached and was shocked to see his chest was as mottled as his face seemed to be.

“Whoever did this was angry,” she said, quietly. “This isn’t a fall, we know that, but it’s not a simple attack either, I don’t think. It’s sustained and it feels personal.”

“So who hated your dad enough to beat him into a coma?” Swift asked. “Given we know it happened between the clinic and the station, it seems likely it was the police. But I thought officers looked after their own.”

“Mr O’Malley was in the force?”

Annie and Swift turned to see that the police guard had entered the room while they had been talking. From the look on Swift’s face, he’d been as clueless as Annie had.

“My dad served as a detective inspector in the Norfolk Constabulary for a long time, yes,” Annie said, stepping in front of the bed to subconsciously provide a barrier between the officer and her dad. “But it was a while back now. I don’t really know if he still thinks of himself as police.”

The officer gave a humourless laugh.

“Once an officer, always an officer,” he said, steely eyed.

Annie wasn’t sure, but she could have sworn she saw sadness in them too.

“It’s complicated with Dad,” she said, an idea bubbling. “But if you didn’t know that he was an officer, then presumably the person who did this didn’t know he was attacking a police officer either?”

The guard shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his thumbs hitched in his belt.

“A person? From what I’ve been told, Mr O’Malley’s injuries were from a fall he sustained inside the arrest vehicle when it was hit by another car.” The guard stood his ground, but his face had softened.

“Their vehicle was hit?” Annie was shocked. “No one told us this, they said he had a fall.”

“Yes, he did,” the guard said. “A fall in the vehicle.”

“So who hit them?” Annie propped her hands on her hips. “Was it deliberate? Why am I only learning of this now?”

“The collision isn’t being treated as suspicious,” the officer replied, looking at his shoes. “It was on a tight bend, the one as you come over the bridge, you know the one, you’ve seen what these roads are like.”

“Not suspicious?” Annie blurted. “You’ve seen Dad’s injuries. How can you say this isn’t suspicious?”

“Do you have the details of the other driver?” Swift asked, stepping up beside Annie, his warmth comforting.

“It’ll all be going through the insurance, and it’s not in the public interest to reveal insurance claim details, so I can’t pass on anything even if I did know it,” the officer said, having the good grace to look sheepish now. “But I know that Sergeant Placid is devastated about the accident, he’d only just passed his extended driving qualification, too.”

“Placid?” Swift tensed beside Annie.

“Yeah,” the guard let out a breath of a laugh, “We call him Croc, after the movie… you know?”

Annie banked the name for later, deciding to try a different tact, one that Swift was normally better at than she was.

“That must have been a shock for him, poor guy,” she said, feeling Swift relax beside her. “Is he okay? Were any of your men injured? Dad would have hated to put anyone in danger, let alone a fellow officer. What actually happened?”

The guard shook his head, visibly paler.

“It sounded terrible,” he said, running a hand over his bald head. “The other car swiped the backside out from the van, buckled the rear doors and sent it spinning into a hedge. The front was so wedged that the officers were trapped in the cab, though word is they can’t remember anything. By the time backup arrived our officers were conscious again, but both Placid and his partner were brought straight here, and they’ve been kept in for observation. Might even still be here, but I’m not allowed to leave my post to go and check on them.”

“I’m sorry, you must be worried,” Annie said, actually concerned now. “That sounds like an awful collision. They’re in the best place, though. Like Dad here.”

They looked at Robert O’Malley, prone and being kept alive by a set of loud machines.

“I’m sure your colleagues are okay,” Swift added. “Mr O’Malley would have had more space to be flung around in the back of the van. Maybe that explains some of the larger bruising and the bar like lines.”

Swift scrunched his face, twisting his lips.

“We’re okay here for a bit, if you’d like to go and see them?” Annie said. “It’s not like Dad’s getting up and running off anytime soon and we’re not going to be pushing his bed anywhere, not when he’s reliant on those to keep him alive.”

As if on cue, the machine attached to the IV drip gave a startlingly loud set of bleeps. Annie felt her legs drop out from under her as the door opened and a nurse hurried in.

“Is everything okay?” she asked. “What’s happening?”

The nurse pressed a switch on the box and the room fell silent again.

“Just the bag needs changing, love,” she said, smiling. “Nothing to worry about. The alarm needs to be loud enough so we’ll hear it from the nurse’s station that’s all. It’s a bit of a something, isn’t it?”

Annie nodded, not trusting herself to open her mouth and reply without vomiting on the vinyl floor.

“It’ll take a moment to sort,” the nurse went on, bustling around the hospital bed. “You can go get yourselves some coffee if you like?”

The guard started out the room, the space small now with all the bodies. Annie and Swift followed him into the busy corridor where the incessant beeps from other machines made Annie feel like she was in a seaside arcade.

“Why don’t you go and see your colleagues,” Swift said to the guard. “We’ll stay here and make sure Mr O’Malley doesn’t go anywhere.”

He gave a wry smile and the guard looked between Swift and Annie. Back and forth, back and forth. Teetering on a decision.

“I’ll be quick,” he said, turning on his heels. “Please don’t tell anyone or I’ll lose my job.”

Annie ran an invisible zipper across her lips and pocketed the key.

“Go,” she said.

The nurse was gently waking Mim when Annie and Swift went back.

“Sorry,” she said to the pair. “I need to be able to get in to the patient.”

Mim had never been a great morning person, less to do with the time of day and more to do with the fact she hated waking up. Annie remembered the house when Mim arrived back from the hospital as a baby. She’d never heard a noise quite like it. And even as Mim grew into a toddler, her early morning wails hadn’t gotten any quieter. Annie braced herself for the tirade as Mim came around from what looked like a deep sleep.

“What?” Mim shot up as if she’d been electrocuted. “Is he awake?”

The nurse, who had been trying her best to rouse Mim gently, jumped as though the electricity had conducted through her too.

“Why don’t you take Mim’s car and drive you both back to the house?” Swift said. “I can stay and wait for the officer to come back. You’ve both had a heck of a day and could probably use your beds.”

Annie didn’t reply, she was waiting, hoping that the nurse would tell them to stay, that she’d tell them their dad was about to wake up and to leave now would be bad timing. Mim was staring at the poor woman too.

“He’s right,” she said, shattering Annie’s heart all over again. “We’re not attempting to wake your dad until Monday morning when the hospital is fully staffed and the surgeons are around. He’s not going to wake on his own because of the drugs he’s being administered. And you both look like you’ve not slept for a week. Go on home. We’ll always call if there’s any change… but it’s unlikely.”

Monday.

Annie knew the police were coming first thing Monday to charge him and hand him his conviction. They had just over twenty-four hours to find more evidence to prove their dad was innocent. Or to come to terms with the fact he wasn’t.

“Okay,” Annie conceded. “Come on Mim, let’s go.”

Mim wasn’t putting up a fight. She looked half asleep as she kissed Robert O’Malley on the forehead and they both said their goodbyes to Swift. And as Annie drove them home, trying to get used to Mim’s car and get them there in one piece, her mind was whirring like an old slide show projector. Images of the officers who’d carted her dad away. The van. The narrow roads they must have taken to the station. A car coming out of nowhere and battering the back of the van. There was something the PC had said that was niggling at her mind, but she couldn’t place it because there was also the glaringly obvious mistake the police were making. The driver and his partner might have been out cold for a while. The van doors were buckled. Someone had crashed their car deliberately and had taken the opportunity to beat her dad to what they presumably thought was his death. It was a targeted operation, and he could still be in danger. Robert O’Malley’s door was being watched to stop him escaping, but the PC on guard could also be saving their dad’s life.

Annie wanted to tell Mim all of this but her sister had fallen straight back to sleep as soon as her seatbelt had been fastened. As Annie drove around the bend, the sea cresting into view over the top of the hill, she also spotted their holiday home in the darkness of the night and figured her conversation could wait until they’d both had some sleep. But as she drove nearer she noticed the house was lit up like Blackpool Illuminations, which was weird, as both she and Swift were sticklers for turning off the lights. And what she saw next left no room for doubt that it had been them, because someone had left the front door wide open.

THIRTEEN

It felt like a million years passed between seeing the open door and getting to it. Annie swerved off the road and up onto the drive, throwing herself out of the driver’s seat and running to the steps.

“Hello,” Annie called out. “Is there anyone there?”

She sounded more confident than she felt, pushing open the door with her elbow and looking around. The hallway table was on its side, the welcome pack strewn across the tiles. Each and every single bulb was switched on, table lamps, standing lamps, the overhead lights. Like a football field spot lit for an important match.

“Police,” she yelled, stepping further into the house. “If you’re still in the property you need to make yourself known.”

And as she yelled the words, Annie felt like someone had undone her bolts and loosened all the tendons and ligaments holding her bones together. Coldness dripped into her stomach and settled there like a ditch.

“Hello?”

The house felt empty. An eerie calmness floating on the surface. Annie’s skin prickled and she smelt the tang of cigarettes in the air. The kind that sticks to walls and yellows teeth.

“Everything okay?”

Annie jumped, hurtling around with her fists raised to the sight of a sleepy Mim rubbing the sleep from her face.

“The door was open.” Annie was wound tightly, her jaw ached just to say those few words.

“Open?” Mim stepped in front and wandered off into the sunken living space. “Why?”

Mim flopped down onto the sofa, throwing her legs up and yawning.

“Mim, look,” Annie said, pointing to the hallway table upended on the floor.

It was weird, the rest of the holiday home looked untouched. Like whoever had entered without permission had gotten bored at the door.

“Oh yeah, that table has a wobbly leg, it nearly fell on me earlier.” Mim looked nonplussed.

“Someone was here,” Annie went on, going around turning off some of the light switches.

But as she cast the corners of the house into shadows, Annie stopped. Maybe light was better. She searched the rooms downstairs, all empty.

“No one was here,” Mim shrugged as Annie came back around to the living space. “You and Joe probably left the door on the latch, and it’s blown open. I’m starving.”

“Mim,” Annie cried, checking the handles on the patio doors. Locked tight. “What if that someone is still here. How can you be so calm?”

Mim sighed loudly, pushing herself up from the sofa and padding to the stairs.

“And why are you always so stressed about everything?” It wasn’t a question, not really. Mim was already halfway up the stairs and not waiting for an answer. “Put the kettle on, would you, I’m gonna get changed and then make some noodles if you want some?”

Annie bit her tongue. Something was wrong here, but she didn’t want to give Mim the opportunity to lash out again. So she filled the kettle and started to sort the paperwork that had fallen from the hallway table. Maybe Mim was right. Maybe Annie had left the house in a hurry and forgotten to turn the lights off. A whole lifetime could have passed in Annie’s day, maybe she just needed some sleep.

“Annie.” The way Mim’s voice carried down the stairs made Annie’s blood run cold. “You’d better get up here.”

Annie dropped the pile of brochures for local attractions on the uprighted table and ran for the stairs. Taking them two at a time, Annie was met with the back of Mim staring into the room Annie and Swift were sharing.

“I think you might be right,” Mim whispered. “Do we need to leave?”

Fingers of dread tickled Annie’s hair, tugging it away from her scalp. Her room had been ransacked, drawers emptied, clothes all over the floor. Her empty suitcase was lying open in the middle of the room, its insides ripped open with scalpel-like precision. Annie’s toiletries had been toppled onto the carpet, her new moisturiser slowly glooping over the thick pile. The stillness of the rooms was enough for Annie to know whoever had done this was long gone. She shook her head.

“My room was okay,” Mim sniffed. “And my bathroom.”

Annie took Mim’s hand and squeezed it.

“That’s good, Mim, I’m glad.”

“Do you think it’s chancers?” The words caught in Mim’s throat. “They know this is a holiday home and that we might have lots of cash or whatever?”

Annie nodded, but that’s not what she thought.

“Probably.” She guided Mim to the big bed and sat her on the edge as she started to tidy away some of her things. “They must have got distracted by something before they got any further. It’ll be nothing to worry about, but we’ll need to make sure we’re more careful and report it to 101. It must happen a lot around here.”

Her heart pounded in her chest and her fingers shook as she tried to screw the lid back on her face cream.

“You never were a good liar.” Mim sniffed again.

Annie toyed with the jar, giving in with a grunt and dropping on the bed next to Mim. All the while a thought was screaming in her ear. In fact, since she walked in the front door and saw the mess of papers, the same thought had been so loud in her ears that Annie’s head felt like it was imploding.

“Do you think this all feels a bit personal?” she said, vowing to stop lying to Mim. “Like, we got here to see Dad and now he’s in hospital so he can’t talk to us, and my room has been ransacked. Why do those two things feel so connected?”

Mim’s brow rumpled.

“Why you, you mean?” she asked. “I get it, it’s not like they looked for valuables anywhere else. Straight here with no detours.”

Annie dropped her head into her hands and gripped her hair through her fingers.

“Not just me,” she said, ready to confess. “Us. Dad. Mum?”

Mim was silent. Annie could hear her own blood pumping in her ears. She took herself out of the bedroom and did a quick sweep upstairs for an intruder. But just like she had downstairs, Annie came up empty-handed.

“I think I know what they were looking for. Come with me.”

Annie called to Mim as she headed back down the stairs. Mim followed silently.

“The first thing I do when I go on holiday is work out a safe place to leave valuables,” Annie said, heading to the pool table. “Working in the police means I’m maybe hyper-vigilant about stuff like that.”

She knelt down under the table and reached out as far as she could. Mim watched on, still lost for words. Or too annoyed to speak them.

“Here,” she groaned, the underside of the pool table scratching her arm.

She pulled out a small duffle bag that had been carefully tucked under the struts of the pool table under the felt. Walking to the kitchen table, Annie lay it down and went to flick the kettle back on again, changing her mind last-minute and grabbing a whisky from the cabinet and a couple of glasses. She put the glasses down next to the bag and glugged a couple of fingers in each one.

“What’s this?” Mim sounded wary.

“Extra money,” Annie said, downing her whisky. Her chest flamed and she poured another. “Swift’s crazy expensive watch that he takes everywhere and never wears. And this…”

It was a folder, innocuous enough from the outside, but the contents could start a war. Mim gasped and grabbed it from Annie’s hands.

“You had it?” she cried. “All this time you had it, and you didn’t tell me?”

Mim looked lost, her huge eyes brimming with tears.

“That’s not right, I’ve only had it for a few months.” Annie knew it was an excuse. A few months was long enough to tell her sister she had information on their mum.

“You let me try and sleep with Swift to get this, all along having it safely tucked away in a stupid duffel bag.” Two red dots had appeared on Mim’s cheeks.

Annie pushed the whisky towards her, but Mim shook her head.

“I didn’t have it then,” Annie said, calmly. “And I had no idea you were going to do that. Of course I didn’t. I would have told you not to bother.”

“Because he was so in love with you?” Mim spat.

“No.” It was getting harder for Annie to stay level-headed. “Because Swift wouldn’t do…”

She had been about to tell her sister that Swift wasn’t one to break the rules. That he’d never steal a file. But that’s exactly what he had done. Annie downed the second glass of whisky and relished the warmth as it trickled down into her stomach.

“What does it say?” Mim said, turning the file over in her hands. “Is there an explanation for what happened in there? Do you know why Dad took me and fled? Who did Mum kill?”

Annie shook her head back and forth with each question.

“I don’t know the answers to any of that, Mim,” she said. “I haven’t read it.”

“What?” Mim stopped, whisky bottle in hand.

Golden liquid sloshed from the spout and landed on the table with a splash.

“I’m not sure why I haven’t read it yet,” Annie went on. “I looked at the first page but then couldn’t get any further. It’s been sitting in my room burning a hole in my filing cabinet.”

Mim ripped open the pages and it was all Annie could do to not grab the file back. Mim had as much right to look as Annie did, and in truth Annie was glad someone else had taken that initiative.

Mim’s eyes scanned back and forth over the pages as she took in what was written there. She flicked through sheets of hand-typed documents, photocopies, pictures, and sheets and sheets of printed material that Annie couldn’t read upside down.

“So much is blacked out,” Mim said, turning page after page. “It’s hard to make sense of any of it.”

That had been Annie’s fear, that the whole file would end up being redacted and she’d have nothing to read. She remembered back to the Lowanford Lake case, and when Swift had handed the file to her in his room at Tink’s birthday party. In amongst the blacked-out sentences, the first sheet had talked of Operation Violet and Holly Sherwood and how she’d broken rules so spectacularly that she was being demoted back to uniform. It gave enough information to decode what was happening, just not why it was happening. The file page had also been dated a week before the day of Annie’s birth. If Mim had noticed this anomaly, then she didn’t mention it and Annie hadn’t ventured any deeper into the file to try and answer those questions either.

“It’s thick,” Mim said, pulling the sheaves of paper back to the beginning. “How are we going to do this?”

So, they were doing this, were they? Together. Annie drew breath.

“From the beginning?” she ventured.

“I say from the end.” Mim shook her head. “Let’s start with what we both really want to know.”

Annie felt like she was on a roller coaster, her stomach dropping out under her. Mim hauled the file up and walked around the table to take a seat next to Annie. Laying it flat out between them, Mim turned the file over and opened the back cover.

“Safety in numbers,” Mim said. “If someone is trying to keep our mum and dad quiet, then we are going to work together to find out why.”

She flicked the pages over so they could read them, running her manicured finger down the writing. Annie felt nausea building in her stomach as Mim’s fingers highlighted the date. It was one Annie would never forget, a date so well etched into her brain that it was more memorable than her own birthday.

The last day she spent with her dad.

“Look here,” Mim said, pointing to a press release printed on Norfolk Constabulary headed paper. Annie tried to swallow but her throat was so dry her tongue was sticking to the roof of her mouth. “Holly Sherwood, lauded police officer, given the keys to the City for the capture and arrest of a notorious child trafficker who had been evading police for years.”

Mim kept reading, the pride making her voice sing. But Annie was no longer listening. She hadn’t heard anything past the name of the criminal.

Thomas Theobald.

FOURTEEN

Annie sucked in a lungful of warm, damp air. She wished she was back in the hospital—with Swift and her dad and the incessant noise of machines that would drown out the screaming in her head.

“Annie?” Mim’s voice sounded echoey. “Are you okay?”

She really needed another drink, but three large shots of whisky later and her eyes were struggling to focus. One more wouldn’t hurt, would it? She lifted the bottle, gripping tightly as it slipped down her hands. Mim took it from her and poured her a little more than two fingers.

“Drink,” she ordered.

Annie wasn’t going to argue. She barely felt the warmth of the liquid now, just the sweet, earthy goodness and the numbing peace it brought with it. Closing her eyes, Annie waited until the acid had stopped churning in her stomach to face her sister.

“There’s something you need to know, before we read any further,” she said.

“Annie, you’re scaring me, what’s going on?”

“Thomas Theobald was a child trafficker,” Annie started, worried that if she waited any longer, she’d not be able to tell the story. “He was running a ring of horrible people who’d kidnap kids and traffic them for all sorts of reasons. Organs. Adoption. Sex trade. If you can think of it, Theobald did it.

“My first ever case with Swift was entwined in the Theobald case, even though he’d been in jail for about 15 years by then. In fact, the suspect in that case had been thought of as one of Theobald’s victims but turned out not to be. But, ever since then, the name has kept coming up. Case after case that I’ve worked with Swift, Theobald has never been far from people’s minds. Even when you and I went to Spain on holiday, what happened there was linked to the Theobald case.”

Mim frowned.

“Why didn’t I know this at the time?” she asked. “Why didn’t you tell me? Especially as it’s all linked to mum.”

“It wasn’t common knowledge at the time, the police don’t like mentioning his name in case it sparks panic.” Annie pulled the file nearer and flicked to the next page. “And I had no idea Mum had anything to do with the Theobald case. I can’t even remember if I knew Mum was in the police when we went to Spain. I thought she was a school cook, remember?”

Mim nodded, her cheeks flushed.

“It must have been a shock to know that she’d been lying to you all this time,” Mim said. “What did she say when you confronted her with the truth? Did she admit it?”

The silence pounded in Annie’s ears like water.

“I haven’t told her,” she whispered.

Truth was, Annie couldn’t confront her mum with the truth because their relationship was already teetering on a knife edge and Annie was scared to topple it. They may have a fractious bond between them, but Annie’s mum had been there from the beginning, and she wasn’t ready to lose her bedrock. No matter how loose the matter above it may be.

“Wow, okay,” Mim replied. “We’re a pair, aren’t we?”

The tension in the air dissipated like mist off the sea and Annie felt her chest expand at the relief.

“I’m sorry,” she said to Mim.

Mim put her hand over Annie’s.

“You’ve nothing to be sorry for,” she replied. “If anything, I need to apologise for lying about being in touch with Dad. I just didn’t want you cancelling this holiday when it had taken me so long to find him. We need to talk to him together. I need you there to show him that what him and Mum have done to us has consequences.”

Trying not to feel like a pawn in her sister’s game, Annie looked back down at the file. The pages prior to the press release were typed reports from the Theobald case by the looks of them. His name was dotted amongst the blacked-out sections. Holly Sherwood had been working undercover again, a number of years after she was previously demoted. But this time she’d been so deep undercover that she’d managed to infiltrate the Theobald top dogs.

“She must have been so scared,” Annie said, flicking to the next page. “These people wouldn’t bat an eyelid at violence. And if they found out who Mum really was, she wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

“Imagine what that does to a person, too,” Mim said. “No wonder you found things difficult with Mum.”

“Lying for a living, you mean?”

“No,” Mim looked sadly at Annie. “Being constantly on edge. She’d been working in the gang since I was born, that’s a lot of days to be worried about being found out. And she was in the daily presence of a man who thought nothing of taking other peoples’ children to harm them. The mindset she must have needed to get into to even talk to the guy, let alone get close to him, must have been awful.”

Annie read on. Not quite ready to forgive either her Mum or Dad yet. The adrenaline was wearing off and Annie could feel her eyes closing. She slapped her cheeks and took in a few more lungfuls of air.

“Open the doors, would you?” she asked Mim. “Please. I feel like my body is falling asleep here, but my mind won’t let me until I’ve read more.”

Mim got up and unlocked the patio doors, sliding them a little, before turning back to Annie with a pale face.

“Are you sure it’s safe?” she said, peering out into the darkness of the garden.

In all the anticipation of the file, Annie had forgotten the mess in her bedroom and the fact someone had broken into their holiday home. She felt her scalp tighten and crawl, pulling up her forehead and making her shiver.

“Maybe shut it again,” she said, eyes darting to the front door to make sure it was closed.

“We should call the police,” Mim said, sliding them back closed.

“And tell them what?” Annie asked. “That someone broke into our home and only ransacked one particular room? It’s a holiday home, for a start, so there’ll be fingerprints galore. Nothing was broken and it looks like they walked in an open door, because none of the doors are kicked in and none of the windows have been smashed. There will be nothing the police can do. It will be an incident number and… hold on, where have our notes gone?”

“What notes?”

Annie got up and marched to the fridge door. It had been the talk of incident numbers that had triggered the memory. Annie and Swift sitting right there in the kitchen, writing their lists of suspects and victims and pinning them to the fridge door like they were back at work. Only now the fridge door was blank, no crime notes to be found. Annie ducked her head and looked under the table then squatted down and peered under the fridge.

“Annie, what have you lost, because it looks like your marbles?” Mim had sat back down and was reading some more of their mum’s file.

“Well, the perp got away with something after all,” Annie said, sitting back down at the table with a thump.

“What?”

“Just mine and Swift’s notes about Dad’s case.” Annie sighed. “Why take those? There was nothing there, not really. It was a desperate list written by a desperate daughter.”

“Are you going to get in trouble for that? Like, police trouble.” Mim rubbed her eyes. “For not having paperwork locked away safely.”

A burst of laughter shot from Annie. She quickly covered her mouth with her hands.

“Sorry,” she giggled. “It’s just that we’re not officially on the case so we’re more likely to get in trouble for doing the work in the first place. Oh Mim, this is all so messed up. How did we get from a visit to see Dad, to sitting at a kitchen table at 1 in the morning trying to decipher Mum’s whole work life?”

Annie went back to the file, wiping away a tear with her finger.

“According to this, Mum was back in VICE before she started working on the Theobald case, I wonder if that’s how they met?” Annie pondered. “Oh, god, look at this.”

Annie’s finger hovered over a sentence that had jumped out at her like a rattlesnake. Mim leant over and started to read.

“Working undercover VICE at a commune… blah, blah, blah,” Mim said. “Commune leader was in a relationship with Thomas Theobald until Holly Sherwood was instructed to infiltrate the Theobald gang by any means possible. By which she took it upon herself to become close to the man and enter into a relationship… Oh no, Annie, no, I’m not reading any more.”

“But look at the name of the commune leader.” Annie was pointing frantically at the page.

“Sera Smith.” Mim looked as shocked as Annie felt. “Sera was in a relationship with Theobald? The same Sera who took me and Dad in when we first left home? The same Sera who set up the Veiled Order.”

Annie nodded, feeling her whisky start to make a reappearance. The Veiled Order had been at the centre of her last case and had nearly lost her Swift. But Sera had also been involved in the Theobald case too. It was all so interconnected that Annie was starting to feel dizzy as she read on aloud for Mim to hear.

“Sera Smith went on to have an affair with Holly Sherwood’s husband at the time, DCI Robert O’Malley, which brought the whole operation into jeopardy and O’Malley had to be lifted from the Theobald case.”

Mim whistled through her teeth. Annie shivered and wrapped her cardigan around her body.

“I feel like my whole working life in Swift’s team is about to come to a head.” Annie gripped the file as though it was a lifebuoy. “Like the last two years have been one massive lie, just to reach this point and find out that both my parents worked on the Theobald case. Why is Theobald so important? And why has coming here to reconnect with Dad triggered it all off again?”

Annie’s breath came short and shallow. She couldn’t get a grip on reality, instead it was swimming around her like a whirlpool ready to suck her down into its shadowy depths. Words scrambled on the page. Pictures morphed in front of her eyes.

“Annie,” Mim put a hand on Annie’s back. “Breathe. It’s okay. Don’t forget you had this file in your wardrobe-cum-filing cabinet, probably thinking of using it for Sunday’s litter tray for longer than we’ve been in Devon. It has only come out now because we’re opening that wound together. It’s okay to be scared, but you need to talk to me. I’m here for you, Annie, and I’m not going anywhere.”

Annie couldn’t catch her breath. Her lungs were too small, the air felt too thin. She was suffocating. Clawing at her throat, panting, trying so hard to fill her lungs and make them stretch wide open again, but every time she took in air, her ribs ached and her heart pounded and she couldn’t do it. The walls were coming in and in a way it was a welcome relief.

“Annie!” Mim kept talking, her voice sounding like she was miles away, but it was keeping Annie roused enough to stay conscious. “We live in Norfolk, don’t forget the whole county is probably related to each other. Isn’t that what people say? That’s why your cases all related, because we are. Maybe Swift’s actually our long-lost brother and you’re breaking a huge law by sleeping with him. Not to mention that your kids will have five feet and all with webbed toes. Might mean they’re great swimmers though.”

Mim had gone off on such a wild tangent that Annie couldn’t help but stop and squint at the idea of webbed five-footed children. She closed her eyes, the room spinning wildly, but her breathing became easier with each second that passed.

“They’ll be attractive though,” she whispered when her voice returned. “Our kids. Won’t they?”

Mim laughed through her tears.

“If you like that kind of thing, I suppose they will be, yes,” she said, bringing in Annie for a hug. “Now what’s say we head to bed before Swift comes back and you get carried away trying to make the five-footed babies a reality?”

“Thank you, Mim,” Annie said into Mim’s shoulder. “Thank you.”

“Anytime, oh sister of mine.”

Mim and Annie go to their feet, walking wearily to the stairs and the bedrooms. Annie knew she would have to tell Swift what she’d learnt from her Mum’s file, that’s if he didn’t already know those secrets.

But what Annie was dreading the most was the final part of the play. Because Annie’s mum had shot someone and that had caused her dad to flee. And if she was cold-hearted enough to be in a relationship with a man who tortured children, then who knew what else she was capable of?

FIFTEEN

Annie rose from a dream of tidal waves as rain pounded against the bedroom windows. Her head thumped and her mouth felt like the inside of Swift’s trainers. Rolling over in the otherwise empty bed, she scrubbed at her eyes with her fists. She wasn’t the only one nursing a hangover, the whole of Haling Cove looked bleak. Low clouds hung over the bay, dishwater grey and soaking everything in their reach. Annie felt like she needed wringing out too, like she’d produce the same damp offering as the sky did.

Too much whisky.

But it wasn’t just the whisky making Annie’s head ache. It was the whole of Saturday. From the moment she had arrived at Edgewater Clinic to the moment she laid her head down on the pillow, Saturday had been disaster after disaster.

“You should have called the police.” Swift didn’t bother with niceties when he was angry. Though Annie noted the teapot and fresh pastries on the tray he was carrying. Sitting up and pulling the covers with her, Annie winced at the way her brain flopped painfully from side to side.

“Could you talk a little quieter?” she whispered, eyes half closed.

“No,” Swift said, quietly. “What you did was dangerous.”

“I searched the house, there was no one here,” Annie protested. “And I know what happens in these situations, so it would have been a waste of police time.”

“You still need to report it, Annie,” Swift said, placing the tray on the ottoman at the foot of the bed. “If nothing else, the owners of the property need to know.”

Annie muttered in a non-committal way and brushed her hair off her face with her hands, feeling around for her hair bobble to tie it up.

“I got a bit distracted,” she said. “I think it was a targeted visit. Why now? Why us? There were no other crimes reported from this address in the last few years. I do my research.”

Swift scoffed as he poured the tea.

“Maybe the other guests were as slack with their reporting as you are?” He handed Annie a steaming mug of English Breakfast and took a seat at the edge of the bed, nursing his own cup. “Maybe someone breaks in every few weeks.”

From the twitching of Swift’s lips, Annie could tell he was pulling her leg, but she shook her head. She didn’t believe that there were too many coincidences and patterns emerging for this break-in to be an off-the-cuff chancer.

“Break in and not steal anything?”

“Some people get off on the thrill of breaking and entering, they don’t need to take stuff to make it fun.” Swift sipped his tea.

“Do you believe what you’ve just said?”

“No, not even a little bit.” Swift sighed. “I was trying it out for size. But look, maybe you disturbed the intruder before they managed to ransack the whole house?”

“Then why start in our bedroom, why not ransack downstairs first?”

“There’s a reason you’re on my team, O’Malley,” Swift said, smiling. “And it’s not just because you’re cute.”

Annie rolled her eyes and blew him a kiss.

“It’s a good job I know you’re joking,” she said, as a roll of thunder rattled the windows. Annie felt her insides swoop when she thought of the task in hand. “Swift, there’s something you should know.”

She looked down at her tea, the perfect colour, just as she liked it. Swift was so good to her. Not just the compliments that he gave her and the safety net he provided, but the invisible ways she knew he listened to her. Always getting her tea right was one small but mighty example.

“You should eat something,” Swift said, passing her the plate of pastries. Annie picked an almond croissant and tried not to worry about crumbs in the bed. “And I already know you drank the best part of a bottle of Macallan. The good stuff. The type of bottle that means taking out a small loan or selling a kidney to enjoy.”

Annie winced, the good stuff swirling around her empty stomach. She nibbled the pastry so she didn’t throw up hundreds of pounds onto the white duvet cover.

“I just grabbed the nearest bottle,” she said when her pastry was finished and her stomach had settled. “I had no idea what it was worth, whoopsie. But wait until you hear why we needed it, Swift, it’ll blow your mind.”

“I read the file,” he said, testing the words tentatively, watching Annie with a careful eye.

“Oh, thank god,” Annie sighed, only realising what a burden it would have to be to tell Swift about the connection between her family and Thomas Theobald. “Swift, can you believe it? When I first started reading the file way back when in your bedroom, I thought there was something up with Mum and her work. Why was she removed from post just before I was born? But I had no idea she was so… I can’t even think of the word I want to use, I’m so angry with her.”

Swift stood from the bed, the mattress not moving; it was so thick and expensive. He walked to the large window and pushed open the doors to the balcony. A waft of warm, damp air filled the room, bringing with it the smell of rain and the ocean and the cries of the seagulls enjoying a shower.

“Annie, I read all the information about Theobald and your mum,” he said, facing out to sea. “I think maybe you should go a little easy on her.”

“But her liaison with Theobald is sickening,” Annie said. “How could she get so close to someone like that? He hurt children. And it meant Dad had an affair with Sera. What about us kids? Did we not matter?”

“Your mum was just doing her job,” Swift said, kindly but firmly.

“But there are lines that even police shouldn’t cross, don’t you think?” Annie felt at a loss.

“So should she have stopped when she was asked to infiltrate the Theobald gang?” Swift pressed. “Or maybe the line should have been at working undercover in the first place.”

Annie knew Swift was right. Once she was embroiled in a case, Annie knew she would do anything to bring the victims justice.

“I worked that case, Annie. One of my very first, straight out of school.” Swift turned, leaning against the glass windows and facing Annie. “I might have worked with your mum. That’s weird to think. I don’t remember her, but undercover work is like that. I wouldn’t be able to picture her because I probably never met her face to face. But what I do remember is the feeling of relief that passed around the station when Theobald was caught and put away. He was a nasty piece of work and your mum helped stop him. That can’t have been easy for her. Especially with kids back at home.”

Annie felt a sweep of guilt floor her.

“And Dad had his own mind,” she said. “He chose to have an affair.”

“Exactly,” Swift nodded. “I get that your relationship with your mum is hard. But I think you need to look at this from her point of view too.”

“I just don’t understand why she didn’t talk to me about what she did, why pretend to be a school cook?”

“Maybe because that’s easier to say than apprehending men who wish kids harm?” Swift came back to the bed and sat down, taking Annie’s hand. “And you know why your mum was stepped down following her initial undercover work in VICE?”

Annie shook her head and Swift kept talking.

“Because she let three of the girls she was working alongside—and they were just girls—stay in her home because they weren’t safe on the streets. She jeopardised her own career to save them and she paid the price. She was so heavily pregnant with you too, that must have taken courage.”

“So if Mum was helping catch criminals and Dad was a DCI,” Annie said, tentatively pressing the wound. “Why did things go so spectacularly wrong and why did Dad leave? He said she killed someone, but there’s no record of that in her file, is there?”

“Nothing I could see,” Swift said. “Maybe that’s what he chose to say to Mim. I don’t know. We need to wait for him to wake up so we can hear his side of the story.”

Annie swung her legs out of bed and headed for the en-suite. She flicked on the shower and stepped under the warm water letting it wash away the rest of her hangover. Through the gaps in the bathroom blind, the sun was starting to make an appearance too, evaporating the clouds away.

“How was he last night when you left?” she called back through to Swift, soaping her hair. “Any change? Did you get anything else from the guard?”

It was hard to hear Swift over the shower water, so Annie turned it down to a trickle while she conditioned and listened to his replies.

“No change, O’Malley,” he shouted. “But he did say the driver and their colleague had already been discharged home so I may have done something a bit cheeky and found the driver’s address. I think we need to pay him a visit.”

Annie had never rinsed her hair as quickly as she did then. With conditioner still in the ends, she shot out the shower and wrapped herself in a giant, fluffy white towel.

“Now?” she asked, dragging on clean clothes from the pile the intruder had left strewn on the floor. “Just give me ten minutes and I’m all yours.”

“All mine, hey?” Swift said, hovering by the door. “What about I give you fifteen minutes and I stay here?”

Somewhere downstairs Mim gave a groan.

“There are other people present who can hear your conversation, guys,” she shouted up to them.

Annie laughed and closed the door on Swift so she could get ready.

Fifteen minutes later they were heading out in Swift’s car on the coast road away from the hospital and the clinic and the house. They had left Mim looking through Holly Sherwood’s file to see if she could find any more information about Theobald. She had made a full pot of coffee and was determined to drink it all before going to check on Robert O’Malley.

The sun was high in the sky now, burning away the last of the clouds, taking the rain with it. Annie closed her eyes and felt the rays warming her face through the windshield. Families were heading to the beach, blocking the narrow roads with their arms laden with picnics and buckets and spades. Swift gave them plenty of room, but Annie could see the way his jaw twitched every time he avoided another child moving at the pace of a tortoise.

They made it with no injuries—given, or received— and pulled up at a large sea-view property set on its own on the clifftop. Swift whistled as he got out the car.

“DS Placid is doing okay for himself on a sergeant’s wage,” he said.

Annie dropped down from the car and stood beside him, taking in the original stonework and the ornate gated frontage.

“Some would say the same about you and your giant mansion,” she replied, giving him an elbow.

“Hey, watch your mouth, I’m a DI,” he joked, opening the gate and walking the path to the front door.

The doorbell chimed out and a few moments later a shadow moved across the obscured glass. The look of surprise the man gave them when he opened the door was not what Annie had been expecting.

“Joseph Swift, to what do I owe the pleasure?” he said, his voice all smile, his face definitely not.

“Morning, Placid,” Swift replied. “Just wondering if we can come and have a chat, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

“Twenty odd years,” Placid said, now not smiling even with his voice. “I suppose you’d better come in before the neighbours start talking.”

Annie looked around before stepping inside. There were no neighbours. And what was Swift playing at?

SIXTEEN

“How do you two know each other?” Annie looked around, following Swift and DS Placid through the hallway to the kitchen at the back of the house.

Swift had been right, there was no way Placid would have been able to afford this place on a sergeant’s wage, not without some outside help. Which he could have in many forms, so what was setting Annie’s teeth on edge about the airy space decorated in all shades of grey?

“We trained together,” DS Placid replied. “Many years ago.”

“I have to say, when O’Malley’s guard said your name it took me by surprise,” Swift said, leaning against the counter as Placid filled a small kettle.

“Not as surprised as I was to see your face five minutes ago,” Placid replied.

It was weird for Annie to hear her surname from Swift’s lips and it not being her he was talking about. She hovered beside the door, the tension in the room pushing her away. The two men like dogs, eying each other up, wondering who’s going to bare their teeth first.

“I’m assuming from the hour and the lack of a phone call that this isn’t a social visit?” Placid set the kettle to boil and pulled out three identikit white cups from the cupboard.

As he set them down and started filling them with cheap coffee grounds, the gears in Annie’s head clicked into place. She knew why she felt on edge, where her anxiety was stemming from. The house may have been grandiose from the outside, all brickwork and fancy fencing, not to mention the sheer size of it. But inside was lifeless, cold, there was no heart to it. This wasn’t someone’s home, it was bricks and mortar and a lot of grey paint.

“What else would it be?” Swift asked as the kettle boiled loudly beside him. “I heard your name and thought we could come and pay you a visit. Like you said, it’s been years.”

Annie couldn’t stand the feeling in the room any more.

“Where’s the bathroom?” she asked, hurrying out of the kitchen and following Placid’s directions down the hall and last room on the right.

She shut the door of the small washroom behind her and leant her weight against it. Swift would have had his reasons for not telling Annie he knew Placid and in the kitchen he had been work-mode Swift. But that didn’t make it any easier. She splashed her face with water, noticing the thick layer of dust on the sink and the musty smell from the towel. Giving that a wide berth, Annie shook her hands and patted her face with her t-shirt. This bathroom was not well used.

And as Annie made her way back slowly through the house, she pushed open a few doors and glanced in. The living room was the same shade of grey as the rest of the house seemed to be, kitted out with what looked like student accommodation furniture. Mismatching sofas and a huge television. But what caught Annie’s eye was the pile of pizza boxes and take out cartons. Placid wasn’t a man used to cooking for himself. Or tidying up. Or keeping house. Though he must have been around Annie and Swift’s age, Placid looked stuck in the mentality of his early twenties.

She shut the door quietly and stepped back up to the kitchen, only to be met by the angry growl of the DI.

“Are you up to your old tricks again, Placid?” Swift said, low and fierce.

Annie stopped in her tracks, listening from an unseen position just outside the kitchen.

“Joe, I swear, there’s nothing going on,” Placid replied. “We were hit by another car. You can’t exactly blame that on me.”

“Another car who paid you to be in that exact place at that exact time?”

“No. Look Swift, I get why you’d ask me that, but I’m changed. I make my own money now, all legit, honest.” Placid’s high pitched words screamed dishonesty.

So did the way he was living. Huge house, barely furnished.

“Annie means the world to me,” Swift growled. “If I find out that you had anything to do with the guys who put her dad in a coma then I won’t be as restrained as I was when we were newbies.”

Annie heard a scuffle, the scrape of a mug on a surface, the clatter of a teaspoon.

“No one put him in a coma,” Placid cried. “We were hit. Our van was hit.”

“And I’m Hercule Poirot. Those injuries were not from a car accident. Have you seen the great hulking bruise on his face? It’s practically screaming ‘look who punched me’.”

“What?” Placid sounded shocked. “That’s not what the clinic said would… I think you need to leave.”

“The clinic? Edgewater Clinic? That’s not what who said would happen? Talk to me Placid.”

“I want you both out of here now.”

There was another scuffle and Swift’s back appeared at the kitchen door. Annie stepped back, letting him pass by, the scruff of his shirt was gripped in Placid’s hand. That wasn’t the way Annie had been picturing the scene from outside.

“Get off him,” she yelled. “What is going on?”

Swift pushed himself free and brushed down his top.

“We were just leaving, Annie,” he said, guiding her away from Placid with a hand on her back. “Good to know where you ended up, Placid. I hope you’re happy here?”

Annie marched out of the house and up to Swift’s car, getting in and slamming the door shut behind her.

“Don’t ever leave me out of the loop like that again,” she yelled as Swift climbed in. “What the hell was going on back there? Who is he? How do you really know him?”

Swift buckled himself in and turned on the engine, taking them out onto the winding roads. Annie felt her blood pulsing around her body as fast as a speeding train.

“I’m sorry, Annie,” he said. “I should have told you. I just wasn’t definitely sure it was going to be him.”

“Placid?”

“Yeah, but I should have said something before we got there. I wasn’t expecting to feel so angry.”

“Me neither,” Annie huffed. “We’re supposed to be a team. At least you could prepare yourself for the possibility you’d feel angry because you knew what you were getting into. I thought we were going to chat to the driver of the van my dad was in. Big difference, Swift.”

Swift was quiet, his fingers gripped tightly on the wheel. They drove for a while, neither of them speaking. The countryside passed by; hedgerows turned into side roads which turned into main roads until they were in the midst of the town and the holiday traffic. Swift drove carefully through the crowds and found them a spot in a car park on the outskirts.

“Is this our first fight?” He peered up at Annie through his brows, head lowered. “If it is, can I start by saying that what I did was wrong. I should have told you I knew Placid from my early years as a beat cop.”

Annie nodded, trying to place yet more pieces of the puzzle that was her dad’s case.

“And if it was our first fight,” Swift went on, his lips curling gently. “Then can I just say that you’re hot when you’re annoyed?”

“No, you bloody well can’t,” Annie replied, grinning. “Because that would be totally unfair and highly unprofessional. Seeing as we’re in work mode, yes?”

She leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek, his stubble grazing her lips.

“Talk to me about Placid,” she went on. “And put the engine back on, I feel like one of those dogs in a warning about not leaving them in a warm car.”

Swift clicked the button and wound down all the windows as far as he could. A coolish breeze tickled Annie’s neck, bringing with it the noise of the town and the scent of car fumes.

“Can’t have it all I suppose,” Swift said, wrinkling his nose. “So, Placid. We trained together. He was one of those people who always had to be best at what he did, he liked to talk the talk. But he wasn’t the fastest or strongest or even the cleverest, so his goals to beat us all soon flew out the window. He got angry. But instead of working himself harder, building himself up, he turned rogue.”

“Rogue how?” Annie asked, her throat dry.

“He started taking steroids, then he started selling them.” Swift looked out at a family walking through the car park, their kids skipping together as the parents trudged behind, laden with bags. “He made a lot of money and when it came to a head, Placid started bribing those officers he sold the drugs to. Apparently, anyway.”

“What do you mean apparently?”

“The case against him was dropped,” Swift went on. “Someone high up took pity and Placid was forced to move locality rather than lose his job. He wasn’t even pushed out, really, just given the option.”

Annie hummed.

“You think he was bribing the top dogs?” she asked.

“Absolutely. And I also think he was doing more than that. I think there are some corrupt people in the police, like there are everywhere. And they will sniff out those weak enough to break the law to get what they want, and they will use them for their own gain.”

“And do you think that’s what’s happened with my dad?” Annie asked. “That Placid was being paid to drive that van at a certain time in a certain place.”

“I think if that is the case, then you are right in believing what happened to your dad is linked with someone breaking into our holiday house.”

“But how would they know we were coming here and the reason? And how would they have known I had mum’s file, if that’s what they were even after? And, more importantly, why would they care? I care because she’s my mum and I want to know what happened with her and dad.”

Annie flapped her arms, none of this made any sense.

“They care because they’re involved too,” Swift said. “They care enough to try to silence your dad. Annie I’m worried about your mum. Do you think you should call her and tell her what’s going on?”

“I need to talk to Mim,” Annie replied, skirting the question. “I need to know who she told about coming here and how she found out dad was working here.”

“And your mum?”

“We can discuss it together.” Annie crossed her arms.

The idea of calling her mum and telling her where she was and why, made Annie feel a bit sick. But Swift was right, if they were all involved in this somehow, then she had a right to know she might be in danger because of her daughters.

Swift’s phone broke through the silence Annie’s thoughts had left. He switched on the engine and ran it through the car speakers.

“Evans, how are you? You’re on speaker and Annie’s here too.”

“Hey, Evans,” she said, glad of the distraction.

“I’m glad you two are together, means I won’t have to explain myself twice.” Evans sounded echoey on the car phone, but Annie could still hear the tension in his voice. She wasn’t sure she was ready for yet more conundrums. “I managed to sneak a look at the tox report of the woman involved in those deaths at Edgewater Clinic, the one your dad supposedly sold drugs to. Sarah Mitchell.”

“What did you find?” Annie asked.

“It’s weird. But the report is basically saying your dad sold her LSD, Annie. He’s going to be charged with possessing an illegal psychoactive substance with intent to supply, and supplying an illegal psychoactive substance.”

“But there’s no penalty for possessing LSD is there?” Annie asked.

“Not unless you’re already in prison,” Swift added. “But I wonder if they’re taking into consideration where your dad was working and the outcome of the supply.”

“Yes, yes, all that,” Evans said. “But that’s not what I’m concerned about. When I read the report I wanted to have a look at the sample results too, but they weren’t attached. So, I did some more digging. Turns out that the original samples looked one way, and the tox report that ended up on the desks of those involved looked another. I’m not sure if the report was doctored after it was written by the pathologist, or if the pathologist lied about the results. In other words, I don’t know who changed them. But the blood from Sarah Mitchell didn’t show the presence of LSD but something called Powdered Scopolamine along with T. daenensis.”

“What are they? Could they be the clinical names for a new type of LSD?” Annie asked, mind racing.

“No, these drugs are scarier than LSD. In its street form Scopolamine is called Devil’s Breath and people say it gives the supplier total control over the user’s thoughts and actions. It renders the user like a zombie, pliable and manipulatable. Mostly it’s used through transdermal patches. Stickers and such like stuck to the skin. But sometimes, in its scariest form, it’s a powder that can be blown into your face.”

“So Sarah Mitchell was given a coercive controlling drug and then killed those other women at the request of the supplier? Is that what you’re saying, Evans” Swift said.

“I don’t know the answers to those questions, only that the results show that’s what Sarah was given. But my guess would be yes.”

Swift turned to Annie.

“Does that sound like something your dad would do?”

“I honestly have no idea,” Annie said. “No, hopefully not. But I know someone who is using mind-altering drugs on unsuspecting women already and I wouldn’t put it past him to cover up a death with a scapegoat if his trials went drastically wrong.”

SEVENTEEN

Swift weaved his way through the traffic and back to the holiday house. The heat of the air sailing in the windows made Annie feel like they were in the Med and not the South Coast of England. Though the last time she went to the Med she ended up in a hostage situation. Trouble followed Annie and Annie decided she was going to stay in Norfolk and just work from now on, as travelling always ended in disaster. Sweat was pooling at the base of Annie’s back and trebling the size of her hair by the time they arrived back.

“Mim?” she called, heading up the steps and into the house. “Are you home? Mim?”

There was the sound of a door slamming upstairs and the patter of feet.

“Alright, alright, who’s on fire?” Mim appeared at the top of the stairs and skipped down them, jumping the last few steps. “What’s up?”

“Mim, how did you find out where Dad was working?” Annie asked, bypassing the niceties. “Who did you ask? Where did you ask? That kind of thing.”

Mim brushed past her and headed to the kitchen area, leaving a trail of Chanel perfume and a whole lot of unanswered questions.

“Have I done something wrong?” Mim asked, eyes narrowed. “Because I feel like you’re accusing me of something.”

Mim grabbed a can of fizzy water from the fridge and cracked it open.

“No one is accusing you of anything, Mim,” Swift said, walking up behind Annie.

“But we do need to know,” Annie added, palms flat on kitchen table. “If the break in last night was targeted towards us, then we need to know who you told about this trip.”

Mim took a long, slow sip of her water, eyes on Annie. When she finished, she spoke as though Annie were a pre-schooler.

“Did you wonder if maybe someone followed us back here? That’s how they knew where we were staying? Did you think about that? Not everything is my fault.”

“Mim, where did you find out about Robert O’Malley’s new job?” Swift was giving her his best interview tone and the flush on Mim’s cheeks showed it was working.

“Oh my god, okay. I asked on a forum,” she replied, chin pointed determinedly at him.

“What kind of forum?” Annie said.

Mim rolled her lips into her mouth and puffed out her cheeks.

“It was a forum for retired and ex-police,” she said, her shoulders sagging. “I thought it might be the best way to find him. The police world is a small community and Dad used to tell me he’d sometimes trawl these sites looking for old colleagues’ names.”

Annie had done the same. For years she’d scrolled through trail after trail of inane police chatter and come up empty handed. How did Mim find him so easily?

“And who told you where he was?” Annie asked, biting down the unfairness of it all.

“I don’t know,” Mim sniffed. “They all use weird usernames like balderdash58 and OperationCatchTheBaddies.”

Annie looked to Swift who had gone a shade paler.

“You think someone in the local force is at fault here?” Annie asked him. “Placid?”

Mim’s brows shot up.

“The driver from the accident?” she said. “You think he’s involved?”

Swift pulled out a chair and sat down, elbows propped on the table.

“Placid would have sold his grandma for fifty quid back in the day. I have no idea what he’s like now, but I am almost 98% sure he didn’t buy that house by himself or by means of a legal nature. In fact, I’m not sure he even wants to live there. It’s a showpiece from the outside, gives him status, but inside was the soulless palace of an unhappy man. It’s possible that Placid could have seen your request for information about your dad and used it to his advantage. It maybe poses the question of bribery to get your dad out of jail or extortion for information, that kind of thing.”

Annie perched at the end of the table, taking Mim’s water and having a drink.

“And what about Dr Reynolds?” Annie asked. “I still think he’s involved somehow.”

“Yeah. It’s too much of a coincidence that he’s conducting drug trials on the patients,” Swift replied. “And these trials are using mind-altering drugs that allow him to manipulate memories. I say we go and talk to him again. Try and find out more.”

“We’re running out of time though.” Annie knew that they had only a few hours left until the doctors tried to bring her dad back to consciousness. “Why don’t I go and talk to Reynolds, and you go and talk to the police? We can get more info quicker that way. And you’re better off talking to the police as you’ll know what questions to ask without rousing suspicion.”

“I’ll sit here and crack jokes to myself, shall I?” Mim added, slumping down onto a chair. “Why don’t I come to the clinic with you, Annie? Dr Reynolds liked me, and I might be helpful.”

“You can go and be with Dad,” Annie said, getting down and giving her sister a hug. “He will need a friendly face if he wakes up early.”

“Wow, it’s almost as though you’re trying to get rid of me and making out like my role is as important as yours. I’m not a child, why don’t I get to do something risky?” Mim crossed her arms over her chest.

Oh, I don’t know, maybe because you’re liable to get hurt.

Annie put a hand on Mim’s shoulder and squeezed.

“I care about you too much to put you in any danger. If these men are capable of putting Dad in a coma, then god knows what they could do to a young woman.”

“I’d like to add that you’re also a young woman and Dad is also my dad.”

“Please Mim,” Annie said, running a hand through her giant hair, trying to tame it.

“Okay, okay.” Mim threw her hands up. “I’ll go and sit at Dad’s bedside like the good little sister that I am.”

Mim grabbed her bag from the table and marched to the door.

‘Let me know if anything changes,” Annie shouted after her. But the door was slammed shut before she could finish her sentence.

Annie dropped her head into her hands and Swift wrapped his arms around her.

“I don’t know what’s happening, Swift,” she muffled into his shoulder. “We were supposed to be reconnecting. Meeting up with Dad and rehashing our pasts and mending all the hurt. And instead we’re arguing more and the past is getting messier and I don’t know which way is up anymore.”

Swift stroked her hair, hushing the tears and the panic rising in her chest. He put a hand on each of her shoulders and moved her gently so she could see his face. His eyes had darkened.

“Your dad is in hospital fighting for his life, O’Malley,’ he said, softly. “You’ve learnt that your mum and possibly your dad were working on a case that you’ve also worked on. A case that feels dark and unreachable because it’s so horrible. It’s possible that someone has followed you here and the same someone put your dad in hospital. It’s no surprise that you and Mim are finding this hard.”

Swift drew Annie back in for a hug.

“And you and Mim have only really found each other recently,” he continued as Annie’s tears began again. “As much as you’d like to do everything on your own, you know you don’t have to now and that’s something to get used to. I’m not talking about me, though I am here too. I’m talking about the way you’ve grown up thinking your dad left you behind and your mum was angry with you because of it. The way you’ve made yourself an island because of the effect that had on you. But now you’ve got Mim back in your life, there’s someone who represents family now. A family member who you can push and test limits of. Mim is the same. You’re both finding your feet with each other and you need to give yourself time to settle back in to being sisters again.”

Annie sniffed, feeling a warmth settle in her heart.

“Who made you so sensible and knowledgeable about family dynamics?” she uttered.

“I have a great family,” he replied, squeezing hard then letting her go. “And I’d love for you to meet them one day.”

Annie felt her face lift into a smile.

“I’d like to meet them too.”

“Let’s sort out yours first though, hey?” Swift lifted his phone from where he’d left it on the table, he looked back at Annie quizzically. “Or maybe not sort out completely, I’d like you to meet mine before we’re all too old and senile to remember it.”

Annie flicked her fingers at him.

“Oy,” she laughed, wiping away the tears with the back of her hands. “They may be the world’s most unconventional and annoying family, but they’re still mine.”

“See, there we go,” he said, shaking his phone at Annie. “You’re getting there.”

He looked down at his phone and frowned.

“What’s up?” Annie picked up Mim’s discarded can of fizzy water and finished it off.

“I’ve got an email from Tink,” he replied, eyes not leaving his phone. “Hold on, looks like she’s got some info on Reynolds. Let me call her.”

He dialled Tink and put his phone on speaker on the table.

“Guys, you’ll never guess what I’ve found?” Tink said, automatically assuming correctly that she was talking to them both.

“Nope, that’s why I called you, Tink,” Swift joked.

“Rude,” Tink replied.

“Ignore him, he’s being all Yoda-like, and it’s gone to his head.” Annie winked at Swift who looked mortally wounded.

“Happy to,” Tink laughed. “Okay, so I did some digging on your doctor Reynolds to see where he moved from and what his speciality had been previously. Well, turns out Edgewater Clinic is his first role since qualifying as a psychiatrist.”

“What?” Annie said. “Mature student then?”

“Yeah,” Tink went on. Annie watched as Swift chewed the lid of the pen he’d picked up from the table. He was deep in thought. “He worked in finance before; can you believe it? Apparently had an epiphany once he’d made his first few million and decided he wanted to help people instead.”

“By becoming a doctor who likes to try out weird experimental medical practices?” Annie scoffed. “Gee, give the guy a Nobel Prize. What is it with men with money who think they can do whatever they like and call it an epiphany?”

Tink laughed down the phone, tinny and high pitched.

“Got it in one, there,” she said. “Because that’s not all I found out. Records show that Reynolds applied to an ethics committee for approval of the work that he’s doing, and he was turned down twice.”

“So he’s not allowed to be doing the treatment he’s doing?” Swift asked. “And I use that word in the loosest terms.”

“And he’s doing it anyway?” Annie added, her mind was whirring.

“Not quite,” Tink interrupted. “He was eventually granted ethics approval and is allowed to be working on his own research. Listen to the name of the project, it’s a mouthful and it’s any wonder that people are put off standing up to these guys when they hide behind a jumble of words like this.”

Annie heard a rustling of paper and Tink continued.

“Here we go, The Role of Neuropharmacology in Memory Modification: A Research-Based Approach to Reducing Aggressive Tendencies in High-Risk Individuals.”

Swift whistled through his teeth.

“How did he manage to swing the ethics committee?” he asked.

“So, our doctor was headhunted to work at Edgewater,” Tink went on. “And the signatory who headhunted him was also the same signatory who signed off the ethics on his trials.”

“What?” Annie said again. “Isn’t that a huge conflict of interest, not to mention weird? Why headhunt someone who’s only just qualified? What’s up with all the other doctors out there who are doing amazing work with mental illness?”

“I’m guessing the bank balance helped,” Tink said. “And the trial he was approved for sounds a lot less experimental than the one he’s actually doing. It sounds controlled and carefully monitored. From how you described Reynolds’ real-life work, it’s anything but.”

Swift dropped the pen on the table with a clatter and Annie jumped.

“Do we know the name of the person who was so keen to work with Reynolds?” he asked. “Maybe we can talk to them too. I’d be keen to know why Reynolds in particular.”

“We do,” Tink said, her voice dropping. “And you’re not going to like it.”

Swift pulled out a chair and sat back down next to Annie. She could feel the tension ebbing from him like pulses from a sonar.

“Hit me,” he said.

“It took me a while to decipher the name because the writing is awful, you can tell he’s a doctor,” Tink said, no humour in her voice. “And there was no additional block capitals etc etc. But the person who signed off the ethics committee, the same person who signed the letter persuading Reynolds to apply for the role at Edgewater was a certain Thomas Theobald.”

EIGHTEEN

Swift grabbed his car keys and ran to the front door. Annie followed suit, trying to make sense of everything she’d just heard through the swirl of panic in her head.

“I’m coming with you to see Reynolds,” Swift called as he beeped open the car and jumped in. “It’s got to be a joke, Theobald is locked up, not working on the committee of secure hospitals.”

Annie shook her head, buckling her belt and holding on as Swift sped out of the driveway and up the coastal road to the clinic.

“We don’t have time,” she said. “You need to go and find out what Placid is up to, I’ll speak to Reynolds. It’s not just the clinic involved in this; you need to get to the bottom of how the local force is involved too. I’ll be fine. We can meet up again later and hash this out if we need to, but you need to trust me on this one. We need to help dad and if that means me going to see Reynolds alone then I can do that.”

Annie held on tightly as Swift took a sharp corner, the car tilting precariously.

“It’s a good job no one was coming,” Annie added, her knuckles white. “I wonder how many people go the long way around to get into the main town, rather than coming this way?”

A thought poked at her brain like an incessant finger, but Annie couldn’t place the realisation that was slowly forming. She left it, not wanting to scare it away, used to her brain working things out at the most inopportune moments.

“Drop me here,” she said, as Swift pulled into the car park of the clinic. “Go and talk to Placid again and let me know what you find out.”

She opened the door before the car had come to a halt, grabbing her bag and stepping out. Faltering, a dark cloud brewing in her chest that was clenching her stomach, Annie leant back in and gave Swift a peck on the lips.

“Be safe,” she said, studying his face and feeling like a guillotine was coming down between them.

“You too,” Swift said, his own worry etched deep into the line between his eyes.

As he drove off, Annie felt the urge to chase after him, jump back in, and drive off into the blue skies that were surrounding the clinic. A new sense of unease settled in her bones and made her whole body shiver as she stood staring at the entrance to Edgewater Clinic. She looked back across at the shimmering tarmac and for a split second considered walking away. A split-second chance she would come to regret not taking.

But for now, she walked up to the door and headed back into the clinic.

Pippa looked up from her desk, a flash of a smile.

“Fergie?” Pippa said, and Annie looked around before remembering the name Mim had given her.

“My name’s actually Annie,” she said, heading up to the booth. “I need to speak to Dr Reynolds as a matter of urgency. Please can you call him and see if he’s free?”

Pippa’s eyes widened.

“Is your dad okay? Has something happened?”

“He’s the same. But… look it’s too complicated to go into and I’m running out of time, but if you really did like Dad as much as you say you did, you’ll do this for me. For him. Please Pippa.”

Annie felt like she was going to cry. The walls of the reception were closing in on her, spinning around like a Wurlitzer. She placed both hands on the desk and tried to steady her mind.

Pippa nodded, taking herself off into the back of the booth. Annie could hear her talking but couldn’t make out the words. Willing with all her might, Annie closed her eyes and waited for Pippa to come back.

“He said he’ll see you,” she said, smiling.

A welcome breeze from the air con had cleared Annie’s head and it was all she could do to not climb through the small gap in the booth window and hug Pippa.

“Thank you, thank you,” she said. “I feel as though I’m on the edge of something here, and I couldn’t have gotten in without you.”

“You’ll need to leave your bags and phone here at reception, again,” Pippa said, pushing a small tray through the hatch. “And pop this visitor’s badge on, so we can keep track of you.”

Throwing the lanyard over her head, Annie peeled off her bag and put it down with her phone. The tray reminded Annie of the airport but there was no time to think about holidays as Dr Reynolds burst through the airlock and into reception.

“Fergie,” he said, eyes locked on Annie. “Or is there something else you prefer to be called?”

Annie looked at Pippa who gave her a shrug as an apology.

“Fergie is my… er, work name. Please call me Annie.” Annie smiled her widest smile.

“Well then, Annie,” Dr Reynolds said, a soft hand on her forearm. “Why don’t you come with me and we can have a little chat?”

The hairs on Annie’s arm rose to attention around Dr Reynolds’ fingers. She felt cold. Heart racing.

Deep breaths, Annie. Deep breaths.

She knew the rising panic was all to do with her history and everything that came from almost being incarcerated before. But Annie couldn’t shake the feeling of not being in control. Back then her mum had saved her from being sectioned. Now, she was on her own.

“So, Annie, would you like to follow me?” Dr Reynolds asked as he swiped his card at the airlock and used his key to unlock it.

Annie faltered, looking back to Pippa and the door beside the reception that she had taken them through the day before.

“Are we not going to the meeting room?” Annie asked, nodding behind her. “You know, the press one?”

“Oh no,” Dr Reynolds said, shaking his head. “I’d much rather talk to you in my own office, if that’s okay?”

Everything was screaming at her to run out the door and all the way back to the holiday home. But if she did that, she’d never find out how a man who had been locked up for almost twenty years was signing ethical committee papers. Or, more likely, who was forging his signature, and why? Annie knew she was being silly, that she was fearing something that just would not happen, so she had to stand up to those fears and help her dad.

She reached to her pocket to see if there was any news from Swift, only to remember that her phone and bag were safely locked away.

“Lead the way,” she said, trying to steady the shake in her voice.

Dr Reynolds chatted inanely to Annie as he took her back through the rabbit warren of corridors. Each door looked like the one they’d just come through, each hallway the twin of its predecessor. There were so many turns and doors and routes to take that Annie felt like Alice fallen down the rabbit hole by the time Dr Reynolds stopped at his office and unlocked the final door.

“I love Edgewater,” he said, ushering Annie inside. “It’s such a simple design, so easy for staff and patients alike to find their way around. Not like my last job where the office block was thirty storeys high and you had to have a code for the lift.”

He chuckled, but Annie could tell by the openness of his face that he wasn’t being facetious.

“Right,” she said, hearing the door click shut behind her. Were they easy to find their way around? She wondered if it was her own state of mind that made the clinic seem like a rat run.

Dr Reynolds’ office was as soulless as the corridor it sprang from. Hospital-coloured walls, a veneer desk, and bog-standard office chair with a wheel that squeaked as he pulled it out to sit down. Offering Annie the chair opposite, she sat down and studied the only decoration Dr Reynolds had bothered to put up. His graduation certificate. An underfunded technical college with an awful reputation, was not the crest she had been expecting to read.

“I need to ask you a few questions, please, Dr Reynolds,” she said, reaching for her notebook and remembering again about her bag. “And thank you for sparing me the time. I know you’re a busy man.”

Play up to his ego. That’s what Pippa had told her and Mim the last time they were here, and Annie would be using that to her advantage.

“I am never too busy for someone who needs my help,” he replied, elbows on his desk, steepling his fingers. “Why don’t you tell me what’s troubling you?”

Annie cocked her head, biting her tongue at the doctor speak. Maybe some doctors never gave themselves time off.

“It’s to do with Da… um… Mr O’Malley, the security guard who was arrested and is now in hospital,” she said.

“Go on.” Dr Reynolds sat back in his chair.

“Well, I think that the police have got it wrong,” Annie said, suddenly feeling like she should have listened to Swift and accepted his help. She was about to accuse the man sitting opposite her of abusing his position and blaming her father for the fallout. She cleared her throat and sat up straighter.

“In what way do they have it wrong? What was their mistake?” Dr Reynolds’ slow, deliberate speech was tightening Annie’s frustrations into a ball in her stomach. But she wasn’t going to be talked down.

“Apart from the obvious glaring error in Mr O’Malley’s care,” she said, shaking her hands. “They said he was dealing a particular drug that was never actually found in the system of Sarah Mitchell.”

That caught the doctor’s attention. He sat up and narrowed his eyes.

“I’m sorry, how do you know all of this?”

There was no way Annie was going to get Evans in trouble, she had to be careful what she said next.

“I also know that you struggled to get ethics approval on your research project and the watered-down version that did pass is not what you’re doing here,” she said, thinking afterwards that wasn’t particularly careful at all.

Two little red dots appeared on Dr Reynolds’ freshly shaven cheeks. Annie could see his shoulders rising and falling with the exertion of his breath and she thought she might as well go the whole hog.

“And,” she went on, “I also know that the man who finally signed off on your committee papers and who persuaded you to come here in the first place, is a man who has been behind bars for over a decade for abusing children. Now I’d like you to tell me what you know so I can stop my dad from going to jail for something he didn’t do.”

Annie whipped her hands over her mouth, but it was too late. Dr Reynolds didn’t flinch, his face gave nothing away. If nothing else, he’d make a great poker player.

“It’s worse than I thought,” he said, instead, his lips curling into a soft smile. “Annie, can you tell me where you are now?”

Annie scoffed, tilting her chin up and crossing her arms over her chest.

“Where I am?” He must be joking, right?

“Yes, do you know where you are?”

“I’m in your office in Edgewater Clinic. If you asked me to find my way out I may struggle, but I know where I am.” Annie felt her palms start to moisten and wiped them on her shorts.

“Can you tell me more about your dad, Mr O’Malley, you say? Did he tell you what was going on here at the clinic? Did he tell you what he’d done?”

Annie shook her head.

“I haven’t spoken to him for nearly twenty years,” she stumbled over her words. Trying to sound confident in what she was saying. “He left me when I was seventeen. We all thought he’d run off to a cult, but actually it might have all been to do with Theobald, the man I was telling you about. He was running a racket of child abductors. I have worked on the case too, in an unofficial police capacity, but now I do actually work for the police and every case I work on seemed to be connected to Theobald and now I’m here, trying to reconnect with Dad and the name has come up yet again.”

She took a breath. Trying to organise the thoughts about her dad and Mim and Theobald in her head had been hard enough, they were still jumbled like a ball of wool. But saying it out loud made it sound ten times more tangled.

“How long have you been having these thoughts?” Dr Reynolds tilted his head and Annie wanted to bat it off his shoulders with the chair she was sitting in.

“What thoughts?”

“The thoughts of working for the police. Thoughts of family members being involved in a child abduction plot.” Dr Reynolds had his eyes on Annie, but he was typing away on his keyboard as he spoke.

“No, no,” Annie stopped herself from shouting. “I do work for the police. And my dad had nothing to do with Theobald in that capacity. He was trying to catch him. At least, I think he was. Mum definitely was. But I didn’t know this as I thought she was a school cook.”

“Annie,” Dr Reynolds got out of his chair and walked slowly around his office. “I’m going to go and get something to help you. We’ll get the paperwork finalised, but I have enough evidence to detain you without your signature. I think you’re having what we call an episode of delusional disorder, but you’re in the right place.”

Annie barked out a laugh,

“What, no! I’m perfectly sane.”

A cold trickle of fear dripped down her spine as she felt Dr Reynolds walk up behind her and place a hand on either shoulder. They weren’t holding her down, but Annie wasn’t sure she’d be able to get up either.

“We’ll get you the treatment you need, don’t you worry, Annie. Or is it Fergie?”

Reynolds hands caressed her shoulders like a boa constrictor. And as Annie tried to wriggle free, she caught sight of something that made her want to vomit. There, on Dr Reynolds’ little finger was a signet ring. A pattern Annie had come to know so well. As it was imprinted on her dad’s face.

NINETEEN

Annie couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. For a horrible moment she thought she was going to throw up all over Dr Reynolds’ desk. And maybe she should. The grossness of it might remove his hands from her shoulders and give her a chance to escape.

“Don’t worry,” he said again, giving her shoulders a squeeze with the same hands he’d hospitalised her dad with. “We’re going to get you all the help you need.”

Annie tested the strength of his grip, wriggling in her seat, but he was ready for her, pushing her back down.

“You don’t need to struggle,” he said, calmly, as though she were trying out the chair for size and not trapped in it like one of his patients. “I’ve already called for assistance. As soon as it arrives, I’m taking you straight to treatment before we book you in. I think a round of therapy will soon sort you out. How do you feel about not having these thoughts and feelings anymore, hey? You’ll not need to worry about the voices telling you you’re working for the police, or the confusion over who your family is. You’ll feel brand new.”

Annie swallowed hard. She couldn’t lose her memories; they were all she had of a lifetime of questions. Her dad when she was younger. The way Mim used to follow her around everywhere she went, trailing the raggedy blanket she loved behind her. The tough times after the disappearance. No matter how hard the memories were to relive, Annie couldn’t lose them. They made her who she was today. Without them, Annie had no idea of the person she’d be. And they were her memories. And it was her choice to lose them or not. This wasn’t a grotesque version of Eternal Sunshine.

“I am not crazy,” she whispered, sitting tall.

Dr Reynolds leant in, his coffee breath hot on her neck.

“Sorry, Annie,” he said. “Did you say something. I couldn’t quite catch it.”

“I said.” She closed her eyes. “I am not crazy.”

She threw her head back hoping for the best and catching Dr Reynolds square in the nose.

She felt a sharp pain in the back of her skull as the doctor’s nose crunched under it, warm blood gushed down her neck. She hoped it wasn’t hers. The doctor cried out in pain, staggering back, his grip on Annie loosening. She took the chance and swung herself from the chair, throwing herself forwards onto the floor. He ran at her, blood streaming out from his hands cupped around his face, Annie pushed herself up and dodged out of his way letting him hit the desk at full speed.

“You’re going to pay for this,” he gargled, as he doubled over the desktop.

Annie ran for the door. Adrenaline was shooting through her veins making her skin feel on fire.

“That was for all the women who knew who they were before you treated them,” she spat. “And for all the lives you’ve changed.”

The man’s eyes darkened.

“Changed for the good, you beast,” he growled. “You’ll see. You can’t escape. Girls like you can never escape, that’s why you need me.”

Reaching behind her, Annie felt the door handle and pulled. With a gasp and a flood of relief, she felt the door move.

“I don’t need you,” she roared. “I know my own mind and you’ll never take that from me. You’re working for Theobald. I don’t know how or why, but I’m going to make sure you rot in jail for what you’ve done.”

A flash of confusion reared on Reynolds’ face, and he reached for his belt. Worried that he was carrying a weapon, Annie didn’t wait to see what he pulled out. Stumbling through the door, Annie was met with the maze. She had no idea which way to go but anywhere was better than the office with Reynolds. She ran along the corridor just as an ear-splitting siren rang after her.

The emergency alarm.

That was what Reynolds had been reaching for. Annie remembered what Pippa had said, she knew she had seconds before a team of workers ran towards the alarm. Crashing into a door, Annie tugged at the handle, but it didn’t budge. She could see through the small window it was an airlock door.

“Come on,” she screamed. “Come on.”

But it was no use. These doors were a safety feature and no matter how hard she pulled, there was no way Annie was getting through it.

Footsteps rang out behind her, and faces appeared through the window in front as a group of guards entered the airlock. She was surrounded. There was no going forward, there were people waiting to cage her whichever way she turned.

“Excuse me, Miss,” Nurse Martinez gripped her arm and pulled.

Was this it? Was this the moment Annie would lose what little history she had kept close to her heart?

“Please,” she began, ready to plead her case. But Annie knew it was futile. Once a doctor had signed away her freedom, there was little she could do to fight her way out of the chains. But she had to try. “I’m just visiting. I had a meeting and I can’t find my way out.”

“You need to come with me,” the nurse said, dragging Annie through the airlock and into another faceless corridor. “It’s not safe for you to be out here.”

“I’m fine,” Annie protested, anger bubbling that a nurse she’d never ever met was telling her she was a danger to others. “It was just the doctor. He…”

Before Annie could wrap up the last few minutes in a single sentence she burst from the next airlock and out into reception.

“What?” The sun burnt her retinas. Annie blinked away the white dots.

“Sorry for manhandling you,” Nurse Martinez said, releasing Annie’s arm. “When an alarm like that goes off it’s not safe to be wandering the corridors in case a patient runs. I’ll leave this one with you, Pippa.”

Pippa waved a hand from the booth and headed to the door to come and see to Annie. Annie shook out her arm, a dull pain throbbing in her bicep. Her hand caught the lanyard of her visitor’s badge and she doubled over, hands on her knees to stop herself from face-planting the floor.

“Oh god,” she said, gulping down great lungfuls of air. “I thought I was a goner.”

“Oh dear,” Pippa said, hand on Annie’s back. “You look like you’ve had a bit of a shock.”

“You could say that again.” Annie stood upright. “Look, thanks for your help, but I need to be getting home.”

Dr Reynolds could come bursting through the airlock at any moment and drag Annie back into the depths of the hospital. She needed to get moving. Now.

“Let me help you,” Pippa said, brow crumpled. “Do you know where you’re going?”

Do you know where you’re going?

The temperature in the reception dropped to minus figures.

“What did you say?” Annie took a step back, something in her shifting.

Pippa had asked the very same question a few days ago, then given her and Mim directions to the police station.

Only they hadn’t been the right directions, had they? Pippa had sent them on a tour of the smaller roads around the coast. Why not send them on the quickest route to the station? The route that she now knew was the one over the bridge that her dad had taken in the police van.

“I was wondering if you needed any help?” Pippa said, edging forward, brow furrowed. “Why don’t you come back to the media room and get yourself sorted. You can call your sister, too, if you like? Get her to come and meet you here.”

“I… no, I need to get going, thanks though, Pippa,” Annie took another step, feeling the cool metal and glass of the outside door at her back.

She spun on her heels and tugged at the door. It didn’t budge. Annie tugged harder, the handle slipping in her sweaty palms. The door stayed firmly shut.

“All doors lock automatically in alarm situations,” Pippa said, matter-of-factly.

“Can you unlock this one now, please?” Annie could hear the shake in her words.

“No.” Pippa took another step towards Annie. “You’ll need to wait for the alarm to stop.”

The tension between the women was like a guitar string twisted too tightly. One pluck and it would snap, whipping dangerously through the air. From the look in Pippa’s eyes, Annie knew she’d be the one it sliced through.

The sun burned through the glass door and singed the skin on Annie’s forearm and as she felt the heat of it fizz the downy hair, the pieces of the puzzle fell into place with sickening clarity. The misdirections. The talk of Pippa’s previous hospital. The heat treatment she had described before. The lack of hair on Pippa’s body. It wasn’t a case of cancer treatment or alopecia. Pippa had been a patient at her previous hospital, not a worker. She’d endured the heat treatment and the side-effects it produced. How had she ended up here?

“Why did you do it?” Annie said, eyes darting around the reception for a way out. “Why tell me and Mim to go the wrong way unless you knew what was about to happen? You didn’t want us seeing the crash, did you? You didn’t want us knowing it was planned.”

Pippa’s face twisted into a smile.

“Took you long enough,” she said, rolling her eyes. “And they said you were the clever one.”

“Who said that?” Annie said. “Pippa, who are you?”

The alarm was louder now, ringing painfully in Annie’s ears. She knew it was only a matter of time before Dr Reynolds came bursting through the door to drag her away for treatment she didn’t want or need. Or maybe she did need it, maybe she wasn’t in her right mind. Things were blurring around the edges. Annie should have seen it sooner. Yet here she was trapped like a fly at a closed window. Maybe a month or two in a cell with no decisions to make and no worries to keep her awake at night might not be a bad thing. Maybe she’s not cut out for real life.

Annie shook the thought from her head. For too long she’d felt like she wasn’t enough, and now she was on the brink of finding out why, Annie needed to stay strong.

“There you are.” Dr Reynolds’ nasal shouts bounced off the walls.

“Doctor, we’re all good here,” Pippa said, smiling sweetly at him.

Annie glanced around for a way out. But every way she looked she was hit with a locked door.

“Please,” she begged them both. “Just let me go. I won’t tell anyone about the work you’re doing with Theobald. I promise. Please don’t make me lose my mind.”

The doctor tutted, marching towards where Annie was pinned to the external door. She squeezed herself as far back as she could, trying to meld into the glass and steel.

“You should hear yourself, girl,” he said, spittle flying from his lips. “Your mind is already gone. All this talk of Theobald has cemented in my own head that you’re a perfect candidate for treatment. Theobald is a figment of your imagination, the product of your mental health, can’t you see that?”

He gripped Annie’s arms so tightly she could feel the blood pool in her biceps above his bony fingers. It throbbed painfully.

“You want to erase Theobald from my memories?” she cried. “Why? So I can relearn about him when I talk to my parents again. Don’t forget that I didn’t know who he was until a few years ago. I learnt about how awful he was back then, and I can do it all again when I’m free. I may not remember you when you’re done with me, but you’re just one pawn in his stupid little game and you’ll get your comeuppance for what you’re doing.”

Annie turned her head to Pippa.

“You too,” she spat. “You’re worse, in fact. You came from an environment where you had no control over yourself. You were a patient. And now you’re here, inflicting that power over others. Where’s your empathy?”

Pippa shrugged and through the movement, something glinted in her hands. Annie squinted, leaning forwards to try and get a better look. Dr Reynolds’ fingers tightened painfully around her arms.

“You’re going nowhere, young lady,” he hissed.

Pippa stepped up, flipping a foil packet over and over in her fingers like a card trick. The alarm was still screaming in Annie’s ears. Where were the guards? The nurses? Surely one of them could help her.

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Pippa unwrapped the packet and laid it out flat, a fine dirty white powder heaped on top. “She’s coming with me.”

Annie’s stomach dropped. Devil’s Breath. She knew what it was and how quickly it could render the user in a state of confusion. In the blink of an eye, Pippa lifted the foil and blew. Annie turned her head away. She held her breath, head pounding, as Dr Reynolds staggered away, dropping his grip from around her arms.

“Pippa, what are you…?” he coughed, heaving, his arms out to try and orientate himself.

Pippa shrugged again. “Annie’s not the insane one here.”

Dr Reynolds scrubbed at his face with his hands, eyes watering. ‘You are,” he screamed. “What is this?”

Pippa sidestepped the doctor’s erratic arms, hitting out any which way he could.

“I’m not insane,” she said. “I was headhunted to work here, just like you. Only you’re stupid enough to think it was because of your work.”

Pippa burst out laughing, the sound of it setting Annie’s nerves alight.

“I was asked here because my research is second to none and the patients here need me,” Dr Reynolds choked out. His face was puce, eyes swollen and weeping. He scratched at his shirt collar, pulling it away from his neck.

Pippa stepped away as he coughed up a lungful of phlegm on the floor beside her feet. Everything about her was calm and collected. She looked unfazed, and that in itself was scarier than Dr Reynolds’ anger. Annie tried the door again, using the distraction as cover. But it was still locked tight.

“You were asked here as cover,” Pippa spat at Dr Reynolds before turning slowly to Annie. “So was your dad.”

Dr Reynolds dropped to his knees, hands covering his ears, face dripping with tears and snot and spit.

“What have you done?” he gurgled.

Pippa laughed again.

“No more than you were doing to those women you drugged.” She stepped around him, head cocked. Annie gripped the door handle behind her in fear. “Although I may have overdone it with the patch I stuck on your arm earlier too. I’m not sure what two rounds of the drug do to a person, I’m just a receptionist, after all.”

“Pippa?” Annie stepped up, dropping to her knees beside the doctor. “You need to call for help, he’s struggling to breathe.”

“You spoiled everything,” Pippa replied, steely eyes on Annie over the prone body of the doctor. “It was all going so smoothly before you arrived. I tried to scare you away by breaking into that bloody huge holiday house and ransacking your expensive shit, but did you listen? No. You’ve ruined it all now. We were trialling the new drugs, and they were working. Sarah Mitchell squashed those women’s heads with her bare hands.”

Pippa let out a giggle and skipped on the spot.

“Rebecca thought she could fly,” Pippa went on. “I told her she just needed to get to a high point and she could fly over the fences and all the way back home. Don’t you see how powerful this is? And Mia’s running was hilarious. She screamed to stop but I told her to keep going and she did.”

“I see how dangerous this is,” Annie shouted back. “Why are you doing it?”

“To control people,” Pippa joked. “We can make them do whatever we want them to now we know the dosage and the drugs. Our whole world will change when we have an army of puppets.”

“You’re evil,” Annie cried, looking at the air lock and praying for help.

“They won’t come,” Pippa snarled, seeing where Annie’s gaze fell. “I’ve locked them out. We thought the doctor would come in handy to get rid of you, wasn’t hard to make him think you’re off your head crazy. Have you heard the shit that comes out of your mouth, Annie? But you managed to get away from him, god knows how.”

“Who’s we?” Annie asked, looking around. “Why do you keep saying we?”

“I was headhunted, Annie, but not for the same reasons the good doctor was.” Pippa’s face was pure white. “I wanted to help. I could get the drugs into the hospital, and it would get me out of where I was. I love being the one in control. Oh how the tables have turned.”

“You’re not in control though, are you?” Annie said, her ears bleeding with the sirens. “You’re being used as a pawn as much as the doctor is. Could you walk away if you wanted? Who are you working for?”

Pippa kicked out at the doctor with her toe. His body wobbled then fell back still again.

“Theobald, I thought you’d already worked that out,” Pippa looked at Annie like she was bin juice. “Together we’re going to be minted.”

Annie’s mind whirred with the idea that Theobald would have people in his charge doing whatever he wanted. He wouldn’t need to wait for people sick enough to do his work, he could manipulate them too instead.

“But Theobald’s in jail,” Annie yelled.

“No, he’s not.” Pippa’s face was so twisted she looked like a cartoon villain.

“I don’t understand. My mum helped put him there.”

“No, she didn’t. He’s hiding here in plain sight,” Pippa kicked out again, hitting the doctor in the ribs and sending him flying sideways. He rolled back, foaming at the mouth, his body tensing into a stiff statue. Then he started to fit. The seizures were so violent the man was lifted from the floor almost like he was levitating, hitting the floor hard when he landed. Pippa jumped back, laughing. Annie moved out of his way, unable to stop the fit or keep him in the recovery position. He was moving too fast for her. And as he was thrown again into the air, Dr Reynolds tilted to his side and landed on the small alarm attached to his belt, breaking it into a thousand tiny pieces.

The reception fell silent. Annie heard the doors click unlocked. She looked at Pippa. The two women unable to rip their eyes apart. A charge of guards appeared at the airlock window and in the split-second Pippa looked from Annie to the men coming to stop her, Annie ran for freedom. She pushed to her feet and grabbed for the handle. Pulling the door open, she spilled out into the fierce heat and ran as fast as she could towards the main road and safety.

TWENTY

Not looking back, Annie ran as fast as she could out of the car park and onto the road. Someone was running behind her; she could hear the pounding of footsteps on the tarmac.

“Go,” she screamed at herself. “Run.”

Up ahead a lorry was racing down the hill. Annie waved her arms, hoping it would see her before it hit her and brought this day to a very abrupt end.

“Help, please stop.” She waved frantically. “Police.”

She couldn’t look less like police if she tried. Red-faced, jean shorts, holiday hair, no bag or phone or badge. But Annie was desperate, and she wasn’t going to move until the lorry driver stopped.

A squeal of brakes cut through the air. A flock of birds flew out of the hedgerow, flapping wildly to get out of the way of the lorry. It was moving too fast. There was no way it was going to stop. Annie squeezed her eyes shut and waited for the pain.

“What the hell are you playing at?”

The pain didn’t come.

Annie threw open her eyes and looked over her shoulder. The road was empty. Whoever had been following her was long gone. She turned back to the lorry driver and nearly hit her nose on the grill. It had been a close call.

“Sorry,” she shouted up to the windshield. “I need to get to the hospital; can you take me?”

The driver’s side door opened, and a man stepped down. Annie’s age, with a t-shirt suntan down one arm.

“Are you hurt? Did I hit you? I can’t be blamed for that, you know. You jumped out in front of me.” He looked her up and down and then over her shoulder at Edgewater Clinic. “Have you just come from the loony bin?”

“Oh, for god’s sake,” Annie said, exasperated, as she walked around to the passenger door and stepped up to open it. “What is it with people and their judgements? It’s not a loony bin and I haven’t just escaped. I work for the police, and I need you to take me to the hospital. Please.”

The lorry driver raised a brow as he climbed back in beside her.

“I never said escaped,” he said, throwing the lorry back into first gear and setting off. “But now you’ve got me worried. You don’t look like you work for the police. I might end up with my throat cut.”

Annie settled back in her chair, her heart slowing up with every hedgerow that passed them by.

“Well, at least if I do you some mischief, we’re heading in the right direction,” she said, winding down her window and sticking her head out. “Hospital, please.”

The lorry blocked most of the view, but in the far distance, just beyond the gates to the clinic, Annie was certain she could see someone standing there watching her. It wasn’t Pippa. This was a man; she could tell by the height and breadth and the way he stood with confidence just staring at the back of the lorry. She didn’t recognise his face, but the skin on Annie’s arms prickled with goosebumps at the distant memory his shape evoked.

The hospital was as busy as ever. Annie ducked past families looking worried, and small children in plaster casts as she ran through the atrium and along the corridor to the ward where her dad was admitted. As she rounded the corner to his room, she ran into the wall of chest muscle that was Joe Swift.

“Oof,” she said, too winded to get any other words out.

Swift put his hands on her shoulders and steadied her until her breath came back.

“Oh my god, Joe.” She spoke fast. “You’re never going to believe what happened to me? It wasn’t Reynolds—and I think he might now be dead—it was Pippa. But Reynolds was about to give me the same treatment he was giving the other women there. He tried to admit me, and I headbutted him and then the alarms went off and I ran. But it’s all Theobald, Swift. Pippa said he’s not in prison. He’s the one who’s been orchestrating this whole thing, the drugs, the deaths, the lies. They are brainwashing people to do their work. Do the police know he’s escaped? When did it happen? Did you find…”

“Annie.” Swift wasn’t one to interrupt, even when her words ran away with her, so she knew something was wrong.

Annie clamped her mouth closed and looked properly at the DI. His skin had the grey pallor of someone who hadn’t slept for long enough or was holding secrets that sapped the life and colour from them.

“Swift? What’s the matter?” If Annie’s heart could beat any harder she thought she might break a rib. “Is it Dad?”

Her hand flew over her mouth, eyes pricking with tears as Swift nodded.

“Oh god,” she cried, blinking and letting the tears run free. “Dad.”

She stumbled towards the closed door and felt Swift’s hand on her shoulder.

“Annie, wait,” he said. “It’s not what you think. Your dad is okay. In fact, more than that. Your dad is awake.”

Eyes wide, Annie felt bile churning in her empty stomach. The rollercoaster she’d taken that day was coming into the station and she was worried that if she got off, she’d never dare get back on again.

“Awake?” she asked, peering in the window.

Mim was sitting beside the bed, blocking the view of their dad. But by the poise of her body and the tilt of her head, Annie could tell she was talking.

“He’s awake,” she said, again, pushing open the door and walking in. “Dad, you’re okay?”

Annie half-skipped, half-walked to the bed. Almost twenty years of absence forgotten in the blink of an eye as she saw him sitting up and holding Mim’s hand. His face was still black and blue, the mark of Reynolds’ ring prominent on his cheek. Annie faltered, so many questions unanswered. But for now, all she wanted to do was hug her dad. So that’s what she did.

Despite the years that had passed and the story that remained between them, Annie breathed in her dad’s familiar scent, whisking her straight back to her teen years and a life she’d never forgotten. She didn’t let him go, worried if she unwrapped her arms from around his neck he’d vanish again. They stayed like that for what could have been minutes or hours, Annie had no idea. All she knew is that whatever she’d just been through, she was now safe.

“I thought you were dead,” she sniffed, finally letting him go and stepping back so she could take in the whole of him. He looked just as she remembered, only a little greyer around the temples and a little fuller in the face, though that could be the bruising. But do parents ever change in the eyes of their children? “I mean, just now I thought you were dead. Not the last twenty years. Although I thought you were dead then too.”

Annie hiccuped a laugh, she couldn’t help the flow of tears soaking her face and the neck of her t-shirt. She wiped uselessly at them with her hands until Swift waved a box of tissues in her direction. Sniffing, she took one and hid behind it for a moment’s reprise. Mim shuffled over so Annie could sit on the chair with her. They were perched like kids arguing over the shotgun seat, attention rapt on their father. Beside them the machines beeped and whirred, but the wires and tubes were now limited to an IV drip and heart monitors.

“Girls.” It was a whole lifetime of emotion wrapped up in a single word.

Annie dabbed at her face with the crumbling tissue, sobbing more tears than she could soak away.

“It’s okay, Dad,” Mim said, holding it together much better than Annie. “You don’t need to talk. We’ve got enough to say for us all. Actually, Annie has enough to say for us all if she can get the words out.”

Robert O’Malley’s lips twitched at Mim. But his eyes dropped to the blue blanket.

“Please leave.” His voice was rough, throat damaged by the breathing tube that had been keeping him alive, but what he said was unmistakable.

“Dad?” Mim sounded heartbroken. “It’s okay, we’ll wait as long as it takes for you to get better. You can go back to sleep.”

He shifted in his bed, the air mattress hissing underneath him.

“Leave,” he croaked again. “It’s not safe.”

A great, racking cough surged up through Robert O’Malley’s chest, doubling him over. Annie glanced around, grabbing the plastic jug of water and tipping some into the empty mug. She lifted the cup and guided the straw to his lips, letting him suck down the water in noisy gulps. When he’d stopped drinking and his coughing had subsided, Annie pulled up a chair of her own and sat by his head.

“Is this because of Theobald?” she asked. There was no point in pussyfooting around the truth, there was too many lies to wade through and no time to pretend otherwise.

“How do you know about Theobald?” he wheezed. “It’s not safe. All of it will have been for nothing if I put you in danger now.”

“All of what, Dad?” Annie said, feeling like she was on the edge of a precipice and about to fall in. “Please. I’ll leave if you still want me to, but first I need you to tell me what is going on. If we’re in danger, then surely it’s best if we know from what? You owe me.”

She added the sentence quietly, but Robert heard it well enough to flush with guilt. His eyes darted to the door and the uniform beyond it.

“How long has he been there?” he asked, nodding at the officer.

“Since they brought you in,” Annie sighed. “I’m not sure what they thought you were going to do while comatose, but there’s been someone at your door around the clock to stop you.”

Robert looked between his daughters.

“He’s not there to keep me from getting out,” he said, running his tongue over cracked lips. “He’s there to make sure I’m safe. From Theobald.”

Annie’s brows hit her hairline.

Behind her she felt Swift close by, the comfort of his presence made known by a light hand on her back. She knew he must be feeling as confused as she was, partly because Swift had worked the Theobald case back when he was a new recruit. The idea that this man who’d orchestrated so many crimes against children was no longer locked away must be a shock for him too.

“What do you mean?” Annie asked her dad. “How did he escape?”

She looked over her shoulder and directed a question to Swift?

“Did you find anything out when you were at the station?”

Swift shook his head and Annie turned back to her father. He looked vulnerable under his prescription blanket and the thought that he was in danger, even in a hospital bed, made her skin crawl.

“How much do you know about Thomas Theobald, Annie?” Robert said.

Annie screwed up her face as she tried to remember all the way back to her first case with Swift.

“That he’s supposed to be in prison,” she started, changing tack when she caught sight of her dad’s raised brow. “That he was a trafficker. My first case with Swift involved one of the children the police thought he’d taken, but it turned out he hadn’t. I learnt then that he used to abduct children to traffic them for organs, slave trade, that kind of thing. I guess, the longer I worked with Swift, the more I found out about Theobald’s past. It’s weird though, a few of the cases I’ve worked on, Theobald’s name has come up. At the time I just thought it was because he was a well-known name, prolific, that kind of thing. But it’s too much of a coincidence. Even when Mim and I were in Spain, his name came up.”

Robert smiled at Annie.

“I knew you were working with the probation service; I kept an eye on you from afar.” His words sent a knife into Annie’s heart. “I didn’t realise you’d started working for the police, though. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s in your blood.”

“Which I had no idea about,” Annie replied. “Apart from you being an inspector, of course. But I thought Mum was a school cook. Turns out she worked undercover and was the one who caught Theobald. But I only found that out when Mim told me, and that’s not something I should be finding out from my estranged sister.” She dragged her eyes away from her dad and looked at the IV stand dripping fluids into his arm. “Mim also told me that Mum had killed a guy and that’s why you left, is that true?”

“Oh, Annie-bananie,” he said, reaching out from under the blanket and putting a hand over Annie’s. “It was all such a mess. I’m so sorry I couldn’t take you with us. And I’m sorry you had to find out about your mum like that. She should have been honest with you; she still should be. I wanted her to be the one to tell you this, but as she’s not here and it’s rather pertinent, I think I need to. Your mum did kill a man. And that man was Thomas Theobald.”

TWENTY-ONE

Annie could have heard a pin drop. Even the beeps and whirs from the machines seemed to sense the weight of the truth Robert O’Malley had just divulged and had quietened to a gentle lull.

Eventually, when the air felt so tense it was about to crack, Swift stepped up and broke the spell.

“But Theobald was in prison,” he said. “I saw them sentence him with my own eyes. Watched as the guards took him down and felt peace when I saw actual emotion in his eyes because up until that point, I thought he was a devil. DI Joe Swift, by the way, nice to meet you.”

Robert gave Swift the once over before offering a single nod.

“You too, DI Swift, you too,” he said. “Let me ask you this. Did you ever see Theobald before the sentencing? Do you know what he looked like?”

Swift shook his head slowly.

“Only when he was arrested.”

“You were there for that?” Robert looked surprised. “You must have been a child.”

Swift laughed.

“Pretty much, yep,” he said. “But I remember the arrest like it was yesterday. Theobald had been the talk of the station for months, and his name was bandied about like the officers had known of him for years. It wasn’t an arrest that I will ever forget.”

“And what do you remember of it? A big arrest like that must have been quite the spectacle, no?”

Annie looked between her father and her partner, the realisation dawning from one to the other. Mim shuffled closer and took Annie’s hand, whispering that she was sorry. Annie didn’t know what she was apologising for, but she held onto Mim’s hand as tightly as she could.

“No,” Swift replied, slowly. “Actually, no. It was all very subdued. I think he was picked up at an airport, but he hadn’t even bought a ticket. There was no chase or showdown or fighting, just quite an ordinary looking guy being put in the back of an unmarked car.”

Robert nodded like he knew the answers.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s because the guy they arrested wasn’t Theobald.”

Swift pulled a chair up in a row with Annie and Mim and sat down heavily.

“This doesn’t leave this room.” Robert O’Malley wasn’t asking; he was making sure they would take whatever he was about to say to the grave. Which might not be a long time to have to keep a secret given the fear etched on his face.

Annie, Mim, and Swift shook their heads, all rendered speechless.

“The man we arrested and put away for Theobald’s crimes was a police officer, a young guy, been in the force for under five years. He signed a plea deal to keep himself safe because he’d been an inside man for Theobald.”

“But why pretend to be him when he knew he would be going away for a long time?” Annie blurted.

“The plea deal meant that his crimes would be kept secret from the other prisoners,” Robert told her. “Which is quite a deal when you’re being put away for crimes against kids, anyway. Even the softest of criminals will tear you apart for that.”

“But I still don’t get it,” Annie cried. “Why pretend to be someone so awful? Even if his crimes would be kept secret, that’s a huge sacrifice not to mention a massive, massive lie. Who knows about this? How was it allowed?”

Robert ran a hand through his hair, the line in his arm snagging on the corner of his pillow. Swift lifted it and loosened the tension from the back of Robert’s wrist.

“Thank you,” he said to the DI. “Maybe it’s best I start from the beginning. It’s not the most family-friendly bedside story I’ve ever told you, though.”

Annie’s stomach twisted as she remembered the renditions of Each Peach Pear Plum and Goodnight Little Bear her dad used to read to her. This was as far from that as she could get.

“I’m ready,” she said, looking at Mim. “We’re ready.”

“Your mum was working her way up the ranks, an indispensable member of the undercover team, when she was moved to the Theobald case. There had been rumours he was moving across Norfolk, and we wanted to be the force who caught him, you know? There was a very small, start-up commune in North Norfolk, closed off from the local community enough for Theobald to infiltrate and start to recruit vulnerable people to do his dirty work and we targeted that as a ruse to draw him in. A colleague of mine, Sera, she was tasked to run the operation. She got inside the commune and eventually started to run it. By the time Theobald came sniffing she was top dog and she made sure he felt welcome. We watched on as he started to secretly recruit members of the commune to stalk and abduct kids, but no one in the commune batted an eyelid at Theobald’s requests because he and Sera were in a relationship by then.

“When your mum was brought onto the case, I made sure she knew of the dangers she was going to be facing. Theobald wasn’t a man who took chances, he had friends in high places. Judges, police, government, that kind of thing. Wherever you look there are people who will do anything for a bit of extra cash; it’s sick, but it’s life, sadly. But your mum wanted to do it. We had you both by this point and we both wanted to make the world a little safer for all kids.

Only… Sera started forcing your mum to take you two with her to the commune, said it would be good for the undercover work as Theobald knew you existed by then. Well, he knew about you, Annie, because your mum never shut up talking about you.”

A beam of happiness flittered across Robert’s face.

“So, Holly took you a few times,” he went on, directing his words at Annie. “You’ve met Theobald, Annie. The real one. She introduced you to him as they got to know each other.”

Annie balked, she felt sick. The patient in the car park. The man watching the lorry. Pippa had said he’d been hiding in plain sight, and he had. With a vertiginous hit, Annie doubled over at the memory of playing in hay bales on a farm. Of picking blackberries and making pies. Of swimming in a lake with other children with dirty knees and matted hair. The memories Annie thought had been an idyllic childhood were actually of her being used as a pawn in an undercover operation to catch a predator.

Again, Swift’s hand on her leg proved the calming touch that she needed not to jump up onto the bed and whack her dad with the IV pole.

“What happened to Theobald?” Swift asked, as he tried to stop the twitching in Annie’s knee.

“He went too far,” Robert said, still looking at Annie.

“He tried to take me?” she stuttered.

Robert nodded.

“But I would have been, what, sixteen at the time? Old enough to run?”

Robert nodded again.

‘He drugged you, Annie,” he said, quietly. “One day when your mum wasn’t working but you wanted to go anyway so I took you with me. But your mum had a sixth sense, she sensed something was off and she saved your life.”

“By killing a man?” Annie could barely get her words out. “Where was Sera? Where were you?”

As soon as she asked, Annie knew. And the way Robert drew his lips into his mouth was the only answer she needed.

“I was with Sera,” he said, answering her anyway. “We… we should never have taken our eyes off you.”

“No, no you shouldn’t have.” Annie felt the tears start up again as Mim put her hand on her other leg.

“Holly found you in the back of Theobald’s car, tied up with another girl who was taken in by the commune. She didn’t think twice about putting herself in danger to save you. She took the car, hot-wired it and as she was getting out of the commune she hit Theobald. Killed him outright.”

“And what? You roped some poor young officer to take his place, so Mum didn’t go to prison?”

“No,” Robert said. “That poor, young officer wasn’t a good person. He’d been helping Theobald get those kids out of the country. He’d been taking a cut and forging papers to get them through customs. He wasn’t innocent in all of this. And he agreed to the deception because the deal meant he’d get a sentence that wasn’t related to children.”

“And who knows? Who agreed to this?”

“Me and your mum,” he said. “And one other person in the force who we trusted at the time.”

Annie stood up, unable to keep still. She pushed her chair back and started pacing the room. Feeling like she had ants crawling in her veins.

“But you said Theobald had friends in high places, yes? Didn’t they recognise that this officer wasn’t him?”

“It was a closed court, people we knew. And we kept his picture out of the papers. We didn’t think it would work; you’re right asking all these questions. I was scared. I asked the same questions, positive that Theobald’s people were going to come after us.”

Annie stopped, turning on the balls of her feet to face the bed.

“Oh my god,” she said, her throat closing. “You ran away because you were scared, didn’t you?”

“Theobald knew some very dangerous people,” Robert said, quickly. “I wanted us all to go. I wanted to keep us all safe. We kept running because I was not going to let us be found. But your mum didn’t want to run, she wanted to face the music if the truth came out.”

Mim, who up until now had been sitting like a church mouse on her chair, sat up straighter and cocked her head.

“Wait a minute,” she said to Robert. “You made me think we were in danger because of Mum. In danger from Mum. But that was a lie. Why make me believe that our mum was the problem? Why keep us moving from place to place when we could have just come home?”

Annie felt her heart break at her little sister’s questions.

“Girls, please.” Robert was losing his voice as quickly as he was losing his audience. “I did what I did to keep you safe. I told Holly I would come back for you, Annie. I promised her that I would take you too. But she didn’t want me to. I had no choice. If I stayed, Theobald’s circle would have found out and they would have killed me and my whole family. Can’t you see that?”

“No.” Annie shook her head, returning to her chair and leaning on the back. “What I see is a man who fled a crime scene because he was scared of being caught. A man who left his wife and one of his daughters to fend for themselves because they were the brave ones who stayed. You could have come back. At any point, you could have come back.”

Annie’s words choked her as she forced them out.

“I made sure you were okay,” Robert said, emotionless. “I paid the private detective you hired to find me to keep my secrets and to feed me information about you instead. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Annie’s jaw hit the floor. All the money she’d wasted.

“But why didn’t you come back when you knew everything was going to be okay?” she cried. “Why didn’t you bring Mim back and let her have a normal childhood? Why did you let me believe you left because you hated me?”

Robert’s bruised face sagged at the jaw; his shoulders slumped. He looked like a lost man.

“I couldn’t.” He tugged at the wire on his hand, pulling the skin on his wrist. “I watched from afar. I kept you both safe from afar. It was the best I could do.”

“I may have been physically safe, but you broke me,” Annie turned away from the bed, wiping her face furiously with her hands. “You’re a coward. You could have stood up to Theobald’s men at home. You could have got in touch. And… wait.” She turned back. “You said Mum hit Theobald and killed him. Then who is it who’s a patient at Edgewater Clinic? Who’s been forging signatures and forcing ethics committees to sign off dangerous research? Who hit your police van and tried to kill you?”

“Theobald never died,” Robert said, sucking in air as he pulled at the IV in his arm. Blood sprayed across his bedcover, turning the blue to lilac.

“What the hell, Dad?” Mim said, pushing her chair back and jolting out of it to avoid the spray.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said, trying to stop the flow with his other hand. “Hand me that tissue, would you?”

Annie passed him the box that Swift had been holding earlier. Robert grabbed a handful and held them over the wound as he tried to unstick his heart monitors with his gushing hand.

“When I was up North, I had a call from the colleague who knew about Theobald and the fake prisoner.” Robert sat up and swung his legs to the side of his bed, the flimsy NHS gown flapping around his shins. “He said he’d seen him while on holiday. One hundred percent he knew it was Theobald. I didn’t believe him, obviously, so I flew out and checked it out with my own eyes. Theobald was alive. God knows how, Holly said she hit him hard and checked to see if he was alive. But there he was, strolling around the plaza like a local. So, me and my colleague started following him, finding out what he was doing. That’s why I left you, Mim, and I’m sorry I didn’t come back. It was too dangerous.”

“You need to work on your forms of communication, Dad.” Mim was wringing her hands like they were blood covered too. “Ever heard of WhatsApp?”

She stepped away from the bed, wrapping her arm through Annie’s and around her waist. Two sisters joined in mutual distrust.

“When he came back to the UK I came too, and secured a job in the clinic he’d taken residence in. I kept an eye on him again from a distance. I thought maybe I could stop him without alerting the authorities because then the shit really would hit the fan.”

“The clinic he’d taken residence in?” Annie interrupted. “Theobald made himself a patient? I think I saw him.”

Robert nodded, groaning as he reached the bedside cabinet for his clothes. Neither Annie, nor Mim, nor Swift helped him. They were all too struck with the story he was telling.

“He thought being a patient was a better way to stay hidden.” Robert pulled on his trousers with great effort. “Like I said, he’s got people in all the right places. Managed to get himself committed and he runs the place with an iron fist.”

“He’s drugging patients,” Annie said. “Why didn’t you just hand him over to the authorities?”

“Because I didn’t want Holly getting in trouble,” Robert said, hooking a sock over his left foot and trying to pull it up. “But he knew I was there, he even signed off the ethics papers in his own name to show me he knew that I knew. And then when he saw me, he recognised me immediately.”

“You orchestrated your own arrest, didn’t you?” Annie asked, her brain catching up to what her dad had done. “You wanted Theobald to see you being taken away so he thought you wouldn’t be any trouble for him.”

“I even got Reynolds to punch me to make it look realistic,” he huffed out a humourless laugh. “That bloody hurt.”

Robert touched a hand gingerly to the signet ring bruise. Annie looked to Swift, she needed someone to wake her up from this nightmare.

“Dad, what are you doing?” Mim asked, hugging Annie closer.

“You saw what Theobald did?” Robert was nearly fully dressed. “He organised my police van to be hit within minutes of seeing me arrested. He tried to kill me.”

“So…” Mim prompted.

“So, the only thing I can do now is run,” he finished, looking at Mim as though she had three heads. “And I suggest you two do the same. I’ve got an officer picking me up in five minutes, he can take us all if I pay him extra.”

The bottom of Annie’s world dropped out from under her.

“Run?” she yelled. “You’re leaving again? But I’ve only just found you.”

Robert hobbled to his feet, his arms gripping his sides as though holding his broken ribs together.

“So you come too,” he said, running a quick hand down Annie’s arm before wrapping it back around himself. “Where are my shoes?”

Annie looked to Swift then to Mim who had unwrapped herself from around Annie and was helping their dad find his trainers.

“Mim?” Annie stepped closer. “What are you doing?”

“Going, Annie,” she said, not looking her in the eye. “There’s nothing for me here. I miss moving around, being a free spirit. And I can’t let Dad go on his own, he needs me.”

“No,” Annie cried. “I need you. Both of you. You can’t leave again. Don’t do this to me. Stay and face whatever happens.”

She thought she had cried her tears dry, but her face was sodden with them, her nose streaming. The door to the room opened and all four whipped their necks to see who’d entered.

“Placid, of course it’s you,” Swift said, as the man entered the room in his uniform, a confused look on his face.

“I thought I’d warned you off this case, Swift. I sent that email telling you to mind your own business because this man needs to stay under the radar.” Placid scowled at Swift before looking at Robert. “You ready, or what? I’ve got the cruiser running outside. We can get the lights on and get away faster.”

“Room for two more?” Robert said, looking at Annie, his face pleading.

“It’ll cost you.” Placid sniffed. “Hurry up.”

Robert took Annie’s hands, blood trickled down his wrist and onto her fingers.

“Annie, I don’t want to leave you behind again,” he said, tears finally pricking his eyes. “Come with us.”

Annie looked at her dad and her sister. They were family. Blood related. Really all she had when she took a mum who never communicated out of the picture.

“Please come, Annie,” Mim said, her face flushed with emotion. “Please. We can be together.”

“Look, I get this is a family thing and whatever, but we need to go,” Placid broke the air. “Theobald was heading this way when I left Edgewater.”

Annie looked again at her family. Then she looked to Swift. He was standing in the corner, silently letting everyone go about their business. He gave her a nod, simple and full of love, and Annie knew what she had to do. Walking to her dad, Annie wrapped her arms around him, squeezing him as tightly as she dared with his injuries.

“Take care,” she whispered. “Both of you, take care.”

And she stood back and watched as they disappeared out of the room.

TWENTY-TWO

Two Weeks Later

“Ow, you’re standing on my foot, Swift,” Tink hissed.

Annie felt Joe move towards her, his elbow poking her painfully in the ribs. Why they were all hiding in the smallest space in Swift’s kitchen was a mystery to everyone except Swift who had suggested it. Robins had most of the space because, despite being the nicest boss Annie had come across, no one wanted to get too close to her.

“Shh,” she said, like a school ma’am. “I can hear something.”

And, right enough, the sound of Swift’s front door squeaking open made its way to the kitchen like it needed a good dose of WD40.

“Hello?” Page shouted through the hallway. “Swift, I’m here. Your door was open.”

Swift snorted and tried to hold it in with a hand, poking Tink in the head with his other elbow.

“Ow, Jesus, how much room do you need?” she giggled.

With the amount Tink and Swift were laughing, it wouldn’t be a shock if Page came storming in demanding to know why he’d been summoned to the DI’s house to help him with some secret paperwork.

“Swift,” Page shouted again. “Where are you? I get this isn’t work related and I’ve been trying to wrack my brains what it might be about.”

Page was getting closer, his voice getting louder. Someone’s stomach gurgled and Tink fell over trying not to laugh.

“I brought beers,” Page shouted, sliding open the door to the kitchen. “I’ll put them in the fridge and we can crack one open when you tell me what’s going on? Is this about what you were saying the other day? Do you need help working on your proposal?”

Page opened the fridge door, and no one moved.

Proposal? Annie cocked her head and looked at Swift as he self-combusted in a nice shade of beetroot.

“Oh, for god’s sake,” Robins said. “How you lot ever catch any criminals is beyond me. SURPRISE.”

She jumped out from behind the kitchen island and gave Page a coronary. The rest of them struggled up, stretching out arms and legs as they went.

“Oh.” Page’s eyes widened. “Hello everyone.”

“Congratulation, you big dork.” Tink wrapped her arms around Page and squeezed him hard.

Annie thought she heard Tink whisper something about secrets and his big mouth, but she might have been over thinking it.

“Congratulations, DS Page,” Annie said, kissing him on both cheeks.

“Thanks, Annie,” he gave her a hug in return. “I can boss Tink around now.”

“Nope. No. No way.” Tink gave Page the finger and grabbed one of the beers he’d just deposited in the fridge, cracking it open.

“Well done, Page,” Swift said, hugging the newly promoted sergeant and slapping him on the back. “We knew you’d do it. I’m just sorry I wasn’t around for moral support.”

Annie took a step back, watching her team jostle around each other with camaraderie and support. Swift hadn’t been with Page when he was taking his exams because he’d been helping Annie. And she knew that he would have been there whether or not they were in a relationship. Because that’s the kind of guy Swift was. Caring. The whole team were. And Annie knew she’d made the right choice in letting her dad and Mim leave without her. They hadn’t been in touch, and they might never get back in touch, but she had her family with her here in Swift’s kitchen.

Theobald had been long gone when Annie and Swift had arrived back at Edgewater Clinic. Pippa too. That’s what happened when you had friends in high places, you could join ethics committees, admit yourself as a patient, and then vanish when it all when wrong. That’s what made Theobald so dangerous.

Reynolds was being carted off in a body bag and Annie felt more guilt at the lack of sorrow she felt for his death, than his actual death. At least no more women would suffer at his hands at the clinic. There was a time and a place for treatment, and his was neither right nor helpful.

“Where are you?” Swift said, sidling up to Annie and giving her a kiss on the cheek.

“Oh, you know,” she grinned. “Just wondering how I got so lucky with my found family.”

As Annie spoke, Tink pulled the extender tap from the sink and sprayed Page with freezing water, soaking the floor as she went.

“Oy,” Swift yelled, grinning.

“Sorry, Guv,” Tink called back, flicking the end of the tap at Page. “But he said I had to answer to him now because he’s not only a sergeant but also older than me. I had to put him in his place.”

Tink grinned like butter wouldn’t melt.

“Maybe you’d like to swap out those two?” he whispered to Annie.

“No way,” she whispered back. “Then who’d keep you in place?”

Robins was pouring some bubbly into old-school champagne glasses when the doorbell rang out.

“Did you invite Gran?” Page asked, grabbing a glass and lifting it in thanks. “Does her carer know where you live?”

Swift nodded and Page went running to answer the door.

That’s what family should do. Annie thought. Run towards each other, not away. There was a lot to process from the very brief moments she’d spent with her dad, and Annie was doing that day by day with a group of friends around her offering her support. She and Swift needed to take some time to decide how much to tell the police, if anything, but they were nearly at a decision. Annie wanted the truth to be out there, even if it meant she’d need to lock her doors and windows and be forever looking over her shoulder. It was the right thing to do.

She gave Swift a kiss in return and grabbed a glass of champagne from Robins, ready to toast to Page’s success when he came back in. But when he returned it wasn’t his gran he was ushering into the large kitchen. It was a woman who looked weary and weighed down and nothing like the warm, vibrant woman Annie had known.

“Hi Annie,” she said, offering a small smile. “Can I come and join you?”

Annie looked at Swift who looked sheepishly at his shoes, before looking back at the woman and trying to contain her feelings. Tears were threatening, as they had done on and off for the last two weeks. But today was Page’s day and she was darned if she was going to ruin it. So, instead, she smiled and replied with sensitivity.

“Hi Mum. Welcome.”

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In the game of love, losing your heart is deadly.

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The O’Malley & Swift adventures available to buy now!

CORN DOLLS

Their first case sees Annie and Joe on the hunt for a young girl who is missing. Snatched from her home during a game of hide and seek. Left behind in her place is a doll crudely twisted from stalks of corn.

FOXTON GIRLS

When a spate of suicides occur at prestigious girls' school, Foxton's, Psychotherapist Annie O'Malley is called in to talk with the students.

What Annie finds are troubled young girls full of secrets and lies; and a teacher caught in the midst.

WE ALL FALL DOWN

When a young woman falls ill and dies after a night out, her friends blame a cloaked figure that had been stalking them in the streets. A masked face with hooked beak, immediately recognisable as a Plague Doctor.

THE HOUSE OF SECRETS

With a lead on her missing sister, Annie and Joe travel north and rent a small cottage in the village where Mim was last spotted. Only, the village has a dark history of its own. The cottage was home to a family who haven’t been seen in over forty years. Their things still packed away in the basement, awaiting their return. It's a macabre destination for the dark tourist, and the rest of the village isn't much more welcoming.

THE UNINVITED GUEST

Back in Norfolk and back to work, Annie O’Malley and DI Swift are called to an isolated seaside village and the exclusive Paradise Grove Spa. Renowned for its peace and tranquility, the spa and its staff offer the chance to relax and recuperate in a discrete private setting on its own causeway. So when a dead body turns up in one of the rooms with no clue to who he is or how he got there, suspicion falls on the secretive group of guests.

DEADLY GAMES

When Annie and Joe are called to the local park to investigate reports of vandalism, they begin one of the most harrowing cases of their career. The vandal is a scared young woman with a bomb strapped to her chest and a list of games she must play. As the games get more gruesome, the young woman has a choice to make; kill or be killed.

ONE LAST BREATH

After the distress of Annie O’Malley’s last case, she’s in need of a bit of rest and recuperation. So her sister, Mim, books them on a flight to a luxury all inclusive resort in Spain for a break. But what was supposed to be a chance to sip sangria and reconnect with each other after so long apart soon turns into something terrifying when a group of armed men storm the hotel and take the guests hostage.

VANISHING ACT

When the celebrated illusionist, Gabriel Mirage, is found dead in the midst of his own vanishing act, O’Malley and Swift are thrust into a realm where the truth is as elusive as the disappearing act itself.

CHILL PILL

Annie finally reconnects with her father, only for him to be arrested and beaten to a coma. Can she and Swift clear his name so Annie can find out the truth of her childhood before it’s too late?

BLEEDING HEARTS

More to be revealed.