A GUARDIAN ANGEL

ALEX SCARROW

In these troubled and dangerous times, there is only one person I can think to dedicate this book to. If you’re of a mind to push back against authoritarianism, tyranny, bigotry, complicit ignorance and cruelty… it’s you.

PROLOGUE

Police Constable Alison Jones could see his brown eyes from where she lay sprawled on the cobblestones. It almost appeared as if the young black man was staring directly at her. Angrily. But that was impossible, of course – there was a large, messy exit wound above his eyes, where the stubble of his hairline gave way to the dark zits on his forehead.

Alison could feel her own blood pooling beneath her. She could feel it running sideways off her chest, down into her right armpit. She turned her gaze from the dead man and looked up at the featureless flat grey sky, at a couple of pigeons flapping across her field of vision, at the boarded-up and smashed windows of the buildings that flanked the alley.

So, this is where I die?

A shitty, grimy rubbish-strewn backstreet in Lambeth.

Ten minutes ago, she’d been finishing off her mid-morning Greggs sausage roll and wondering whether to join the others at the Nag and Hare later on. As a freshly minted police constable, having finished her probation last week, she was still very much the new girl. Alison was wary of having one too many and making a fool of herself in front of them.

Here she was now, though. Dying in a south London backstreet. Her brief twenty-six years of life about to end on an otherwise unremarkable and overcast Tuesday in September.

Her understanding of what had happened was completely scrambled. She’d responded to a call about shots being fired in a nearby McDonald’s. A number plate had been given; she’d spotted it and given chase. Then it was a blur. Her patrol car had slammed into the side of the white van and now she was bleeding out from a gunshot wound. The sound of them must have alerted someone. Surely somebody nearby had dialled 999. There had to be an ambulance on its way by now… or so she hoped.

The bullet, which had hit the the upper right side of her torso, must have nicked an artery. The bright red blood was more than simply leaking out; it was pulsing out.

‘Oh, come on!’ It was only her third solo patrol as a proper cop and she’d been shot – quite possibly, fatally. ‘Not fair…’ she grumbled.

‘What’s not fair?’

It was a male voice, breathless. Close by and just out of her view.

‘Whuh?’ she managed.

A tress of dark hair swung into view and she found herself staring up at a skinny young man, the rest of his long greasy mop tucked back behind jug ears.

A civvy.

‘You’re… you’re not a paramedic,’ she muttered thickly.

‘There’s one on the way,’ he replied. ‘‘I called 999.’ He looked down at the wound in her shoulder. ‘I’ve had a bit of first-aid training. I need to press down hard on that, right?’

She nodded. ‘Apply pressure… Slow… the… blood…’

He shrugged off a shoulder strap, pushed up his shirt sleeves and pressed his hands over her wound.

Alison screamed with the pain.

‘Sorry!’ he said, backing off. ‘Sorry!’

‘Keep… the weight on…’ she rasped.

‘I got it,’ he replied quickly. ‘I think, yeah… I think this is defo slowing it.’

‘In… your… expert opinion?’

He looked down at her and said, ‘You’re lucky I was passing. The street’s dead out there, no pun intended.’

Alison managed a brief smile. She liked his manner.

‘That bloke over there…’ He glanced at the body. ‘He’s the one that shot you?’

She nodded. ‘He’s dead… I think.’

The young man studied him briefly. ‘Oh yeah, he’s very dead.’

‘It… happened… so… quickly…’ Alison said through gritted teeth.

‘Hey, best not to talk. Save your strength. Brace yourself – I really need to stop this blood…’ Then he pressed down more heavily on her wound.

‘FUCK!’ she bellowed.

It felt as though the weight of his whole body was bearing down her. She could feel the cobblestones her, biting into her. It took a few seconds for Alison to acclimatise to the new level of pain. She puffed out laboured breaths as the young stranger continued to crush her shoulder into the ground.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked, obviously trying to take her mind off the shitty situation.

‘Alison….’ she replied. ‘You?’

‘Beanie.’

‘Benny?’

He shook his head. ‘Beanie, as in “Beanz Meanz Heinz”.’

She huffed out a ragged laugh. ‘Why…’

‘It’s a long story.’

The pain receded to a dull ache. His gaunt, scrawny face hovered above her. He had acne on his temples, blackheads on his nose. His brows were locked together, his lips pressed together with the effort of keeping the pressure steady. A pitiful patch of bristles speckled his jaw. His long hair had spilled out from behind his jug ears and now dangled either side of his head like the fluttering wings of a raven.

‘Stay with me, Alison…’ he said. ‘I’m not going anywhere… You’re too young to die right now.’

Wooziness was setting in. That nice feeling after a lunchtime drink before you’ve eaten anything. ‘I think I am… going to… die…’

He locked eyes with her. ‘Listen… today’s not your day. You’re going to live long, have babies and grandbabies, and achieve a shit ton of great things.’ He paused, cocked his head and grinned. ‘Hey, you hear that?’

‘What?’

‘Sirens. Hang in there.’

‘You know what you look like, Mr Beanie? A… scruffy angel…’

Her vision began to blur. The dark flapping wings of his hair, the pale oval of his face and the lifeless grey sky above them merged together.

And she died.

1

Boyd cast his eyes over the body parts that Sully and Magnusson had begun to assemble from the sides of the rail track. He nodded at Sully to lower the tarp. He’d seen enough.

‘There’s still more to be found,’ said Sully. ‘It’s not even close to being complete.’

Magnusson gestured at the bridge further down the line. ‘We’re guessing this person timed their jump to land in front of the train,’ she said, ‘but they got it wrong and hit the driver’s cab.’

Sully nodded. ‘Easily done. It’s not like it’s something you can practice…’

Boyd looked at him. Pointedly. Now’s not the time.

The stare sailed past Sully, unnoticed. ‘So, they hit the roof of the cab and, because of the speed of the train, the body would have spun along the first carriage’s roof, with bits flying off in all directions. Like a human Catherine wheel.’

‘Jesus,’ muttered Boyd.

It was probably a very accurate description of what had happened, but Boyd wasn’t in the mood for Sully’s professional flippancy.

The remains looked as though the body had been fed into a wood-chipper. Here and there were pieces of human that were vaguely recognisable: a foot still wearing a trainer, an elbow joint or it might have been a knee, flayed at both ends.

The worst of it was that he could very well be staring at fragments of Dan.

‘Can you tell if it’s male or female?’ he asked.

Magnusson raised her brows. ‘Your guess is as good as ours right now.’

‘You must have an idea,’ pressed Boyd.

Magnusson tightened her lips, clearly annoyed by his persistence. ‘I really can’t say from… this. All I can give you is that this person had a slight build.’

Boyd felt his guts turn over. It wasn’t the answer he’d been hoping for. Definitely not the answer he wanted to share with Emma later. He looked round for Minter.

His DI was with the train’s driver, who was sitting on the trackside embankment. The chap had his head between his knees and was blowing out a steady stream of vape clouds.

Boyd glanced at the three stationary carriages. Being a Sunday morning, there’d only been about two dozen passengers onboard. They’d disembarked on the coastal side of the track. From there, a uniformed officer had led them through the grass-tufted hummocks of sand and along the shingle beach, to a coach that was waiting to take them into St Leonards. Most of the body parts had been found on the inland side.

‘All right there?’ said Boyd as he approached Minter and the train driver.

‘Our driver Lee – he’s not in a very good way, boss,’ said Minter.

Boyd nodded. ‘That I can see.’

‘Have they got any info on the jumper yet?’ asked Minter, gesturing at Sully and Magnusson, who were still combing the tracks and the weed-tufted banking for fragments.

‘They can’t even say for sure if it’s male or female,’ Boyd told him.

Minter winced and rested a hand on Boyd’s shoulder. ‘Look… it’s way too soon to jump to any conclusions, boss. It may not be who you think it is.’

‘I know… but it would have been good to have been able to tell Emma it’s a clear no,’ Boyd said.

‘He’ll turn up sooner or later,’ replied Minter, offering him a reassuring smile.

Boyd squatted down in front of the train driver. ‘Lee, is it?’

The man nodded, his eyes fixed on the ground between his feet.

‘How’re you doing?’ Boyd asked.

‘I’m…’ was all Lee managed to say.

‘Okay, mate,’ said Boyd, gently squeezing his arm. ‘We’re not going to do any statements right now. That can come later, when you’re ready… But can I ask you… did you, maybe, catch a glimpse of the jumper as you were approaching the bridge?’

Lee looked up, revealing bloodshot eyes. He had tracks of tears running down both cheeks.

‘I just… It was a blur….’ He returned his gaze to the ground. ‘I heard the thump on my roof. I didn’t see the poor sod. Just heard him. And I knew exactly what that sound was.’

‘Him?’ queried Boyd.

Lee’s expression was blank.

‘You said him?,’ pressed Boyd.

‘It is a bloke, isn’t it?’ replied Lee. ‘These incidents – usually males that do it, right?’

Statistically, maybe. Boyd had no idea though. ‘You absolutely didn’t see anything? Hear anything? Just before the body… you know, impacted?’

‘Sorry. No.’

Boyd shook his head grimly. There was nothing here he could take home and reassure Emma with.

Nothing.

2

The net huts that loomed out from the beachfront along Rock-a-Nore were unique to Hastings. Clad in weatherboards and coated in centuries’ worth of tar and black creosote, the tall, narrow wooden structures resembled a cluster of stockade towers huddling together amid the shacks and lean-tos of the old fishing village. Their instantly recognisable profile made them a must-see Sussex landmark for tourists and an obvious, easy silhouette for local business logos.

Their history took them back as far back as the sixteenth century. Which made it (in the words of a BBC South East reporter), a crying shame that a fire had broken out among them on Monday, 6 May, but the local fire service had been on the case ‘pretty damned sharpish’. The alarm had been raised at 7.37 a.m. when a worker at Pelham Arcade had spotted smoke above the huts. Three fire engines had turned up within five minutes. No one wanted a repeat of 2010, when the old pier had burnt down to a few dozen support stumps emerging from the sea like bad teeth.

But the huts’ old, seasoned weatherboard – coated in layer upon layer of creosote – had gone up in flames really, really fast.

Despite the prompt alert and the heroic effort of Hasting’s fire service, four of the proud monuments to Hastings’ fishing past had been reduced to a lattice of charcoal spikes and black mounds of smoking debris by lunchtime.

The story had even made the national news, right after an item about drone attacks in Ukraine.

‘Ruddy, ruddy shame,’ sighed DSI Sutherland as he eyed the faint plume of smoke rising from Rock-a-Nore, half a mile away. ‘Another bit of our local history gone up in flames!’

From their vantage point on the pier, Boyd and the other officers looked up from their fish and chips at the smoke beyond Pelham Arcade’s Ferris wheel.

DC Rajan slurped tea from his paper cup. ‘Come on – it’s not exactly Notre Dame. It’s just a few old huts.’

‘Old huts that go back centuries,’ replied Sutherland tersely. He adjusted the Penfold glasses that sat on the bridge of his nose. ‘I’ve heard that some of them date back to the English Civil War. To the days of Charles the Second and Oliver Cromwell, you know.’

Raj squinted at the silhouette of the remaining huts. ‘There’re plenty more of them left,’ he commented.

Warren glanced at Sutherland. ‘Are they used for anything these days, sir?’

‘Fishermen used to used them to dry their nets, lad,’ Sutherland replied. ‘They’d also sell their catch from them. It was fresh, you see? Fresher than anything Tesco or Captain Bird’s Eye could ever manage. Right out of the sea, off the back of the boat and straight onto a wooden counter – some of the fish still flapping around…’

Warren pulled a face at the thought of that.

‘But – to answer your question, Warren – they’re not used for much these days.’ Sutherland sighed again, then returned his attention to his lunch and speared a chip from his punnet. ‘They keep ’em locked up now.’

As the group headed up the hill to the station, Sutherland and Boyd walked ahead, like a pair of teachers leading a primary-school crocodile. Sutherland had joined them on account of Warren’s birthday beer and chips on the pier. His tartan jacket was now draped over one arm and he’d worked up sweat patches as they tackled the incline.

‘So, Boyd… Hatcher’s wondering if you’ve had any thoughts over that special invitation,’ he said.

Hatcher had passed Boyd a mysterious letter last week. It had been addressed to him and, though it had been sealed, Hatcher had seemed well aware of its contents: an invitation from DCI Williams to discuss ‘a unique strategic opportunity within the police force’. His intuition told him that it was most likely Yolanda Williams, who he’d crossed paths with over eighteen months ago. She’d obviously moved from counter-terrorism to… well, whatever it was, he’d find out soon enough.

‘Not yet,’ replied Boyd. ‘I’ve got a few things going on.’

‘I heard.’ Sutherland glanced his way. ‘Your daughter’s chappie?’

Boyd wasn’t surprised that his DSI knew about Dan. Although Hastings station was large, the population on the first floor was pretty sparse at the moment. News or gossip – what there was of it – travelled fast.

‘Young ’uns these days,’ offered Sutherland, ‘they’re a constant source of stress, aren’t they?’

Boyd nodded, thinking of Emma. She was in a bad way. He’d shared with her everything that he’d recently learnt about Dan: from the heart-to-heart they’d had at the Pump House to his conversations with Dan’s ex-manager and bandmates. And Emma had been horrified. Horrified that she’d not picked up on any of it. Horrified that her boyfriend been so troubled that he’d even considered ending his life. She was blaming herself, upset that she’d not spotted anything wrong, for thinking that Dan had been having the time of his life touring with his band in Europe.

‘He’ll turn up at some point,’ assured Sutherland.

Boyd nodded again. ‘I need to find him and get him into a place where he can be treated.’ He paused. ‘I think I’m going to hand the body on the tracks to Warren or Rajan.’

Sutherland sighed. ‘I’d have preferred Okeke to have it. She’s better on the comms.’

Okeke had taken some time off. The rumour doing the rounds was that she and Jay had split up and Boyd was happy to let that story have oxygen.

‘When’s the new DCI joining us?’ Boyd asked.

‘DCI Elliot should be transferring to us in three weeks’ time,’ Sutherland replied.

‘What about the team?’

‘He’s already putting feelers out for a second,’ Sutherland said. ‘He knows he needs to get cracking on relaunching Rosper. I told him to look for a DI with relevant experience to join us ASAFP. The rest we can fill in once he’s here.’

Boyd looked at him. ‘What about a new operation name?’

Sutherland rolled his eyes. ‘I know, I know. We’ll need to start the whole ruddy county lines op from scratch.’ He sighed. ‘The database, the spreadsheets… It’s a bloody monumental pain in the arse.’ He smiled thinly. ‘But it’ll be his pain in the arse. And he can rename the operation whatever the hell he wants.’ Sutherland paused and ground to a halt. ‘Also… I’ve just remembered!’

‘What?’ Boyd said, also stopping.

‘You’re getting a new DC. She’s transferring from the Met.’

‘Well, it’s about time.’

‘DC Alex Goh,’ Sutherland told him.

‘Is she experienced?’ Boyd asked.

Sutherland nodded. ‘Very. I interviewed her.’ He smiled. ‘You’ll have your hands full with that one, trust me.’

3

Through her closed eyelids, Alison Jones was vaguely aware of a warm light at first. It created an amber-hued, womblike haze across which spectral forms darted and flitted like bugs on the surface of a pond.

Then a soft electronic beeping crept into her consciousness.

Her gummy eyelids cracked open and sudden daylight smeared her vision. There was a large window to her left, flooding the small hospital room with a bright glow. The daylight triggered a fleeting memory – hazy and flickering, like an old film projector casting its footage onto a swaying net curtain. A memory for sure, but from when? A minute ago? Hours? Days? Years? It was a fuzzy memory of a figure looming over her. A young man, his long hair swinging down towards her, blocking out the light from an overcast day. Brightness bloomed around the outline of his head and shoulders and the sun threw out rays that looked like large angel wings gently unfolding and flapping on either side of him.

Stay with me, Alison… I’m not going anywhere…

An angel.

‘Hello, Alison.’ It was a soft voice that she recognised. Her mum’s. ‘Alison, it’s me.’

Alison turned to look at her mother. Violet was sitting beside the bed, her coat on the back of the chair, a sudoku book in one hand and a biro in the other. She set them down in her lap and leant forward.

‘How’re you feeling, dear?’

It was a good question. Alison had a dull ache on her right side that seemed to stretch from her neck all the way down to her hip. But, also, she felt extremely relaxed. Oddly content, in fact. She glanced at the morphine drip running into her left arm and said a silent thank you.

‘Okay…’ she replied thickly. ‘I… feel… a bit…’

‘Sore?’

Alison smiled. ‘Pretty stoned… actually…’

Her mother tutted reproachfully. ‘Now, now…’ She reached for the plastic cup of water on the swing table that hovered across her daughter’s bed. ‘Would you like a sip?’

Alison nodded, her mouth was dry. She took the cup from Violet and drank.

‘What happened?’ she said.

‘What can you remember, dear?’ Violet asked her.

Alison thought. She remembered an angel – but before that? It was all jumbled. The last coherent memory she could summon was the morning briefing at the police station. The smell of a bacon sandwich making her tummy rumble and the chemical stench of PC Carver’s heavily applied deodorant. He’d been right next to her, drenched in the stuff that teenage boys liked to spray themselves with. Lynx. Or Stynx, as it was referred to by Carver’s colleagues. She could also remember the monotone drone of Police Sergeant Hall’s voice listing the spill-over tasks from the previous night shift.

And then…?

And then she’d been in her patrol car. Alone and on her way to… to deal with one of those spill-over tasks. She vaguely recalled she’d been on her way to some mechanic’s workshop in response to a call about a break-in. Freshly off probation, she was getting the shitty run-around-town routine that no one else wanted, so probably something dull.

‘There was a shooting, Alison,’ prompted her mother. ‘You were involved. Do you remember any of that?’

Yes. That was right. She’d been bleeding. Lying on cobblestones and bleeding.

‘Only you,’ added Violet. There was a strong note of disapproval in her voice. ‘I simply cannot believe they put you in such a dangerous situation without any experience, without proper training…’

‘Mum, I’ve had training. I’ve had two years of it,’ said Alison .

‘Well,’ her mother huffed, ‘you’re still only just… what’s the term? Qualified.’

Alison remembered a crash. Remembered the impact and being hurled painfully against her seatbelt.

There’d been a white van.

A big man.

And a gun.

‘Alison?’

She looked at her mother.

‘I know you’re tired of hearing this from me… but this simply isn’t the right job for you to be doing. I honestly think –’

‘Mum,’ Alison interrupted. ‘Please, not now.’

Violet leant back in her chair. ‘You nearly died yesterday. And you’re all I have. Will you at least think about that? You could be doing something that pays far better and is far less dangerous!’

Alison remained silent.

Violet shook her head and tutted. ‘Well, you’ll be pleased to know that you’re all over the news.’

Alison glanced at her mother again. A bit of clarity was returning to her vision. ‘The news?’

‘There’s a mob of reporters waiting outside the hospital,’ Violet told her. She leant in close and, for a moment, Alison thought that her mother might actually break a life-long habit, drop her stiff upper lip and show some emotion. Maybe even give her a hug.

But instead Violet raised a brow. ‘They’re calling you a hero.’

4

Fire Investigation Officer Mark Wells sighed and tutted for about the millionth time this morning. The four net huts that had been completely burnt to the ground were among the oldest. It was an absolute bloody tragedy. Two hundred years of cultural history; the blood, sweat and tears of generations of fisherman were soaked into the wood grain of these stoic, old curiosities. They were a monument to the very different town that Hastings had once been: a working town, one with its own purpose and its own industry.

And now? Hastings was a magnet for property hoarders who had discovered what their London money could buy.

The hut he was currently inspecting had somehow managed to remain upright, despite being reduced to a skeleton of support beams with four oak pillars at the corners, all scorched and reduced to charcoal. The few remaining slats of weatherboard hung from their rusted nails like loose feathers.

The steep wooden roof and most of the joists from which nets would have once been hung had collapsed into a smoking mound. It was debatable whether or not this hut had actually been ‘saved’. It was still standing, technically, but it seemed extremely unlikely that it would ever be restored. Mark sighed again as he looked up at the limp daylight penetrating the last tendrils of smoke. His gaze settled on the four gulls that had taken an oak pillar each and were now staring reproachfully down at both himself and the smoking shambles.

What a bloody, bloody shame.

It was just like Eagle House. Only three years before, the old building, which had a remarkable backstory, had been reduced by fire to shards of wood and piles of rubble. It had been replaced with a block of six modern apartments with shared grounds and parking and ridiculously high asking prices.

Mark dragged his thoughts back to the task at hand – the cause of this particular fire.

So far there’d been no evidence of foul play. Given how susceptible to fire damage these old things were, the fire could easily have started with a solitary discarded cigarette butt. He could detect the faint smell of creosote. According to the maintenance manager, this hut had been given a fresh coat just last year. Which was probably why it had gone up so damned quickly. That stuff was toxic and it was, quite literally, an accelerant. There were far less hazardous weather barriers that the huts could have been coated in, but the local historical society had insisted on traditional creosote.

He turned round on the mound of debris, the fragile remnants of burnt weatherboard cracking and shifting beneath his weight. As he made his way out of the skeleton of beams, the toe of his left wellington boot clunked against something that didn’t skitter aside quite so readily as the rest of the debris. He snapped on his head torch and looked down to inspect what it was…

Boyd and Warren watched as Dr Palmer picked her way through the itemised body parts on her inspection table.

‘To answer your question, DCI Boyd,’ she said, ‘yes… I’d say this is the body of a young male and not a female.’

‘You said “I’d say”…’ Boyd raised a brow. ‘Does that mean you’re not a hundred per cent certain?’

Dr Palmer gave him a small lopsided smile. ‘Sorry. Force of habit. As a rule, I try never to claim one hundred per cent certainty over anything.’ Her smile straightened. ‘Let me start again. Yes, this is a male body, of slight build. If I’d been handed a complete humerus, femur or even a tibia I could have given you something more precise from the level of epiphysis fusion at the ends. But I’ve got a pile of smashed-up pottery here.’ She sighed. ‘I managed to find a portion of the lower intestine intact. It’s full of solid matter. So we’ll have an idea of what he had for his last meal and whether he might have been under the effect of alcohol at the time he jumped.’

‘What about drugs?’ asked Warren.

She turned to look at him. ‘The stomach contents and the toxicology report will be a few days away, I’m afraid. My colleague who does that is on a hiking holiday this week.’ Her gaze settled on Boyd. ‘You all right there?’

‘Yeah… I’m fine,’ Boyd replied.

Her eyes narrowed slightly behind her glasses.

‘I’m fine,’ he repeated, rubbing his jaw absently.

‘I can handle this on my own, sir,’ said Warren. ‘If you want to go and get some fresh air.’

Boyd nodded at Palmer to continue.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I’m going to pick my way through what’s here for any surface details. Tattoos, birthmarks, anything that can help us ID this man.’

‘Dental records?’ said Warren.

She shook her head. ‘There’s not enough of the jawbone to create a dental map. Obviously, the DNA’s going to help with identification.’

‘Only if we’ve got him in our system,’ said Warren. ‘Or a familial link to some closely related scrote.’

Boyd’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He raised a finger to politely excuse himself from the rest of the inspection. Walking away from Palmer and the table, he pulled out his phone and checked the screen before swiping it to answer the call.

‘Minter?’ he said.

‘You’re not going to believe this, boss,’ said Minter. ‘We’ve only gone and got Body Number Two for this week.’

‘Another body?’ Boyd asked. ‘What? Near the rail track?’

‘No. Nothing to do with that one,’ Minter replied. ‘The fire inspection officer just called the station to say he’s found a body in one of those burnt-down net huts. I’m heading to Rock-a-Nore now.’

5

‘How’s it going, Magnusson?’

Minter squatted beside Magnusson in the cramped confines of the hut’s structure. Side by side, both of them broad-shouldered, there wasn’t a great deal of elbow space around them. The huts were all tall but incredibly narrow.

‘Sully too busy to come out to play today?’ said Minter.

‘He’s gone out to the train track at St Leonards again,’ she told him. ‘It’s driving him nuts that he didn’t find all the body parts yesterday.’ She looked up at Minter. ‘You know what he’s like. Place two similar objects in front of him and tell him there’s maybe a third, or a fourth to be found… He’s a completionist.’

‘Is that a thing?’ commented Minter.

‘You should see his fridge door,’ she said with a sign. ‘He’s got a magnet from almost every town in the country.’

Minter glanced down at today’s find. Magnusson had brushed away the scorched planks and charcoal from the body that Mark Wells had all but tripped over, revealing a small cadaver that was tucked into a blackened foetal ball.

‘Jesus. Poor sod,’ Minter muttered. ‘I hope it was the smoke that finished them and not, you know, the flames.’

‘It’s hard to say,’ Magnusson mused, studying the pitifully balled-up figure. ‘The foetal position happens when the muscles and tendons cook. They contract in the heat and the body ends up in that position.’

‘Is it a child, do you think?’

Magnusson clucked her tongue. ‘It was someone small and slight, for sure. Someone with not a lot of body mass. They were very slim.’ She pointed at the ground beneath the cadaver. ‘That should show signs of significant fat liquefaction, but it looks almost dry to me.’

Minter pulled out a pencil torch and ducked down to inspect the area more closely. The floor of the hut was made from the same wood as the walls, but it hadn’t been coated in layers of creosote and tar.

The beam of light managed to catch just a few dabs of glistening reflection.

‘You’re right,’ he said.

It was – thank goodness – nothing like the campsite that they’d been to last year, where they’d found the charred remains of DCI Flack’s informer strapped to a chair. The floor beneath the scorched chair had resembled the bottom of an uncleaned oven.

‘If I was going to hazard a wild guess,’ said Magnusson, ‘I’d say this person didn’t die in the fire.’

‘Huh?’ Minter glanced up at her.

‘What I mean is…’ she continued, ‘this appears to be an old body. Someone who died long before the fire.’

Minter returned to the station, leaving Magnusson to oversee the extraction and transfer of the body to Ellessey Forensics. His first port of call was the kitchenette. It was gone 11 a.m. and he’d yet to have his first proper cuppa of the day, even though he’d been up since six. On waking, he’d headed straight for the gym. After that, he’d jogged to the pier and back before showering and shaving in the gym’s changing room. He’d had a call from his booking agent at nine about a potential modelling job in Brighton in a fortnight’s time if he was interested. He thought he might be. And then Fire Investigation Officer Mark Wells had called to say he’d tripped over a body on the way out of the incinerated hut.

Minter had definitely earned a brew.

He stepped into the kitchenette to find a slim dark-haired woman wearing plastic gloves and making a start on the dirty mugs piled in the sink. She must be one of the new cleaners, he thought. They didn’t usually bother with the cups, mugs and cutlery; that was left to the officers themselves.

‘Oh, blimey, love’, he said. ‘You can leave those alone… We’ll do them later. Just empty the bin, yeah?’

As she turned and raised a brow at him, Minter was interrupted by a loud ‘Minnnter!’ It was Sutherland yodelling his name from across the floor.

Minter stuck his head out through the doorway. ‘In here, sir.’

Sutherland crooked his finger at him and pointed to his goldfish-bowl office.

Minter sighed. That first cup of tea was going to have to wait a little bit longer. He hurried along after Sutherland and stepped into his office.

Sutherland sat down behind his desk. ‘I just heard we’ve got a body in one of those huts,’ he began.

‘Yes, sir,’ Minter replied. ‘One body – burnt to a crisp.’

‘Well, is it male? Female? Adult?’ Sutherland asked.

‘It was very small,’ Minter told him. ‘It could possibly be a child.’

‘A child?’ Sutherland winced. ‘What did Wells think caused the fire? Did you speak with him?’

‘Briefly,’ said Minter. ‘So far, he hasn’t found any evidence that it was arson. He said it could easily have been started by a discarded cigarette.’

‘And any thoughts from Sullivan?’ Sutherland asked.

‘Magnusson’s on this one, sir. Sully’s over at the railway track. Magnusson said the body was very thin, possibly borderline malnourished… but that’s all she has for now.’

Sutherland settled into his seat. ‘Any theories?’

Minter puffed out a deep breath. ‘Could have been a homeless person using the hut for shelter.’

‘An immigrant?’

Minter shrugged. It was a possibility. An awful one. ‘A child immigrant maybe.’

Sutherland sighed. ‘Burnt to death in the middle of Hastings. The Chief Super’s not going to like that.’

‘Magnusson thought the body may have been there before the fire…’ Minter added.

‘What? How long did she think it had been there for?’ Sutherland asked.

Minter shrugged. ‘Long enough to have partially mummified.’

Sutherland tapped his chin. ‘In which case, this one’s definitely yours, Minter. Boyd’s on the other. I think he said he’s taken Warren as his second.’

‘Which leaves me with Rajan and Abbott,’ said Minter.

‘There’s a new DC starting today,’ said Sutherland. ‘DC Alex Goh. She’s been out of uniform for a couple of months.’

‘Oh… so, she’s a bit green, then?’ Minter raised his brows. ‘But never mind – it’s about time we had a newbie on the team. It’s like a desert on the floor these days.’

Sutherland smiled. ‘Alex Goh isn’t exactly green,’ he said. He stood up and crooked his finger at Minter. ‘Come along – I’ll introduce you.’

He led Minter out of his office and looked around the largely empty floor.

‘Anyone seen Goh?’ he boomed.

Warren pointed towards the bathroom doors, which were just along from the kitchenette.

A moment later, the door to the ladies’ swung open and a slender woman with long dark hair in a braided ponytail emerged, flapping her hands to dry them.

Sutherland waved her over.

‘DC Alex Goh, this is DI Stephen Minter,’ he said.

Minter flushed. She was the ‘cleaner’. From the kitchenette. She met his gawping awkwardness head-on, extending a hand for him to shake.

With a broad smile, she said, ‘I left the mugs in the sink for you.’

6

Alison stepped into the senior consultants’ conference room, which this morning had been transformed into an ad-hoc press venue. She was still wearing a neck brace for the soft tissue damage caused by the whiplash, and her right arm was in a sling to protect the freshly stitched wound just below her collarbone.

She was led into the room by none other than Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis Sir Lesley ‘Rollie’ Rowland. He gently steered her along the side wall, walking her around tripod legs and snaking power cables, to the front of the room. She found herself facing a chorus of snapping cameras and bright flashes.

Rowland stepped forward to the bank of mics. ‘Good morning, everyone,’ he began. ‘This is going to be a short press briefing, as you can see that PC Jones is still recovering. But before she speaks and takes any questions, I would like to say a few words.’

He glanced at Alison, beaming like a proud father. ‘PC Jones represents – no, she personifies the very best of the Metropolitan Police’s values: diligence, quick-thinking, initiative… and, most of all, courage.

‘On Tuesday morning at 11.15 a.m., PC Jones responded to a report of a shooting in Lambeth. Only a few streets away, she judged that she would be the closest unit to the incident. She swiftly determined in which direction the suspect’s van was likely to be heading and intercepted it, aware that the suspect was armed and had fired several shots into the window of a McDonald’s only moments earlier.’

Rowland beamed at Alison once more, as thought she was his very own flesh and blood. ‘PC Jones put herself in harm’s way by striking the van with her patrol car, then she wrestled the suspect to disarm him while he was still stunned by the impact.’

He paused and sighed. ‘Unfortunately, the suspect’s weapon discharged twice during this physical struggle, resulting in a critical wound for PC Jones and a fatal wound for the suspect, Tyrone Nelson. He was pronounced dead at the scene, and PC Jones nearly died due to the amount of blood she’d lost by the time the paramedics arrived. So…’ He took her by the elbow and gently pulled her towards the bank of microphones, ‘we are very lucky to have this brave young constable with us today.’

Alison stared at the cluster of mics and couldn’t help but think that they resembled a bouquet of brightly coloured foam balls. She’d never spoken publicly before. No… Strike that – she’d won the flag race at her local pony club’s gymkhana when she was a kid and had been awarded a small pewter cup. Crimson-faced with stage fright, she’d mumbled something into a microphone about being ‘chuffed to bits’. That had been mortifying enough. She suspected this would be far worse.

‘Uh… hello,’ she began, feeling heat immediately blooming on her cheeks. The cameras rattled and flashed in her face. ‘I, er… IT’S all a bit of a crazy blur… still, you know?’ She faltered for a beat. ‘And, crumbs, I, uh, only came off probation a couple of months ago…’

Her audience responded with a ripple of gentle laughter.

The fragments of Tuesday that Alison could foggily recall made little sense as a narrative sequence. She could remember the overcast sky and the pigeons fluttering across it. She could remember the smell of burnt rubber, the faint tang of cordite from the two gunshots, the sound of the van’s engine, softly ticking. And the accusing eyes of the dead gunman. Tyrone Nelson. She also kept thinking about baked beans and had an image of a scruffy herbert of an angel looking down at her as she lay bleeding out on the cobblestones.

She’d heard from one of her nurses that, technically, she had died twice. Once in that backstreet and a second time in the ambulance. The quick responses of the paramedics had brought her back and kept her going.

Her mother fervently believed in God and all that ridiculous nonsense, but Alison didn’t put much stock in. The harder the nuns and teachers at Harlington Convent had tried hammering religion into her head, the more she had pushed back.

Nevertheless… on Tuesday morning at 11.21 a.m. PC Alison Jones was pretty sure she had spoken with an angel.

An actual angel.

Alison was vaguely aware that, while she’d been going over the events in her mind, the assembled audience of photographers and journalists had been patiently waiting for her to speak. She flushed again.

‘I… I just want to say thank you to the paramedics wh-who got me here,’ she stammered, ‘and the A & E team who were ready for me. Without them… well, I wouldn’t be. um, standing here today.’

Commissioner Rowland stepped forward to rescue her. ‘Thank you, PC Jones. We have time for a couple of quick questions,’ he said, pointing at one of the forest of hands that shot up.

‘Niall Cameron, News of the World,’ the journalist said. ‘PC Jones, what you did was brave. Our readers think that you’re an incredibly courageous young lady.’

She smiled. Her round cheeks reddened a little more. ‘That’s… that’s very kind. Thank you.’

‘You were aware that the suspect was armed when you responded,’ he said, to which Alison nodded. ‘And you had no backup, going in – nothing to defend yourself with, no weapon, no body armour,’ he clarified.

‘No. Uh, no. That’s not quite right,’ she replied. ‘I was wearing a tac-vest.’

‘Which by the way,’ said Commissioner Rowland, ‘is only effective against knives. And as a result of PC Jones’s training, she would have known that as she approached him.’

His proud smile widened as he looked down at her. He leant forward towards the mics again. ‘PC Jones ran towards danger equipped with nothing but her incredible courage.’

Rowland pointed at another reporter.

‘Damien Mewes. The Sun,’ he said, standing up to ask his question. He gave her a fawning smile. ‘Alison – I mean, PC Jones… A number of our readers have contacted us to say that you deserve some sort of award for bravery, for tackling an armed shooter with links to a south London gang. All alone, no support, no backup, nothing but a baton on you...’ He glanced at Rowland. ‘Is something like that being considered?’

The police commissioner shuffled uncomfortably. It was not a question he’d been expecting quite so soon. ‘We’re still looking into the sequence of events: what exactly happened, how it was that PC Jones ended up facing the gunman entirely on her own –’

‘Our readers are already calling her a hero, Sir Rowland. A national hero.’

Alison felt her cheeks flushing even redder and, to her horror, the cameras began flashing once more. Her pink hamster face was going to be on all the front pages, in every newsagents and corner shop tomorrow morning.

7

Boyd had found the visit to Ellessey particularly difficult. Even though they were some way off from identifying the body, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d been staring at pieces of Dan on Dr Palmer’s inspection table. The last thing he wanted to do was spend the afternoon at his desk, gazing at his monitor and listlessly clicking through unread emails while the memory of that last time he’d seen Dan alive, standing in the street, pitifully waving goodbye, played over and over in his head.

The body in the Rock-a-Nore hut would be a welcome distraction, so he decided to gatecrash Minter’s after-lunch briefing in the small conference room. Minter had a modest audience: Magnusson, Rajan and… a brand-new person – a slim, dark-haired woman who looked to be in her mid-thirties. She must be the new DC that Sutherland had mentioned.

Minter was surprised to see Boyd enter the room and take a seat.

‘You joining us, boss?’ he asked.

‘If that’s all right?’ Boyd replied, setting his takeaway coffee down on the table.

‘No problem,’ replied Minter, a little reluctantly. ‘I suppose I’d better introduce you.' He turned to Goh. ‘This is DCI Bill Boyd – and, boss, this is our new DC –’

‘Alex Goh.’ She leant across the table and offered Boyd her hand. He took it lightly, but Goh gripped his hand and gave it a vigorous shake. ‘Pleased to meet you, sir.’

‘Is that an American accent I detect?’ asked Boyd.

‘Maine, sir,’ she said briskly. ‘But I’m also a Brit… so that’s how come I’m now a copper and not a cop.’

‘Ah, okay,’ he said.

‘I’ve got dual nationality,’ she explained. ‘My dad’s US Air Force. Mom’s from a little place called Honnington.’ She shrugged. ‘They had me here. Raised me over there. Which kinda blows because it means I got the IRS on my back for life.’

‘IRS?’ asked Rajan.

‘US tax people,’ answered Magnusson. She looked at Goh. ‘Is it true you pay US tax wherever you are in the world?’

Goh nodded.

‘So what… you pay your tax twice?’ said Raj.

Goh shrugged. ‘Once. The IRS and HMRC haggle over how much of my tax they each get.’

Boyd settled back in his seat. ‘And you’ve been in the UK police for…’

‘Four years,’ Goh said. ‘I was in uniform in the Met for three and a half, then I moved to CID. Before that, I was a Maine State Police trooper for seven years, five of those in the criminal investigations division.’

‘Seems like you’ve got plenty of experience on both sides of the Atlantic,’ said Boyd.

‘Uh-huh.’ She cocked her head, ‘Different laws, different terms but same methodology, sir.’

‘“Boyd” is good for me,’ he replied. ‘Though I also answer to “boss” or “guv”.’

She grinned. ‘Duly noted.’

‘Right then,’ said Minter loudly and a little tetchily. ‘Shall we press on?’

Minter went straight into reading out the fire investigation officer’s report. The gist was that he’d not found any evidence of a suspicious cause for the fire. There had been no signs of an accelerant, but he had added a caveat that the recent coat of creosote on this particular hut had made it more combustible than those next to it. As for the body, the only clear fact was that it had been in the hut at the time of the fire.

Magnusson took over from there. ‘The body is female, adolescent if I was going to hazard a guess from the size. It’s very skinny. I couldn’t find much fat spill from the body, even though it was thoroughly baked through. The body’s now with Dr Palmer at Ellessey.’

‘Were there any sign of trauma to the body?’ asked Boyd. ‘Impact? Stab wounds?’

Magnusson shook her head. ‘I couldn’t see any obvious signs. But they’re not going to be easy to spot on a thoroughly carbonized body.’

‘Fair enough,’ Boyd said, catching Minter smiling politely at him. It was a tight smile that suggested he’d really like it if Boyd could take a step back from his case and let him take the lead. Boyd shrugged apologetically.

‘So then,’ Minter said, ‘at the moment it’s not particularly clear whether we’re looking at an unfortunate accident – some poor homeless girl who died there months ago – or whether something more sinister is afoot.’

Goh chuckled.

Minter glanced at her irritably. ‘Something to add, Goh?’

She shook her head. ‘Nothing, go on.’

Oh boy, thought Boyd. Sutherland had been right: she was going to be a handful, for sure.

Minter paused, his eyes narrowed at her for a moment. ‘If we’re going to explore the route of suspicion, then we have to consider that this fire might have been started by someone wanting to hide evidence of foul play.’

‘Was the hut locked?’ asked Raj. ‘If so, then that makes the fire look pretty suspicious.’

‘I already said the body wasn’t fresh,’ chimed in Magnusson.

‘You sure?’ said Raj.

‘Very. Again, as I stated, there were no fat emissions.’

‘But you said the body was very skinny,’ Raj persisted.

Magnusson dipped her head with exasperation. ‘If I oven-baked some skin-and-bones catwalk model, I’d still get a tray of dripping afterwards. Trust me.’

‘As far as I know,’ said Minter, cutting off this exchange, ‘those huts are usually padlocked. That doesn’t mean always… I know some of them are still used to store kit by the fishing boats that go out of a morning.’ He picked up the report and skimmed it. ‘There’s no mention of a padlock that I can see here.’

‘So it could have been a rough sleeper,’ said Boyd.

Minter nodded.

‘Do you get that sort of thing down here?’ asked Goh. ‘Hastings doesn’t seem like the kind of town that has a vagrants problem.’

‘Homelessness is an increasing local problem here,’ Minter told her.

She appeared genuinely surprised. ‘I got the impression that this place is a well-heeled seaside town.’

Magnusson snorted. ‘You’ve got to be kidding. Just take a look around the Silverhill area and bits of St Leonards, or Bexhill away from the seafront.’

Boyd nodded. ‘It’s got its rough areas.’

Minter picked up his notepad from the conference table. ‘I think for now, while we’re waiting on Ellessey to give us more details on the body, Rajan, I’d like you to check CCTVs in Pelham Arcade, Rock-a-Nore, the Old Town area, George Street and so on… See if anything suspect happened late Sunday night, early Monday morning. It might well have been someone tossing a fag… but let’s have a look, eh.’

Rajan nodded.

‘And also any local mispers on LEDS, recent and not so.’

Raj nodded again.

Minter turned towards their new arrival. ‘Goh, I’ll have you as my action log and evidence gatekeeper.’

She raised a brow. ‘You want me to do admin?’

Minter raised his chin defiantly. ‘It’s not just admin. It’s critical work. I don’t know how fastidious American police forces are with evidence chains, but over here we take that part of our work seriously.’

‘Relax.’ Goh patted his arm and grinned. ‘I was only shitting with you.’

8

Alison Jones sat on the instantly recognisable sky-blue studio couch of The Morning Show while a floor producer clipped a lapel mic to her blouse’s collar and a make-up artist gave her face one last dusting of powder.

‘Love your new hair, by the way,’ whispered the make-up artist .

Alison smiled at her. ‘Thank you.’

She’d had it cut short into what had once been known as the ‘Diana look’ but was now called the ‘Dando Do’. Before, she’d always worn her long hair in a French plait, but a smutty piece in the Sun about her ‘page three’ potential – with her long blonde hair, her girl-next-door looks and her fulsome figure – had prompted her to go for the chop. It was nice to be famous, but not so pleasant to be leched over.

The hosts Peter Summers and Kellie Halman shook her hand and introduced themselves.

‘We’re so proud to have you on our morning sofa,’ said Kellie, beaming.

Peter nodded. ‘A real-life national hero. Or is it “heroine”? I don’t know… Can we use that term still?’

Kellie tutted and rolled her eyes. ‘Excuse Peter. He’s so old-school.’

‘Coming back in five… four…’ shouted the studio producer. She finished the countdown in silence on her fingers.

Kellie turned to the prompt and her presenter face on. ‘Welcome back! Now, we have a very special guest this morning: a young woman who, a few months ago, demonstrated incredible courage in the face of danger when she tackled an armed gunman on the streets of London. I am, of course, talking about PC Alison Jones! Welcome to the sofa, Alison.’

Alison smiled and nodded awkwardly. ‘Good morning. And thank you so much for having me.’

‘Not at all! Thank you for coming on,’ said Peter.

‘So, I know that there’s been a lot of coverage about what happened –’ Kellie dropped her fresh-as-a-daisy smile and replaced it with an earnest frown – ‘and, once again, our thoughts and prayers go out to the parents of those two little girls who were murdered in cold blood by the gunman that morning in the McDonald’s restaurant…’

Alison nodded. She knew their names off by heart now. ‘Rosie Dillon and Fleur-Collette Brown. They were school friends. Best friends,’ she said solemnly. ‘Both in their first year at secondary school.’

‘So tragically, tragically young,’ Peter chipped in.

‘I… um… I met their parents,’ said Alison, ‘a few weeks ago. We’ve become quite close.’

It had been something of a PR event arranged by the police commissioner. She and Sir Lesley Rowland had made a very public visit to a community hall to meet with them. Rowland had been extremely mindful of controlling how the situation might be perceived. On the one hand, a young female police officer had confronted a reckless gunman, with the ensuing tussle for the gun resulting in his accidental fatal injury. On the other hand, a white officer had been responsible for the death of a black boy. And it had turned out that he was just a boy. She knew that now too. Tryone Nelson had turned seventeen the week before. To offset any possible public sympathy for Tyrone, Rowland had orchestrated a photo opportunity of Alison sharing hugs and condolences with the mothers of the two black girls who’d been killed as a result of Tyrone’s feckless drive-by shooting. The public conversation was to be steered towards gang violence and how the hell these gangs were able to access to so many guns.

‘And how are you doing, Alison? Have you recovered from your injuries?’ Kellie asked.

‘I, um… I still have a little stiffness and difficulty down my right side,’ Alison replied. ‘The bullet severed some nerve endings and my right arm isn’t quite right. It’s tricky holding things properly. Like, um, a pen. But the doctors say that will get better.’

She could feel her cheeks warming again. Dammit. She hated the blushing. How it made her look like she was about twelve. She hated how her nervousness caused her to stumble over words, and made her voice so high-pitched that she sounded as though she’d been sucking on helium.

Peter leant forward, clearly keen to ensure he was a part of this segment. ‘I notice you’ve changed your look, Alison. I like the new hair.’

‘I… uh… I’ve had it long all my life,’ Alison replied. ‘I just wanted –’

‘Wanted a change,’ Kellie offered helpfully. ‘Well, it suits you. Anyway, Alison, obviously we don’t want to dwell on the awful events of what happened that morning –’

‘I’m afraid can’t talk about it,’ Alison said, ‘because an investigation is currently underway.’

Kellie nodded sympathetically. ‘Yes, but I suppose what we want to get a sense of is this: what was going through your mind that morning? What made you do something so… well, so incredibly brave?’

Alison hated that kind of question. They felt like a trap, as if simply answering the question in the affirmative was her saying, Yes, I am so incredibly brave and wonderful, aren’t I? So she reached for her stock answer.

‘Honestly? I didn’t have time to think about it. I knew I was the closest unit. I knew that he was coming my way and I had to do something…’

9

‘Good grief, it’s been a busy week,’ said Dr Palmer as Minter, Goh and Magnusson entered Theatre Three. Palmer peeled off a glove and shook first Minter’s hand and then Magnusson’s. She looked at Goh. ‘And this is?’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Minter. ‘This is DC Alex Goh. She’s just joined us from the Met.’

Palmer shook Goh’s hand. ‘Dr Helen Palmer,’ she said.

‘Good to meet you, ma’am,’ Goh replied.

Palmer paused for a moment, the unexpected accent throwing her.

‘So…’ She waved the three of them over to the body on her table. ‘Here’s our Jane Doe from the net hut.’ She paused and sighed. ‘That was such a damned shame, the fire. Those huts go back centuries, don’t they?’

‘There’s still plenty more of them standing,’ said Goh.

‘That’s not the point,’ snipped Minter. ‘It’s another piece of Hastings’ past gone up in flames.’

‘They probably won’t replace the four huts that burnt down,’ said Magnusson. ‘I heard they’re considering putting in another chippy there.’

Dr Palmer moved to the far side of the table. ‘The body, as you can all see,’ she began, ‘is very badly burnt. I haven’t had any luck extracting any fluids from the head or spinal area yet. It’s pretty much a dry husk.’

‘You’ve read my site report?’ asked Magnusson. ‘I found only a couple of drops of fatty deposits beneath the body.’

‘Yes, I did. And that doesn’t surprise me at all.’ Palmer pressed her lips together. ‘The body certainly isn’t a recent one. Obviously, there’s evidence of some mummification. If I was to hazard a guess as to how long the body has been in the hut, I’d say nine months to a year.’

‘Is that long enough for it to become mummified?’ asked Minter.

Palmer nodded. ‘In the right conditions, yes. Although we started summer very cold last year, it got rather warm, didn’t it? The inside of that black-painted hut would have become extremely hot from June to August.’

Minter’s brows raised. ‘You’re saying there was a dead body inside that hut with a whole season’s worth of tourists walking around it, taking pictures of it only a few feet away… Surely there’d have been a noticeable smell?’

‘I would have thought so.’ Palmer shrugged. ‘But I don’t know… I’ve been to Rock-a-Nore many times. All you can smell are the doughnut stands, the fish stalls and candyfloss.’

‘There’s a seafood stall only a few dozen yards from the hut,’ offered Magnusson. ‘The smell of fish is pretty overpowering.’

Minter nodded. ‘Fair.’

‘Any idea of the cause of death?’ asked Goh.

Palmer shook her head. ‘Not yet. There’s nothing obvious.’

‘No signs of trauma? Injuries?’ prompted Minter.

‘The skin’s too damaged to tell us very much,’ Palmer explained. ‘If there had had been any puckering from a knife wound, or subdermal colouring from an impact wound, that would have shown up if you’d brought me this body before the fire. But not now. A scan will show us if there are any broken bones or scrape marks on any bones. I mean, we might, I emphasise might be able to spot any blade-intrusion paths into the soft tissue. But don’t hold your breath.’

‘What about DNA?’ said Minter.

‘Well, that’s what I’m trying for at the moment,’ Palmer said. ‘I’ve prodded around the usual places where there might be residual moisture, but so far there’s nothing. A scan should show me if there are any viable pockets of fluid left for me to try my luck.’

‘So this could well have been death by natural causes?’ offered Goh.

Palmer nodded. ‘It’s very possible. It could have been a rough sleeper who managed to get in. We had a particularly cold spring last year. I can’t imagine those huts offer much in the way of thermal insulation.’

‘It could have been a drug addict,’ said Minter. ‘Who overdosed in there perhaps.’

Palmer nodded again. ‘Equally possible. We might still be able to run a worthwhile toxicology test on her… but our specialist is away this week.’ She smiled. ‘I had to tell your DCI that yesterday. He didn’t seem best pleased.’

‘It could have been somebody who had too much to drink,’ said Goh. ‘I’ve known of cases like that… Drunks who didn’t manage to get home, frozen to death in dumpsters.’

Palmer nodded. ‘But alcohol traces don’t linger like narcotics do. If we receive a negative for drugs in the toxicology report, then, yes, it could have been someone too drunk to get home.’

She appraised the body on her table and went on: ‘This person was incredibly thin. I would say she’d have been very vulnerable to hypothermia. So, as I said, the best guestimate I can give you as to how long she’s been there – and do please take this with some latitude – would be nine to twelve months.’

‘Age?’ asked Minter.

She looked at him, one brow raised. ‘On a visual inspection?’

Minter nodded.

‘Adult,’ she replied. ‘How’s that?’

10

Boyd looked up from the paperwork spread out on his desk. He’d decided it was about time he dug into his overflowing in-tray and dealt with the backlog of minor cases that were building up. There’d been a spate of phone grabs in and around the Priory Meadow shopping area. The kids – and they were usually kids – were savvy enough to grab phones that were in use and, therefore, already unlocked. It wasn’t the phones themselves they were after; it was the digital wallets they had their sights on.

He was in the process of comparing witness statements and descriptions of the perpetrators with minors on Hastings’ local intelligence system, grateful for the distraction while he waited for Ellessey to come back with details of the body on the rail track.

If the body turned out to be Dan, then he, Emma, and Charlotte could begin to deal with the awful news. But, until then, they were suspended in an stressful holding pattern, not knowing whether Dan was out there somewhere and desperately in need of help… or whether that ship had sailed.

Fuck it. This evening, after his shift was done, he’d have another drive around Hastings, St Leonards and Bexhill on the off-chance he might get lucky and spot the lad.

Boyd’s gaze came to rest on Okeke’s vacant desk. He pulled out his phone, got up and walked over to the empty Rosper end of the CID floor.

Okeke answered quickly. ‘Hey.’

‘What’s the latest?’ he asked softly.

She sighed. ‘He’s in Virginia.’

‘What’s he doing over there?’ Boyd asked.

‘God knows,’ Okeke replied. ‘He’s managed to rent some place. For cash.’

‘Has he still got that little boy with him?’

‘Uh-huh,’ she muttered.

‘How is he?’

‘Jay or the boy?’ She paused and took a breath. ‘Stressed. Jumping at shadows.’

‘So, what’s the next step?’ Boyd asked.

‘Karl’s going to fly over,’ she told him. ‘He’s going to pick up the passport we sent to the post box in New York. Then if Jay can bloody well stay put for five minutes, Karl will fly south and hook up with him there.’

Boyd looked around to make sure he couldn’t be overheard. ‘Why not have another fake made up and sent over to where he is now?’

‘At five grand a shot?’ Okeke huffed. ‘It’s cheaper this way. I’d go but then… there’s the watch-list thing.’

He nodded. ‘Makes sense. No point pushing our luck on that front.’

‘Plus,’ she added, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if those Mulligan people have eyes on me now.’

She’d told Boyd about the Mulligan Club in a previous conversation. They were a bunch of alt-right crackpots with money, resources and ambitions. A bunch or men who wanted Jay dead – all because he might have managed to bag something possibly, incriminating on a battered, fire-damaged phone.

‘When’s Karl heading out?’ Boyd asked.

‘In a couple of weeks,’ Okeke replied.

‘Why the wait?’

‘Oh, the fucking irony!’ She sighed. ‘Karl needs to update his passport. He’s paid to have it fast-tracked, but it’s still going to take a fortnight to process.’

‘Do you need to take more time off until Karl can get him back home?’ said Boyd. ‘I can sweet-talk Sutherland into extending your –’

‘No. I don’t…’ she interrupted. ‘I think I want to come back in on Monday. I’m just sitting around at home, and worrying about Jay is fucking exhausting. I need to get back to work.’

11

Minter set the tray of coffees down on the canteen table and dealt them out. ‘Milky and sugary for you, Mags, and black for Goh.’

‘Thanks,’ replied Magnusson.

Goh took her coffee and tested it. ‘So… how long do I have to wait until I get a nickname?’ she asked.

Minter sat down. ‘It’s only your second day, isn’t it? Give us all a bit of time, eh?’

‘Anyway,’ said Magnusson, ‘it’s not like we can shorten your name… There’s hardly anything to it as it is.’

‘True,’ replied Goh.

Minter stirred his tea. ‘So… you used to be a copper over in the States? Uniform and plain clothes, eh?’ He looked up from his cup. ‘How’re you finding it here? A bit different, I presume?’

She met his eyes. ‘I’m used to it. I’ve done my time with the Met, remember?’

‘Sounds like you’ve been in policing for quite some time,’ Magnusson observed. ‘How old are you?’

‘Thirty-seven,’ Goh told her.

‘Blimey,’ said Magnusson. ‘You don’t look anywhere near that!’

Goh smiled at her. ‘That’s Asian genes for you.’

‘Thirty-seven, though…’ said Minter. ‘It’s a bit late in the day to be starting out right at the bottom, isn’t it?’

She nodded. ‘I joined the Met thinking they might fast-track me, but – oh, no – apparently I have to put in the years just like everyone else.’

‘Well, we do policing very differently over here, you know,’ Minter said.

Goh shook her head. ‘It’s actually no different, the investigative bit anyway. In fact, you guys have copied a lot of our methodology.’

‘She’s right,’ said Magnusson. ‘Criminal profiling. Combined DNA indexing, digital forensics…’

Minter bristled slightly. ‘I meant… the uniformed bit of policing. You said you did a couple of years on the beat in the Met?’

‘Right. Well, yeah… that’s different, for sure,’ Goh said. ‘There are no guns for a start.’ She smiled. ‘I kinda felt like I was naked the first few weeks on patrol. But then it became pretty clear that a stop-and-search in Kensington was more likely to end in an exchange of passive-aggressive frowns than gunfire.’

Minter sipped his tea, then straightened up. ‘Well, anyway, folks, back to work, eh? Do either of you have any thoughts on our Jane Doe?’

‘Your coroner got it about right, I think,’ said Goh. ‘My bet is on some idiot getting blind drunk on a cold night and sleeping it off in that shed.’

‘Hut,’ clarified Magnusson. ‘And we’ll know more when Dr Palmer gets back to us after the scan.’

‘If Dr Palmer’s right,’ Minter added, ‘we’ll have to wind the clock back at least nine months and start looking there.’

‘Nine months to a year,’ said Magnusson. ‘And, to be honest, it could be longer. Once a cadaver’s dried out, it’s done. It doesn’t rot. Ours could be years old. I reckon that Raj is pretty much wasting his time trawling for CCTV footage.’

‘I wasn’t thinking he’d actually spot our Jane Doe going in the hut.’ Minter rolled his eyes. ‘I was hoping we might spot how that fire started. If it’s suspicious and we catch someone lingering around the huts early doors, well, that could give us our starting point.’

Magnusson shrugged.

‘She’s right,’ said Goh. ‘CCTV’s a waste of manpower. You’re better putting your guy on mispers. More likely to hit something more solid that way.’

Beneath the table, Minter flexed his hands into fists. It might only be her second day, but DC Alex Goh was already getting under his skin. She was doing a superb job of making Okeke look like the perfect, easy-going work mate.

‘And if Palmer can manage to get a decent DNA sample,’ said Magnusson, ‘our Jane Doe might be on the system. Especially if she was, say, an addict and had previous form for petty crime or shoplifting. That kind of thing.’

Minter raised his hand to silence her and Goh. ‘First off, I absolutely do want the CCTV on the Rock-a-Nore area to be checked,’ he said firmly. ‘If we can catch something on that, great. If not, we’ve lost a day. All right?’

Goh shrugged. ‘You’re the boss.’

‘You’re still thinking the fire’s suspicious, then?’ said Magnusson. ‘The FIO said he found nothing suspicious.’

‘Hang on,’ said Minter. ‘If it was painted recently, as in the last year or so… wouldn’t whoever did the work have been able to get inside the hut too?’

‘I suppose so,’ Magnusson replied.

‘Good point,’ said Goh.

‘And it might have been left unlocked at the time,’ said Minter.

Magnusson nodded. ‘That seems logical.’

Minter pulled out his notebook. There was a call to be made as soon as he’d finished his tea.

12

Alison was beginning to struggle less with imposter syndrome. She was slowly getting used to the idea that she had, in fact, done a pretty brave thing

Or foolish, if you asked Mother.

She’d done more than two dozen TV couch interviews over the last fortnight. She was coping better when the studio lights came on and the cameras swung her way. No more hot flushes and blotchy cheeks. No more squeaky-voiced replies littered with ‘umm’ and nervous giggles. No more looking like a rabbit caught in the twin beams of an approaching truck.

And now, here she was, on the Stephen Black Show sandwiched between some journalist-presenter-broadcaster who she’d never heard of … and … none other than the insanely famous Hollywood actor Robert Daunt!

The grin on Stephen’s face as he exchanged banter with the Hollywood star was quickly replaced with an earnest expression as his eyes settled on Alison.

‘So, Alison Jones… national hero, rapidly becoming a national treasure, welcome! I’m loving the new look, by the way,’ he said, gesturing at her hair.

Alison pushed her fringe out of her eyes. ‘I’ve had it long for most of my life,’ she said. ‘I thought it was about time for a change.’

Stephen glanced at his star guest for tonight’s show. ‘So, Robert, I’m not sure how up to date you are on British news, but our Alison here is a real-life action hero. A couple of months ago she single-handedly took down a gunman in south London and took a near-fatal bullet. Isn’t that right, Alison?’

Alison nodded. ‘I was very lucky to survive. The bullet nicked an artery and –’

‘It was real Mel Gibson stuff,’ cut in Stephen.

Robert Daunt raised his brows and nodded. ‘Whoa, that’s pretty cool.’

‘You actually tackled him head-on, didn’t you, Alison?’ continued Stephen. ‘She rammed him with her car, basically.’

Again, Robert’s thick brows bounced up. ‘You rammed it?’

‘Well, I… intended to just block the road. It was narrow, so he wouldn’t have been able to do a U-turn… Anyway, I guess I misjudged the pulling-out bit and ended up –’

‘Ramming him in the side,’ finished Stephen. ‘Demolition derby style.’

Robert Daunt shook his head, amazed. He smiled and looked at the camera. ‘And that, Ma, is why the cops over here don’t need to pack guns…’

The audience laughed.

‘Cos they’ve got balls the size of melons,’ Robert Daunt finished.

‘But after that initial impact,’ continued Alison as the laughter faded, ‘it all gets blurry, Stephen. I know I got out, and I ran over to disarm him while he was still stunned by the impact and in a state of shock.’

‘You went to disarm him,’ Stephen said. ‘You tried to wrestle the gun off him…’

She nodded. ‘And that’s when it went off. During the struggle. Twice. The first shot caught me. The second… It killed Tyrone –’

‘The shooter,’ Stephen cut in. He stared down the lens of the camera. ‘Let’s not make this about him. He was a drug dealer. A man who’d just shot dead two innocent little girls. I can’t even begin to comprehend the courage you displayed in those few seconds.’

‘I wouldn’t call it courage, as such,’ replied Alison. ‘I didn’t really have any time to think about what I was doing.’

Stephen suddenly cupped an ear. ‘My producers are telling me that we can’t go into any specific details,’ he said.

Alison nodded. ‘Yes, the investigation is still ongoing, so we have to be careful.’

‘So,’ Stephen continued, ‘you were in a pretty bad way, weren’t you? Dying, in fact, but then someone came to your aid…?’

She nodded again. ‘Right. Yes. A young man. He applied pressure to my wound. He saved my life. Slowed the blood. Kept me going until –’

‘An ambulance turned up,’ supplied Stephen, hustling her along. ‘What can you tell us about him?’

Alison shook her head. ‘It’s still a foggy mess. He was young. He had long hair. That’s about all I can remember. I don’t know if the paramedics spoke to him. I don’t know whether…’ She paused, closed her eyes and tried to replay the memory. ‘He was wearing a trench coat. I think… Then he sort of just vanished. You know? Into thin air?’

The studio audience were perfectly silent as they leant forward to hear her account.

‘He was what my dad would have called a bit of a scruffy herbert,’ she added.

There was a smattering of laughter as the tension bubble in the studio popped.

‘A scruffy herbert?’ repeated Robert Daunt, doing a passable British accent.

The audience laughed again and the remaining tension was sucked out of the room.

‘Is it possible you imagined him?’ asked Stephen.

Alison frowned. ‘No. I really don’t think so!’ Her voice came out sharp, and the studio fell into an uncomfortable silence before Robert Daunt stepped in.

‘You saw your very own guardian angel, Alison,’ he said, smiling. Not a smile for the audience. Not a smile for the camera. But a genuine one, just for her.

13

‘I’m just repeating what others are saying, Aaron… It’s the Curse of Green Edith.’

Aaron rolled the wheelbarrow up the ramp and emptied the load of blackened fragments of wood onto the truck’s flatbed.

‘Who’s she?’ said Aaron.

Duncan Smart paused his shovelling while he waited for Aaron to the wheelbarrow. ‘You not heard of Green Edith?’ he asked.

Reversing down the ramp, Aaron shook his head.

‘She was a local witch,’ said Duncan. ‘Back in the day…’

Aaron pulled up beside him and bent down to pick up his shovel. ‘When? When was she a local witch?’

Duncan breathed out heavily. ‘Four… five hundred years ago, maybe. Back when people believed in that kind of thing. She had beef with some local fishermen, apparently.’

‘What kind of beef?’ Aaron asked as he resumed shovelling charcoal and ashes into the wheelbarrow.

Duncan had no idea what kind of beef the locals had had with Green Edith, but decided to fill in the narrative gap himself. ‘They sold her some bad fish and made her sick. The point is she had a big old bust up with this fisherman and his son. A week later, they were both drowned in a storm out there…’ He pointed between the net huts at the churning grey sea. ‘A sudden storm came out of nowhere. And here’s the thing, Aaron… There were other boats out there, but it was only this bloke and his son that got hit. So, the locals decided it was all down to this Edith woman. That she was a witch and she’d cursed them.’

Aaron looked up at his boss sceptically. Duncan had a habit of telling tall stories, then laughing at him for believing them.

Duncan shrugged. ‘Don’t look at me like that, lad. It’s true. Anyway… to cut a long story short, they ended up burning her to death. Right here. In fact, just down there on the shingle.’ He pointed between the huts again. ‘They say she screamed in the flames. ‘I’ll be back to get you all!’ Duncan’s old-crone voice was surprisingly good.

Aaron could believe people back then were that crazy. He was doing a play called The Crucible at school and had learned about the Salem witch trials. It was stunning how gullible people had been.

‘So, basically, Edith cursed the whole fishing community, right?’ Duncan stretched his back. ‘But the thing is… over the centuries, there’ve been a few fires down here. Huts burnt to the ground and rebuilt. But every single time that’s happened…’ He paused for effect and lowered his voice. ‘They’ve always found a body in the ruins. The body of a little old shrivelled woman, burnt to a crisp.’

Aaron raised an eyebrow. ‘Every time?’

‘Every time, mate,’ Duncan assured him.

‘And that’s who you reckon was in here? Green Edith?’

Duncan shrugged mischievously. ‘Not me, lad! I’m not saying that… It’s just what some people around here are saying, you know? The old Hastonians, people who know about this stuff.’

Aaron hefted his loaded shovel into the wheelbarrow, suspecting Duncan was messing with him, yet again. But then he heard a soft thunk as something hard hit the bottom of the barrow. He peered in, brushed away the charcoal and grit he’d just dumped and spotted something.

‘I mean,’ Duncan continued, ‘it’s hard to explain that coincidence, right? Same little body, all wrinkled up…’

Aaron had stopped listening. He reached down and picked up a small metal cigarette box. He turned to Duncan with a smirk.

‘So, Duncan,’ he said, raising the tin. ‘This Green Edith? She had a spliff every now and again, did she?’

Minter watched Magnusson as she teased the box open with her gloved fingers.

‘Be careful, Karen,’ he warned.

Magnusson hadn’t asked Minter to cross the landing and join her in the forensics department. he’d invited himself.

‘Oh, okay. I’ll do that,’ she replied. ‘Good idea.’ She wiped away some of the sooty grunge from the top of the lid. ‘Butterfly.’

‘Hmm?’

‘On the lid,’ said Magnusson. She tilted the tin so he could see the faintly embossed shape. ‘Cute.’

The lid had a greasy crust around its rim. It looked like organic matter. She carefully scraped some of it into a sample dish, then capped the dish and scratched the rest away. She eased the tip of a scalpel under the rim and slid it round until the lid popped open.

‘Voila.’ She lifted the lid and set it down on her workbench.

Minter leant over her shoulder, crowding her space uncomfortably, his breath on her cheek.

‘So, what we have here,’ said Magnusson, ‘is a key. A Yale key. There’s a plastic fob attached to it.’

‘Anything on the fob?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s melted. Nothing I can read on it.’ She set it down on her mat. ‘And… what looks like a kit for rolling joints. I see Rizlas, a grinder, some tobacco, some cardboard for roaches.’ With tweezers, she picked up a blob of crinkled plastic with some dark-coloured substance inside. ‘And that is the naughty stuff.’

She placed it under a magnifying lens and peered at the blob.

‘Hmmm… I don’t think that’s just natural weed,’ she muttered. She shifted to one side so that Minter could look through the magnifying lens. ‘Do you see those flecks of colour?’

‘Those tiny blue bits… and the specks of white?’ he said.

‘They’re synthetic compounds. JWH-018, AMB…’ Magnusson began.

Minter straightened up. ‘You’re saying it’s spice?’

Magnusson dropped the synthetic cannabis into an evidence bag, then she looked up at Minter and pushed her chair back slightly so that he was outside her personal space again.

‘Ellessey will have to confirm that, but yes… I’d say that’s definitely spice. Which could explain a lot,’ she said.

Minter straightened up. ‘So… she was a druggie, then.’

‘It’s nasty stuff,’ she said.

He nodded. ‘It can cause blackouts.’

‘Long ones,’ Magnusson agreed. ‘It can also cause your heart to race frantically, and if you’ve got an existing heart problem, it could lead to a stroke or a seizure.’

‘So our Jane Doe could have passed out in the hut? And if it was a particularly cold night, she could have died from hypothermia?’

Magnusson nodded. She gently took out the grinder, the paper and the cardboard for roaches and set them out on her mat.

‘This roach is browned, see? That might also be useful for DNA.’

She dropped it into another evidence bag, then returned to look at the other items of paraphernalia. The used roach has been torn from the larger piece of cardboard. The heat of the fire had darkened what had once been white cardboard to a light brown. She gently picked it up and turned it over.

‘Ooh.’

‘What?’ Minter asked, peering over her shoulder again.

‘It’s a business card,’ she said.

The words printed on it were faint against the darkened background. She pulled an angled desk lamp across, aimed it at the mat and squinted as she tried to make out the details.

‘Can you read it?’ said Minter.

‘Ooh, Minter… you’re a very lucky boy,’ Magnusson replied, a smile spreading across her lips. ‘I think you might just have your first useful lead.’

14

Boyd had taken the Thursday off. He’d had his six monthly MRI scan at the Conquest Hospital in the morning and had arranged to meet Charlotte, Emma and Maggie at the White Rock Theatre restaurant for lunch.

He arrived to find they’d already secured a table by the broad curved windows that looked out over the pier and onto the shingle beach. Ozzie and Mia were tucked up into dozing dog-doughnuts beneath the table. Neither seemed particularly bothered that he’d arrived. He dumped his jacket on the back of a seat, bent over the tall toddler chair at the end of the table and tickled Maggie under the chin before he sat down.

‘How did it go, my lovely?’ asked Charlotte.

‘I got zapped by the big beeping machine and injected with that stuff that makes you feel like you’ve just peed your pants,’ he told her.

Emma looked back from the window. ‘Nice,’ she said.

‘This liquid… I presume it helps them see what’s going on inside,’ he explained. ‘IT makes you feel a quick heat flush, particularly in your groin area.’

‘Too much info, Dad,’ huffed Emma, putting her hands over her ears.

‘They said I should hear something in a couple of weeks,’ he said.

‘Oh, I hate the waiting,’ said Charlotte.

‘I’ll be fine,’ he replied. ‘They got me early, remember?’

Emma’s gaze was back on the window. He knew what she was doing. He found himself doing it too… She was eyeballing the promenade, looking for Dan. Hastings was getting busy again, now that May had arrived.

Is there any more news? mouthed Charlotte, nodding towards Emma’s back.

He shook his head. ‘Have you guys ordered yet?’ he asked.

‘No, we were waiting for you,’ replied Emma, her attention still on the beach outside. ‘I think I might just go for a main.’

‘Not hungry, Ems?’ said Charlotte. She turned to Boyd. ‘We walked the promenade all the way from Bexhill Pier to Rock-a-Nore. Maggie loved it.’

‘It’s a nice day for it,’ said Boyd.

He picked up the lunch menu and had just started scanning the short selection when his work phone buzzed in his trouser pocket. He reached down to grab it.

‘You’re on lunch,’ sighed Charlotte. ‘Can’t Sam or Minter handle it?’

‘Okeke’s still off,’ he replied, ‘and Minter’s –’

It was Minter.

‘All right, mate?’ Boyd answered.

‘Boss, I thought I’d give you the good news… unless Palmer’s already called you with it?’

‘No. I’ve had nothing this morning,’ Boyd said. ‘What have you got?’

‘Well, I’ve got two bits of good news,’ Minter replied. ‘Firstly, Ellessey have just emailed to say that the John Doe on the track was in his mid to late forties.’

Boyd felt a dizzying wave of relief. ‘They’re absolutely certain about that?’ he asked.

‘One hundred per cent, boss. They discovered an upper arm bone. And there’s some stuff about the elbow joint being properly grown, hardened and showing wear and tear.’

Boyd felt relief flood throughout his entire body. ‘Thank God for that.’

Emma had turned from the window and was looking his way, her eyes suddenly wide, hopeful.

‘Okay, Minter,’ said Boyd. ‘Thanks for letting me know. Oh, and the other news?’

‘The Jane Doe. We have an idea as to where she was staying before she ended up in the hut. And she was a drug user. Spice.’

Boyd nodded. ‘That would explain a few things. Well, keep me posted, and thanks for the call, mate.’

‘Dan?’ Emma asked, the moment Boyd ended the call.

He smiled. ‘The body on the train track… it wasn’t our Dan.’

Emma dissolved into tears.

Charlotte reached across the table and squeezed her hand. ‘Oh, thank goodness for that. We could go for a walk around Warrior Square after lunch. Perhaps have a look beyond the pier towards Bexhill – see if we can spot him?’

Emma nodded and wiped her eyes.

‘Good idea.’ Boyd looked back down at the menu. ‘All right then… let’s fuel up. I’ll have the cheese-and-bacon toastie.’

15

‘If you or anyone you know has any information about this particular case, any information at all that could help Essex Police identify who was driving this brown Ford Focus, then please call the number at the bottom of the screen and your call will be treated in the strictest confidence.’

PC Alison Jones turned to her left, to hand back to Crime Line’s main presenter, Gillian Salisbury. The light on the top of the camera in front of her switched from green to red, indicating she was off-shot.

She let out a small sigh of relief. The three cam operators swivelled their attention away from her and rolled their clunky studio-broadcast cameras – like large malformed Daleks – towards Gillian as she segued to the next unsolved case.

‘After the break, a man in the Nottingham area who has been committing a series of post-office burglaries armed with a machete and wearing this distinctive-looking red-and-black balaclava…’ Gillian Salisbury froze with her smile fixed in place until the floor producer raised her clipboard to indicate they were off-air for the next two minutes.

The cameras lights all blinked to red.

They were off.

The studio, however, was a buzz of frenetic activity. The two dozen call handlers – Alison had learnt since joining the show – weren’t simply extras in uniform. They were actual police officers. And the calls coming in, useful or not, were being recorded and collated to add to the police’s national HOLMES database.

Gillian walked over from her marked spot and rested a hand on Alison’s arm. The presenter was a clear foot taller than Alison, slim, attractive, with a light touch of make-up. Just enough to look both serious and attractive.

‘That was really good,’ she said. ‘Good job.’

‘Thank you,’ Alison replied. ‘God… I was so, so nervous.’

Gillian smiled. ‘Well, it didn’t show. Look, no matter how long you do this for, it’s always nerve-racking when you’re doing live TV.’

Alison nodded.

‘I think the producers like what they’ve seen,’ Gillian continued. ‘I suspect they’re going to ask you if you want to be a regular on CS.’ She glanced over her shoulder at the floor producer, who was holding a finger up to communicate there was one minute to go.

‘I’d really like that,’ Alison said. ‘But I think I’d need to get my Chief Super to approve it.’

‘Oh, I’m pretty sure he’ll approve.’ Gillian winked at her. ‘You’re PR gold for the Met. You’re a living, breathing recruitment poster!’ She nudged Alison’s arm. ‘And by the way… once you’ve got your face on the telly, the work never stops.’ She glanced again over her shoulder. The producer was waving frantically at her to get back on her spot. ‘There’d be a career outside policing. If that was something you were interested in.’

‘Really?’ Alison asked.

Gillian nodded. ‘You’re a natural. The camera loves you.’

Throughout the second half of the show, Alison struggled to keep the smile from her face. Crime Line wasn’t the kind of programme where anyone smiled, apart from Gillian’s ‘until next week… take care now’ sign-off right at the end.

It was a serious show.

Doing serious police work.

Alison had fallen into a slump following the shooting in 1999 and the media feeding frenzy that had followed. The attention had tailed off and she’d gone back to being a regular police constable once again, with the occasional moment of recognition from the pissheads she had to deal with late on Friday and Saturday nights.

Her mother’s desire that her little girl might move into something managerial and office-based or, better still, something outside the force entirely… well, it had remained unfulfilled. So Violet had resumed her not-so-subtle digs about policing being the kind of job more suited to ‘hardy, earthy types’.

She made it clear that she’d always hoped that Alison would make better use of her school connections. It had been expensive sending her to private school with the Taras and Eugenies. But Violet had seen that as an investment, an opportunity for Alison to make well-to-do friends who would be able to help her set something up further down the line, a little boutique, maybe. Failing that, one of them might have a brother who worked in the City. The day that Alison had announced to her parents that she was going to become a common on-the-beat copper was the day Violet had given up the aspiration that her daughter would one day be in the pages of Hello magazine.

The year 2000 had ended up being a disappointing splash back down to earth for Alison. The grind of police work, the soulless routine of returning to her empty flat in Fulham, far too exhausted to do anything but put on pyjamas and watch Big Brother while slurping a pot noodle, had been a rude reminder that media hero status was all too brief.

The world had moved on and left her behind to relive that moment of violence and terror alone. Often, she’d found herself waking in the dead of night with a scream perched in her mouth because the dead Tyrone – with his lifeless, glazed eyes and his brains spread out on the cobblestones just a few feet away from her – had started grinning at her.

And on those nights, when nightmares of Tyrone tormented her, Alison found another spectral figure to comfort and reassure her: the stranger who had saved her life. The scruffy skinny lad with his long hair and that silly name.

Beanie.

She hadn’t mentioned Beanie in a while, because, in all honesty, she wasn’t one hundred per cent sure he’d been real. She’d begun to suspect that her blood-starved mind had been playing tricks on her. Didn’t people say that when you starve a brain of oxygen it goes into overdrive, producing a whole bunch of endorphins, dopamine and feel-good stuff?

Beanie – her scruffy herbert of an angel – had almost certainly been a wonderful hallucination.

Today’s not your day. You’re going to live long, have babies and grandbabies, and achieve a shit ton of great things…

But Robert Daunt, bless him, had given her a look that had seemed to say, Fuck all these folks – I believe you. In the green room after the show, she’d managed to have a moment with him before his minder had whisked him away to record another show in another studio. And he’d scrawled his name on a publicity photo and written: He’ll be back, I’m sure of it.

The first half of 2001 had been a particularly dispiriting time for Alison. Her brief moment of fame been and gone, and her life had become a very lonely anticlimax.

That was until she’d received that telephone call out of the blue. The one from a junior producer inquiring as to whether or not she’d be interested in a guest spot on Crime Line

16

Barrow Court B&B was in a cul-de-sac in the Silverhill area, a few streets back from the seafront. It was easy to miss with the flaking sign obscured by a bush that was in danger of swallowing it. Minter wondered, as he tried to find some gap to squeeze his car into, how the hell the B&B managed to find any business whatsoever.

And, more to the point, how its guests found their way back to it after a few pints and a bag of chips.

Barrow Court was not far from Cottle Street… and Argyle House.

Same area, same kind of vibe, same kind of folks. Minter climbed out of the car, took the five steps up from the pavement, stepped under the guano-flecked portico and pushed the B&B’s doorbell. A moment later, the door opened and a middle-aged man wearing a high-vis vest and steel-toe work boots appeared, carrying a lunch box.

‘You’re not the owner, are you?’ Minter asked.

‘Do I look like the owner, mate?’ The man pushed past him, leaving the door open and reeking of stale cigarettes and BO. ‘She’s in the breakfast room,’ he added, as he went down the steps.

Minter entered and found himself in a narrow hallway with a pinboard on the right, patchworked with flyers for local businesses and stern advisories for the guests.

No guests after seven!

No smoking or vaping in the rooms!

No takeaways to be consumed on these premises!

He could hear the clatter of plates through an open door on his left and he peered in side to find a small front room with three tables covered in cheerless burgundy-checked vinyl tablecloths, dirty plates and the mandatory cluster of condiments.

‘Helloooo?’ he called.

‘Hello?’ echoed a female voice.

A woman emerged from a doorway on the other side of the room, her hands wet and speckled with soap suds. She looked Minter up and down. Her harried, scowling face instantly transformed.

She smiled. ‘After a room, are you, my lovely?’ she asked.

Minter raised his lanyard. ‘DI Minter, Hastings CID. Are you the owner of this place?’

She took a few steps towards him, squinted at his ID, then eyed him a second time. ‘You’re a policeman,’ she observed.

Minter smiled. ‘Correct.’ He offered her his hand.

She grabbed the dishcloth that was tucked into her apron, dried her hands quickly and shook his proffered hand. He guessed she was in her late sixties. Her dark hair, streaked with white, was wound into a bun. She had a Caitlin Moran-like tress of grey at the front. He noticed that her eyeliner had been clumsily applied, leaving ink dots on her eyelids.

‘What’s this about?’ she said.

‘I presume you’ve heard about the fire over in Rock-a-Nore on Monday?’ he began.

She nodded. ‘Oh yes. A real shame that was.’

‘It’s not common knowledge yet,’ Minter said, ‘but a body was recovered from the ruins of one of the huts.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Blimey, you’re kidding!’

‘Fortunately, it wasn’t someone who had died in the fire…’ Minter continued, ‘but we believe the body had been there for quite some time.’

‘Blimey,’ she said again. ‘That’s awful.’

‘It is rather awful, yes,’ Minter agreed. ‘Might have been there for nearly a year.’

Her mouth drooped open.

He pulled out his notebook. ‘So, the reason I’m here, Ms…?’

‘Wendy,’ she supplied. ‘Wendy Maigrette.’

She spelled her surname for him as he wrote in his notebook.

‘That’s my Equity name,’ she added.

He looked up. ‘Sorry? What’s an Equity name?’

‘Stage name.’ She smiled and nodded at the nearest wall.

Minter turned to see various framed photographs of a young woman. A stunningly attractive young woman at that.

‘I used to be in showbiz, you see,’ Wendy explained. ‘I was in a couple of those old Carry On films. Do you remember them?’

Barely. He vaguely recalled that they had Kenneth Somebody in them. And that short feisty lady who played Peggy Mitchell on EastEnders. Barbara Winters or something similar.

‘I think I’d better take your actual surname, if that’s okay,’ he said.

‘Balls.’ She sighed, then smiled. ‘You can see why I chose another name. “Balls” isn’t really the stuff of tinsel and show lights, is it?’

Minter smiled as he jotted it down. ‘We’re trying to get an ID on this body. And the only lead we have so far is your business card.’

‘My business card?’ she repeated.

‘We found one of your business cards on the body,’ Minter told her.

Her mouth dropped open again. ‘Lord!’

‘So, we’re assuming that person might have been a guest here. The person was a woman,’ he said. ‘Quite short and very slim.’

‘Well, I get all sorts here,’ Wendy said. ‘I can’t honestly remember someone from a year ago.’

‘Do you have a guestbook? Or a visitor’s log?’ Minter asked.

‘I’ve got a guestbook.’ She nodded. ‘Do you want to have a look at it?’

‘If you don’t mind,’ Minter said.

She led him through the doorway into a small kitchen. There was a pile of plates, cutlery and a frying pan in a sink.

‘It’s a bit of a mess, sorry. I only just finished serving breakfast.’

They entered a tiny office next to the kitchen. The high-ceilinged room was dingy with no window and was lit by a single bulb encased in a fitting made of multicoloured dewdrop-shaped glass beads.

‘Let me dig out… you said, what, a year ago?’ Wendy said as she flipped through a row of leather-bound books in a nook behind her small desk.

Minter looked around. The walls were lined with shelves stacked with an odd assortment of items of clothing, bizarre accessories and theatre props.

‘Ah, here we go,’ she said, pulling out a notebook. ‘Your dead woman had been in the hut for about a year, yes?’ She opened the book on her desk and flicked through the pages. ‘I mainly get single men here. Travelling salesmen, contract workers… not many holiday makers sadly. And not that many women. I mean there are some…’ She glanced at Minter. ‘In the business, so to speak.’

‘What business?’

She raised a pencil-lined brow, then resumed running her finger down one page, turned it and ran her finger down the next.

‘Oh… I see,’ Minter said, nodding.

‘Aha,’ she said finally.

Minter to look at the book. ‘What have you got?’ he asked.

‘Now, I do remember her…’ Wendy turned the guestbook round to show him and placed her finger beside a name. ‘Katie Smith, May 2023. She asked me where the nearest police station was. I told her the only one I knew about was on Bohemia Road.’

‘Can you describe her?’ Minter asked.

Wendy frowned and closed her eyes. ‘Slim. Very slim. Long, dark hair. I think it was dyed dark. She was no spring chicken. I could see grey roots.’

‘How old would you say she was?’

‘Hard to say, dear,’ Wendy replied. ‘I got the impression she’d done some very hard miles. She looked a little haggard. She looked – what’s the word…? Gaunt. Sunken, if you know what I mean.’

‘Would you say she looked like she might have been on something?’ Minter pressed.

‘Drugs?’

He nodded.

‘Well, I’m not one to judge people on how they look… but… I suppose, yes. Possibly. To be honest with you, at first I thought she might be a down-on-her-luck tart trying her luck in Hastings. But then I suspected she was just some druggie. Especially after she stitched me up.

‘Stitched you up?’ Minter echoed.

‘She never settled up with me,’ explained Wendy. ‘She booked for a whole week and never returned to pay on the last day.’ She sighed. ‘That happens from time to time. It’s not fair. It’s not like I’m the bloody Sheraton and can track guests down to send an invoice.’

17

‘Katie Smith was a guest at Barrow Court B and B the first week of May last year. Never settled up with the owner, Wendy Balls,’ said Minter. ‘Which she was not best pleased about.’

‘I’m presuming Katie didn’t return?’ said Goh.

Minter shook his head. ‘Nope.’

‘She leave behind anything useful?’ Goh asked, looking up from her cheese-and-tomato sandwich. She’d been less than impressed at what the canteen had to offer for lunch. ‘Katie Smith sounds suspiciously like an alias.’

Minter nodded. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if it was. Especially if she didn’t intend to pay in the first place.’

‘Do we have a description of her?’

Minter opened his notebook. ‘The owner said that Katie was skinny… No, she used the word “scrawny”.’

‘Well, that fits our Jane Doe,’ Goh said.

‘She had long, dark hair, possibly dyed,’ Minter continued. ‘She was a white woman in her late forties to mid fifites.’ He looked up from his notes. ‘Dr Palmer emailed me just now to give me an age estimate of between forty and fifty-five, so that matches.’ He glanced back at his notes. ‘The B&B lady also added she thought her guest might have been a sex worker, trying her luck in Hastings for a few days.’

Goh looked at him. ‘What gave her that idea?’

Despite what she’d said, Wendy Balls had seemed very much like the judgemental type to Minter. She obviously liked to doll herself up like some downmarket Carol Vorderman, and he guessed that she took a dim view of anyone who didn’t bother to make the same effort.

‘She said Katie looked scruffy. Thought she might be a tart on the game. Then she said she thought Katie might be an addict. Particularly after she didn’t turn up to settle the payment for her room,’ he said, reading from his notes.

‘Tart?’ Goh raised a brow. ‘Love your words over here.’ She sighed. ‘Lotta assumptions there, though.’

‘Well, they’re not exactly wild ones,’ replied Minter. ‘Given how she ended up.’ He stirred his tea absently. ‘If this is her, of course.’

‘Your forensics tech initially thought it might have been someone much younger, though,’ said Goh.

‘I think Mags was basing that on the height of the body,’ Minter replied.

‘What height did we end up with?’

‘Palmer said five foot,’ replied Minter. ‘Anyway, we’ll look her up on LEDS after lunch. If she was an addict, we might have her on our system.’

Goh nodded, examining the limp sandwich on her plate. As she picked at it, she said, ‘So, Minter, you’re not from round here, are you? Is that a Welsh accent?’

He nodded.

‘What brought you all the way down here to sunny Hastings?’ she asked.

He sipped his tea. ‘I got a transfer about ten years ago. All my extended family are back in Wales. Accents so thick some of them that I’m beginning to struggle to understand them myself.’

‘Have you got your own family?’

She seemed surprised when he shook his head. ‘No significant other?’

‘Nope,’ he replied. ‘I honestly don’t know how any of my colleagues can fit the time in to have a partner. What with the work, the gym, the training…’

‘What’re you training for?’ asked Goh.

He shrugged. ‘Just general fitness, really.’

She raised a brow and stared pointedly at his thick forearms. ‘You’re several degrees beyond general fitness.’

‘I like to look after myself,’ he told her, pleased by her comment.

It wasn’t just vanity, he reminded himself. The three catalogue jobs he’d had thus far had earned him nearly fifteen hundred quid. Not bad for three days off work. If he was going to put effort into looking good in a tight-fitting T-shirt, it made sense to make a bit of money from it.

‘I run,’ she offered. ‘Quite a lot, actually. When I transferred to CID in the States, I started piling on the weight, like, big time. It’s being desk-bound, right?’ She shook her head. ‘I put on forty pounds. Took me ages to lose it all. I’m determined not to make that mistake again.’

‘I run too,’ he added. ‘It’s not all lifting weights. Got to keep the legs up with the top half or I’ll topple over.’

She chuckled. It was the first smile he’d seen on her face that hadn’t come across as sarcastic.

‘You’ll quite often see me running along the front at seven,’ he said. ‘A quick five-K before work.’

She nodded. ‘I might do the same. I like a bit of a view when I run. I bet that’s quite nice, the beach, the seagulls…’

He smiled at her and glanced down at the remains of her sandwich. ‘You all done with that?’

She nodded and he reached over to pick it up.

‘Don’t mind if I do,’ he said.

Back on the CID floor half an hour later, Minter and Goh sat side by side at his desk. Minter logged onto LEDS, opened the misper enquiry page and tapped in ‘Katie Smith’. As he’d expected, there was a long list of likely candidates with several variations on details. Wendy Ball’s description of Katie Smith had been woolly enough that he feared it would be difficult to rule many out.

‘What about this one?’ asked Goh, pointing at one of the candidate headers.

Minter clicked on the name to expand the profile.

‘Katherine Ali Smith…’ he muttered aloud, skim-reading the notes. ‘Reported missing three years ago, last known address Brighton, age forty-one. W-One, slim, dark-haired…’ He nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s a good one.’

The photograph that came with the misper report displayed a woman wearing a dark hoodie and nose piercings.

Minter read the notes out loud. ‘Mother mentioned daughter has become addicted to drugs after a bad relationship and moved out from living with her to stay with friends in Brighton.’ He looked at Goh. ‘I’ll bookmark it. Let’s see if we’ve got anyone else who sounds as promising.’ He tagged the record and continued scrawling through the hits.

An hour and a half later, they had a shortlist… of one.

He turned to Goh and let out a sigh. ‘I should probably make the call.’

‘To the mother?’ she asked.

He nodded. ‘Calls like these are pretty difficult to handle. It takes a bit of…’

‘Experience?’ She had an expression that suggested the arsey Goh was back. ‘Shouldn’t we double-check with your Dr Palmer first? The nose piercings? Our Doe might, possibly, show signs of those still.’

‘Palmer didn’t mention any piercing holes in her report,’ Minter replied.

‘Maybe she wasn’t wearing them any more… If she’d had a piercing in for long enough, it would have left a permanent fistula,’ Goh offered.

Minter frowned. ‘I don’t recall there being much of a nose left on that body.’

‘All the same… worth a call, don’t you think?’ she said.

Soon afterwards, Minter was on the phone to Palmer.

‘Do you want the Jane Doe, not the John Doe,’ she asked.

‘Jane,’ he replied. ‘I’ve got a quick question for you, if that’s all right?’

‘Go on.’

‘Were there any signs of piercings on the body?’

‘Did I find any studs or rings? No,’ she told him.

‘Were there any signs that she’d ever had a piercing in the past?’ Minter asked. ‘Specifically a nose piercing?’ He glanced at Goh. ‘An old fistula?’

Palmer was silent for a moment. ‘Are you joking, DI Minter?’

Minter remained silent.

‘If you’re hoping for any identifying tattoo, or old scars…’ Palmer continued, ‘or even healed piercings, I’m afraid you’ll be sorely disappointed. Old broken bones, dental artefacts, significant medical conditions, surgical procedures, missing limbs, organs… Yes, I could help you. But something as subtle as piercings on an ossified and carbonised body? I’m afraid not.’

‘Ah, okay,’ he said.

‘I did, however, carry out an MRI scan this morning and there was one detail that might be of use to you,’ Palmer told him.

‘Go on.’

‘There is a small swelling on the right clavicle,’ she said.

‘On her collarbone?’ said Minter.

‘Well done,’ Palmer replied. ‘It was fractured quite a long time ago, I’d say. I can’t see any evidence of a violent death for her. No blade intrusion lines, no residual signs of impact haemorrhaging…’ She paused ‘I’m presuming you’re asking me about the nose piercing because you have a possible ID for her? Someone with piercings?’

‘We’ve got a hopeful,’ Minter said. ‘With some piercings, yes.’

‘Do I get a name to put on my notes? Honestly, having two Does in the same theatre is giving me a headache.’

‘Nope,’ he replied cheerfully. ‘Not yet… Not until I’ve had a chance to speak with Katherine’s parents.’

‘Katherine?’ Palmer said gleefully.

Minter closed his eyes.

‘Excellent. She can be Katherine Doe for now.’

18

‘We’re going to have to suspend you while the IPCC take a look into this, Alison.’

Alison was staring out of the window at the Thames glistening in the morning sunlight. The London Eye on the far side was casting a bicycle-wheel shadow across it. What the Chief Super had just said slowly registered. Alison turned back to look at her.

‘Did you say… suspend me?’

The Chief Super nodded. ‘Yes, Alison.’

‘But it’s just a shitty smear piece … and it’s only because I called him out for being a sexist pig!’ she said, heart sinking.

The News of the World had published a salacious article, written by a creep called Simon Fulwell, about Crime Line’s Gillian Salisbury having had a brief ‘modelling career’ in her early twenties. They’d even printed a couple of shots. Gillian had been devastated by the article. More to the point, she’d been pulled from the show. A few days later, Alison had been doorstepped by a journo from a rival tabloid and, in an ill-judged moment of anger, she’d let rip, calling Fulwell ‘a fat and ugly prick who should mind his own business’.

Being a serving member of the police force, especially when she was on TV once a week, she’d been called up to Chief Superintendent Susan Burns’s office and admonished for getting involved. But there’d been a look in the Chief Super’s eye that suggested she would probably have been tempted to say something similar.

The upshot of Alison’s little outburst was that Fulwell had levelled his cross-hairs on her. And his go-to story had been the Lambeth shooting, making the claim that the forensics taken from the incident didn’t match her account.

‘I’m sorry, Alison, but we need to demonstrate that we take allegations like this seriously,’ the Chief Super had told her.

‘But it’s utter rubbish!’ Alison replied.

‘I know that. You know that.’ The Chief Super held her hands out, palms up. ‘But –’

‘There’s already been an investigation!’ said Alison. ‘And what? The Met has to launch another one just because some tabloid hack can’t cope with being called out?’

The Chief Super had yesterday’s News of the World on her desk. The article was on the front page, beneath a picture of Alison from five years ago. It had been taken at the press breifing after she’d been discharged from hospital. The headline above it declared: HERO FACES QUESTIONS.

‘The allegations are serious, Alison. Serious enough that we have to show some due diligence,’ Burns told her.

‘He didn’t say they contradicted my account.’ Alison pointed out.

‘But there were gaps in the evidence,’ Burns reminded her.

Lacking any specific details, Fulwell’s piece had implied that she’d shot Tyrone Nelson in cold blood and then staged her injury, to make it look as though the gun had gone off accidentally, catching her first and then killing him.

‘Ma’am, he’s accusing me of murdering Tryone Nelson!’ Alison protested.

‘Which is why we need to be seen to be taking another look at the evidence,’ replied the Chief Superintendent. She gave Alison a sympathetic look. ‘I know this is unfair, Alison. I know this is a shitty situation, but we have to show that we’re taking some action.’

‘Unfair?’ Alison looked out of the window at the almost imperceptibly rotating Ferris wheel on the South Bank. ‘He’s saying I’m a fucking murderer.’

Burns raised a brow, but let the language slide. ‘And when we’ve done our due diligence, the News of the World will have to print a retraction and an apology. That’s how this works. You of all people have been around the block enough to know that.’

‘Being suspended from duty will make me look guilty,’ said Alison.

‘No, it won’t. It’s standard procedure. And everyone knows that.’

Alison shook her head. ‘Suspended’ meant ‘guilty’ to most of the muttonheads who read that fucking paper.

‘And, I’m afraid, you’ll have to give up Crime Line, Alison,’ Burns said, delivering the final blow with a sigh.

19

Minter jotted down the number for Katherine Smith’s mother and prepared to dial it his desk phone.

DC Goh was sitting next to him, impatiently biting into an apple.

‘Come on then, I’m very eager to learn from your experience,’ she muttered.

He glanced at her. ‘Can we just knock off the sarcasm for five minutes, Goh?’

She shrugged an apology of sorts.

‘Right.’ He loosened his tie and rolled up his sleeves, before dialling the Brighton number.

‘Put it on speaker,’ Goh prompted, taking another bite of her apple. ‘So I can hear.’

Right now, Minter wanted nothing more than to shove that sodding apple down her throat. They both listened to the phone ring.

Finally, a woman answered. ‘Hello?’

Minter cleared his throat. ‘Mrs Smith?’

‘Yes. Who is this?’ she replied.

‘My name’s Detective Inspector Stephen Minter. I have a question I need to ask about your daughter. If you have a moment?’

There was a pause. They heard a rustle followed by Mrs Smith’s muffled voice. She was clearly talking to someone else.

‘Mrs Smith?’ Minter prompted.

The rustling ceased and she answered, ‘Yes?’

‘Can I ask,’ he said, ‘did your Katherine ever fracture or break her collarbone?’

There was another pause, then… ‘Yes… Yes, I believe she did.’

Minter glanced at Goh. She paused her noisy chewing. It very much seemed as though they had their Jane Doe. The next bit, Minter reminded himself, was going to have to be handled extremely sensitively.

‘It was at school,’ continued Mrs Smith.

Deep breath. Sympathetic tone. Professional but with a human touch. Empathy. Some words of condolence. Mention of a family liaison officer coming over to see her. Minter ran through the next steps in his head.

Mrs Smith was still talking. ‘She used to play football for the school. That’s right, isn’t it, Katherine? You did it playing football –’

‘Hold up. What?’ said Minter. Goh’s gaze had dropped to her lap. He was pretty sure the annoying cow was sniggering.

‘She’s right here, if you want to speak with her,’ Mrs Smith said.

Goh’s shoulders began to shake, and Minter pushed the button on the phone to silence the speaker.

‘Hello?’ There was a younger voice on the phone now. ‘This is Katherine. Who is this?’

‘It’s DI Minter, Hastings CID,’ Minter told her.

‘And this is about my missing persons report?’ Katherine said.

‘Uh… Yes, it is… It –it was,’ Minter stuttered.

‘For God’s sake!’ Katherine exclaimed. ‘I’ve been back living with my parents and caring for them for the last bloody year! I even reported myself as not missing… I went to the station in Brighton and spoke to your lot in person! Don’t you people update your bloody records?’

Minter felt a flush of heat prickle his cheeks. ‘Hmm… it does appear as though something’s gone wrong there,’ he said.

The line went dead and Minter slammed the phone down.

Goh let out a small snort of laughter. ‘Well, that was very helpful, DI Minter. A super-useful piece of on-the-job training for me.’

20

Boyd had Dr Palmer’s updated forensics report on his desk. It included an analysis of the humerus that had been recovered, along with various diagrams, charts and an explainer on ‘Ageing a Human Skeleton’ that looked suspiciously like a Wiki cut-and-paste job. He wondered how much Ellessey Forensics billed Sussex Police for those professional extras that they didn’t need and hadn’t asked for.

The bottom line was that they were looking at the utterly destroyed body of a man aged between forty-five and fifty-five. Dr Palmer had also included close-ups of various tattoos that she’d spotted. None of them were complete.

The assumption, looking at the various faded inkings, was that the chap had been a biker. A Hells Angel. The giveaway had been the front wheel struts, handlebars and what looked like the tip of a large feathered wing. The tattoo beyond those details was indiscernible, framed as it was by torn skin and frayed muscle tissue.

There was nothing in the images that suggested dark themes or contentious imagery. There was what looked like a heart and the leg of some cartoon character that could have been Kermit. If Boyd was going to have a wild stab at interpreting the man through the ink on his skin, then he would have said the poor sod had been more Dave Myers than Sonny Barger.

It was a funny old thing, but in another universe, if life had spun out differently, Boyd could imagine a version of himself in an old leather jacket, wandering the highways and byways of Britain on a mud-crusted old Harley – nothing and no one tying him down to anywhere in particular.

He sat back in his seat and stretched, looking out of the window at the scaffolding and plastic sheeting that the workmen had finally started to dismantle. The RAAC building inspection was over and apparently the police station wasn’t about to crumble like a digestive dipped in a cup of tea. They were going to have natural unfiltered daylight on the floor again soon.

His mind, once more, gravitated back to Dan.

He’d been missing for eight days now. Eight days presumably kipping in doorways, in any sheltered space he could find. The only mercy was that the weather this year had been far kinder than last. It occurred to Boyd that the body found in the hut could so easily have been Dan.

We need to find the bugger.

Aimlessly trawling Hastings in his spare time had yielded nothing so far. Perhaps it was time to bite the bullet and officially report Dan as a missing person.

Minter had Goh and Magnusson on one side of the conference table in the Incident Room and Sutherland and Boyd on the other.

‘So our most hopeful lead turned out to be a dead end,’ Minter said. ‘The Katherine Smith we thought might be our lady in the hut turned out to be alive and well – back home and living in Brighton with her parents.’

Sutherland frowned. ‘So, what happened there?’

Minter sighed. ‘Apparently she reported herself at Brighton station to say she wasn’t missing and the muppets there forgot to update her record.’

Sutherland tutted. ‘Bloody sloppy.’

‘Well, there must be plenty other mispers worth chasing down,’ said Boyd. ‘I presume there are other similar enough matches you can look at?’

Minter looked at him, slightly irked. ‘Yes… of course.’

Boyd could see that his DI was a little annoyed that once again he’d gatecrashed his briefing.

‘Sorry, Minter… I should say why I decided to invite myself,’ he said.

Minter nodded. ‘Yes, that would be nice.’

‘The misper I’m working on… he’s a similar age to yours,’ Boyd said.

‘You think they might be linked somehow?’ asked Sutherland.

‘It’s a possibility.’ Boyd shrugged. ‘I mean… tenuously possible. The man on the rail track took his own life a day after the hut burnt down. It’s a coincidence anyway.’

Sutherland nodded thoughtfully. ‘Are you thinking a possible relationship?’

Boyd nodded. ‘That’s what I was nudging my way towards.’ He glanced at Minter. ‘So, that’s why I’m sitting in, if that’s okay? To see if there’s anything here that might join up with my case.’

Minter’s guarded manner eased. ‘Fair enough.’

‘On the other hand, I’m sitting in because the Chief Super wants to know how things are coming along,’ Sutherland said, smiling.

Minter was taken aback. ‘I’ve only had since Monday on this, sir.’

‘I know, I know,’ said Sutherland. ‘But we’ve already had somebody from the Argus asking about it. God knows how they find out about our cases so bloody quickly. They know a body was found, but it’s not going to be a good look for us when they learn that it had been slowly rotting away inside a local tourist attraction for over a year.’

‘Not rotting exactly,’ cut in Magnusson. ‘Mummifying.’

‘Even bloody worse!’ Sutherland muttered. ‘Can you imagine the headlines they’ll come up with. “Curse of the Hastings Mummy”!’

‘“It’s a Pharaoh Cop”!’ offered Raj.

‘“Tomb Much for the Local Police”?’ added Warren.

Sutherland chuckled. ‘Ooh, I like that one!’

‘God…’ groaned Magnusson.

‘“Local CID Wrap Up the Mummy Case”?’ suggested Goh.

‘All right, all right…’ cut in Minter. ‘You’re all very funny, but we’ve work to do.’

Sutherland nodded. ‘Aye, you’re right. Anyway… Minter, Her Madge wants this body ID’d and the case resolved before the hack reporters start congregating around those huts.’

‘Probably best you do a press briefing,’ said Boyd. He gave Minter a wink. ‘I know how you love doing those.’

Minter sighed.

‘We’ll get a whole load of time-wasters and cranks calling in,’ said Magnusson.

‘It only takes one legit call to generate a lead,’ offered Boyd. ‘If your Katherine Smith was a part of the local drug community, someone might recognise her name.’

‘Katie Smith…’ corrected Goh. ‘Katherine Smith was our waste-of-time lead.’

‘A press briefing it is, then,’ said Sutherland. He clapped Minter gently on the back. ‘Make it a good ’un.’

21

Alison Jones switched the TV off. She had watched more than enough mid-morning fluff to dull her mind… and seen more than enough Richard and Judy to consider uncorking the bottle of red on her kitchenette counter and finishing the lot.

She tipped the rest of her reheated takeaway into the bin and flipped the kettle on to make a black coffee before she could weaken and reach for the Merlot. She’d already crossed the drinking-alone-in-the-evening line, but daytime drinking was a red line she absolutely refused to step over.

Anyway, she had a couple of house viewings penned in for this afternoon. The last thing she wanted to do was turn up with the keys, smelling of stale wine and nursing a headache. Bay and Winters were the kind of estate agents who placed a lot of emphasis on sales ‘chemistry’. A first viewing was as much about the person showing a punter around as it was about the property itself. She had the property sheets on her breakfast table ready to review. They were nice places. Expensive places. It was Horsham after all.

The kettle boiled and she made herself a black coffee before returning to the table, firmly resolved to power through and get herself up to speed on the blurb: good schools in the catchment area, nice parks and green areas nearby, a thriving local high street full of artisan bakers and local businesses and – of course – a decent-sized Waitrose.

Her mother had been pleased with Alison when she’d finally handed in her resignation to the Met last year. She’d almost given her a hug.

‘Good girl, Alison. You’ve made the right decision. It’s time to move on to something better, more rewarding.’

Working for a local estate agent wasn’t exactly the dream she’d always had for herself, but maybe it was better than patrolling the streets of south London in a stab vest.

Had she moved on, though?

No, she mused, she hadn’t. She was still getting the odd text or email from journos wanting to interview her. The IPCC investigation that the Met had conducted (the second inquiry) hadn’t been the straightforward repudiation of the News of The World’s article that Chief Superintendent Burns had promised her. The troublesome issue of absent forensics had reared its ugly head.

There had been no evidence of muzzle burn or gunshot residue on Tyrone Nelson’s body.

Then, six months ago, a journalist from the Mirror had decided to kickstart the bandwagon and written a piece that questioned Alison’s account of the incident. If Nelson’s gun had discharged as she’d claimed, while she’d been twisting his arm to get him to drop it, there should have been traces of gunshot residue on his back. There would have been evidence of muzzle-flash scorching on the hair on the back of his head too.

The journalist had gone on to make a big thing of Nelson’s age. He’d been seventeen. Technically an adolescent, not an adult. There had also been no conclusive evidence that he’d been a dealer or in a gang. Yes, the motive for his attack had supposedly been gang-related – it had been said that he’d gone after a lad in a rival gang who’d stabbed his older brother. The journalist had agreed that Nelson had had access to a firearm, which meant he’d had access to the weapons belonging to his brother’s gang. (And yes – to balance the article’s argument – Nelson had killed two innocent girls when he’d fired the gun into the McDonald’s).

The Mirror article had reported that PC Alison Jones, after being wounded on her approach, had successfully disarmed Nelson before going on to calmly shoot him in the back of the head. The term used in the article was ‘judiciously executed’.

Those two words had done more damage to Alison’s reputation than the entire rest of the article. If you typed ‘Alison Jones judiciously executed’ into Google, the results led from photos of a proud, smiling Alison graduating from Hendon and the tabloid headlines proclaiming her a hero to the various new, negative articles. There were links to opinion pieces on various wacky internet conspiracy forums, saying that Alison’s shoulder wound had been self-inflicted, in an attempted cover-up, while others accused her of being a racist copper who was acquainted with one of the officers linked to the Stephen Lawrence shooting back in 1993.

The new articles peddled lies and it enraged her that she was now being demonised simply because of the lack of gunshot residue. She was guilty due to the absence of evidence, for God’s sake! Surely it was supposed to work the other way round?

The solicitor she’d been appointed by the police union had put forward a robust defence: that the gun – a .22 calibre pistol, which was a very small handgun – had been located at the bottom of Nelson’s back when it had gone off. He was a tall lad, a good foot taller than Alison, and she’d been attempting to twist his wrist so she could cuff him when the gun had gone off. The residue discharged from the gun simply wouldn’t have reached Nelson’s head.

As for the accusation that PC Jones had inflicted the wound on herself… Well, the critical evidence that might have helped debunk that nonsense had never been gathered. If she’d turned the gun on herself, then there’d be no avoiding the fact that her shirt and tac vest would have been covered with residue. However, they had been removed by the paramedics as they worked to resuscitate her and, of course, no one knew where they were now.

The solicitor had also mentioned the mysterious man ‘Beanie’. He would have been either close enough to either witness the incident or hear the gunshots. Which according to Alison’s account should have been a ‘bang-bang’, rather than a ‘bang’, a pause and then a second ‘bang’.

But since this witness couldn’t be identified, and no one had come forward, Alison Jones was regrettably caught in a no man’s land, where there was no evidence available to exonerate her, but equally no evidence to condemn her for ‘judiciously executing a teenager on the streets of London’.

Yes. The solicitor had actually used that phrase (quoted again and again and again in the papers the next day) in her defence.

Her thoughts lingered on Beanie for a moment. Her mysterious guardian angel may have saved her life back in 1999 as she’d lain bleeding out on the cobblestones, but it would have been really, really helpful if he could have turned up for a second time to help save her bloody reputation.

She sipped her coffee and tried to clear her head. It was all bullshit. Mother was right: she really had to put it behind her now. She was never going to be a copper again. She was now a viewing assistant for an upmarket estate agent in Horsham. Her mother had wangled her that job via a friend of a friend– on the condition that Alison was prepared to disguise her identity just a little.

This was something that Alison was more than happy to do. She’d adopted her mother’s maiden name: she was Alison Smith now, and she’d changed her look once again. Gone was the Jill Dando hairdo that had made her so instantly recognisable. She now wore her hair in a bob, and had tinted the blonde to a warm chestnut brown.

She glanced at the half-finished bottle of Merlot.

No. Absolutely not.

She needed to get her head back into work mode. She had three properties to show this afternoon and there was an open house on a super expensive one (£2.5 million) that she would be hosting tomorrow. She needed to put on her Big Friendly Estate Agent smile for the punters.

She glanced again at the Merlot on her kitchen counter beside the kettle.

Just one sip wouldn’t hurt.

22

Boyd had positioned himself at the back of the press room this morning. It was Minter’s show after all, and he didn’t want to accidentally make eye contact with him and put him off his stride.

‘Right, folks – is everyone ready?’ began Minter.

He looked around at the modest audience. Those who had turned up knew that the press briefing would be about the recent fire in the Rock-a-Nore fishing huts and the body that had been found. There was nothing particularly juicy for any of the national papers in that. It was a local story for the local press.

‘Good, then I’ll begin.’ Minter looked down at his notes. ‘As you all know, there was a fire in Rock-a-Nore and four of the net huts were destroyed.’ He glanced up at the audience. ‘I’m well aware the news that we recovered a body from one of them has begun to circulate.’

Boyd noted, with satisfaction, that Minter’s confidence with public speaking had grown enough that he was already taking his eyes off his briefing notes and making eye contact with his audience.

‘The body,’ Minter continued, ‘was that of a woman in her forties to fifties, of slight build and around five feet in height….’

‘You look like a proud dad at an elementary school play,’ a voice whispered.

Boyd turned to see that DC Goh had parked herself beside him.

‘The autopsy,’ Minter went on, his gaze back on the notes, ‘indicates that the woman was not a victim of the fire but was already deceased… and had been in situ inside the hut for over a year.’

There was a ripple of murmuring across the room and the sound of pens skittering across notepads.

‘At this point we have no evidence of foul play,’ Minter said, ‘and no reason to suspect the woman was murdered. The most likely cause of death was natural causes, most probably hypothermia. She may have had a chronic medical condition that was exacerbated by extreme cold.’

Again, he looked up and this time appeared to be ad-libbing. ‘You’ll all remember we had that particularly cold snap about this time last year, right?’

Boyd nodded. Good man.

Minter went back to his notes. ‘The woman was going by the name of Katie Smith at the time of her death. She might have also gone by the names Katherine, Kate or Kathleen – or this could have even been another alias. Drug paraphernalia recovered from the site suggests that this woman was a drug addict and may well be known by folks in that particular community. We know she was staying at a local B and B at the time of her disappearance last year… and…’ Minter had a single slide prepared and he pressed his clicker. An image appeared on the screen behind him. ‘The manager of the establishment was able to help us come up with a likeness of the woman.’

The image showed an AI-generated image of a gaunt-looking woman with limp, dark shoulder-length hair and pale skin, mottled with imperfections, and noticeably dark patches around a sunken pair of eyes. Boyd wondered how much the newly installed Face ID Collaborator AI software on LEDS had leant on creative licence. The prompts that could be typed in were somewhat susceptible to interpretation. The program had made Katie Smith look like a seasoned addict from Crack Alley.

‘Copies of this likeness can be obtained from my colleague at the back when you leave,’ said Minter.

Heads turned and DC Goh raised the wad of paper in her hand.

‘All right then,’ Minter looked around. ‘I’ll take questions.’

Boyd checked his watch. It was 11 a.m. and Emma was due at the station any moment. He stepped out of the press room and made his way outside to the car park.

A loud clanking of poles drew his attention to the workmen up on the scaffolding. Hastings Police Station was slowly emerging from its orange plastic-wrap cocoon, not as a bright young butterfly but as the same drab concrete and glass caterpillar it had been before.

He heard a car door slam and turned to see Emma emerging from the back seat of Charlotte’s car. She lifted Maggie’s buggy out of the boot and unfolded it, before strapping Maggie in and waving Charlotte off.

‘You’re actually bringing Magpie?’ Boyd asked her.

Emma shrugged. ‘It’s a chance for her to see where Grandad works.’

He pulled a face.

‘Come on,’ she replied. ‘She’s not going to end up embarking on a life of crime just because she’s glimpsed a few scrotes.’

‘I’m more worried about her feeling so at home that she wants to join up when she’s older,’ he muttered.

He led Emma to the main entrance, signed her in at the front desk, bleeped her through the gate with his pass and helped her carry the buggy up the stairs to the first floor.

‘I don’t see why you can’t just do the interview,’ Emma said.

‘Personal involvement. I can’t,’ he replied. ‘Sorry, Ems – it’s just how it’s done. Once the misper’s filed, it’ll go into our system and one of my lot will get assigned to it.’ He paused beside the double doors that led to the CID section. ‘Anyway, I’ve collared a familiar face to interview you.’

He pulled the doors open, led her into the bullpen and spotted Warren coming out of the kitchenette with a coffee.

‘Here she is!’ he called out to him.

Warren gave him a nod of acknowledgement, swerved to retrieve some paperwork from his desk and came over to join them.

‘So, you know DC Warren,’ said Boyd.

Emma smiled. ‘We’ve met a few times. And you came along to Dad’s notorious barbecue.’

Warren nodded. ‘Ah, yes. Yes, I did.’ He eyed Boyd warily. ‘Do you want to come along with me to the family room, Emma?’

‘Let me know when you’re done, Warren,’ Boyd said.

‘Will do, guv.’

‘Emma… Lunch after?’ said Boyd.

She nodded and wheeled Maggie after Warren as he set off for the family room.

23

Alison stared down at the icy cold water of the Thames, a black void that sparkled intermittently with reflections from the illuminated London Eye.

Things hadn’t worked out as well as she’d hoped with her estate agent job. Despite being a well-spoken pretty face with a cheerful, homely smile, she’d blown her chances with Bay and Winters. There’d been one too many complaints about her turning up late for a viewing and smelling of alcohol, turning up with the wrong set of keys… or simply not turning up at all.

She shivered in the evening breeze. She’d been in London since midday. And the day had begun with such high hopes.

She’d awoken this morning with the absolute certainty that she could talk her way back into the force. The second inquiry had cleared her of wrongdoing due to a lack of evidence, and therefore there was no case to answer. Her union-appointed solicitor had assured her that this meant she was innocent, despite what the trolls on the internet had to say.

Alison was no longer being pestered by emails or calls from conspiracy nuts or journos looking to dig up that old story again. That had been a year ago. Enough time had passed. She’d been certain, this morning, that she’d be able to wrangle a brief face-to-face meeting with Susan Burns, who had been promoted to assistant commissioner and was now responsible for front-line policing. Alison could have, and probably should have, emailed to arrange a meeting, but she knew that Burns had gatekeepers handling her email and figured she’d have a better chance of seeing her if she just showed up.

She also knew that Burns had a soft spot for her and was sure that if she turned up at the front desk at New Scotland Yard, asking whether Assistant Commissioner Burns could spare her just five minutes of face-to-face time, that there’d be a decent prospect she’d be allowed back in.

But her impulsive trip up to London had not gone the way she’d hoped.

Yes, Burns had seen her and had taken her outside for a walk along Millbank Road to the park nearby. However, Burns had regretfully informed Alison that there was no way back into the Met for her. The force had been getting a lot of heat recently over candidates who’d not been properly vetted, or, worse, who had been vetted but were later found to be wholly unsuitable. She herself was spearheading a task force to review the process, to prevent any more ‘bad apples entering the barrel’.

Not, she had said, that she considered Alison a ‘bad apple’. But the bottom line was that the ‘no further action’ result of the inquiry would be seen as a red flag. Burns had wished her well and left Alison on the park bench, returning to her very busy day.

Since then, Alison had wandered aimlessly up and down the Thames, not particularly keen to head back to Horsham and her shitty little flat. She was in arrears with the rent, had several red-stamped utility bills stuck to her fridge door… and no job.

For the last six months she’d been getting by on a flimsy job seeker’s allowance and modest cash handouts from Mother. Her mother, the tight cow, wouldn’t give her enough to get comfortable wallowing around on her arse. She wanted her daughter to either sort herself out or come home and let her sort her out.

As the sun had settled behind the crenelated rooftops of Westminster and the stoic tower holding Big Ben, Alison had started to feel the cold. The smell of booze and the lure of the warmth inside had drawn her into a pub where she’d spent the afternoon, nursing one small glass of red after another and pondering what to do next.

Now here she stood on Westminster Bridge at gone ten o’clock at night. The tourists were back in their warm, expensive hotels, the rush-hour foot traffic had been and gone, and the last train back to Horsham was due to leave at eleven. There was time yet to head back to her studio flat and stare at the walls.

The wine had been accompanied by several gin and tonics, and the shiny lights along the South Bank had become Van Gogh-like swirls in the dark. She leant heavily on the low wall of the bridge and peered at the black void below.

It would be pretty quick, wouldn’t it?

There was something incredibly satisfying about the notion of her floating body being discovered by someone tomorrow morning, and the whole country suddenly realising that they’d let down their ‘national hero’. That they’d allowed weaselly tabloid papers, internet trolls and self-appointed opinion curators to decide that she was a closet racist, a ‘bad apple’ who’d decided to take justice into her own hands and execute a mere ‘boy’ in cold blood.

Never mind that he’d just shot dead two innocent little girls.

Alison had done a brave thing, but it seemed people’s memories were short. Gratitude had a brief shelf life. Once the celebration drinks were over and the canapés cleared away, no one really wanted to stick around to make sure the guest of honour was okay.

And she wasn’t okay.

She really wasn’t. She had nightmares about it nearly every night. Nightmares where Tyrone was lying on the cobblestones and chuckling while his glazed eyes continued to stare accusingly at her. She had frequent flashbacks triggered by the slightest thing. The smell of petrol. The sound of pigeon wings flapping. Any loud bang… and suddenly she was there in that backstreet, wrestling frantically with a boy much stronger than her, trying to get the muzzle of that gun so that it wasn’t fucking well pointing at her face.

Alison swung one leg over the wall, then the other, and settled the heels of her boots on the lip of stone. Her hands were the arbiters of her fate now. If they let go, then the matter was resolved.

‘All right there, love?’

She turned to see the outline of a uniformed police officer standing a few yards away.

‘Um. Not really, no,’ she replied, her slurred words smeared out like wet paint.

‘It’s a bit too cold to be standing around out here, eh?’ he said conversationally.

‘Not really,’ she replied. ‘I’m not… causing any bother… am I?’

‘How about you come back over this side, love?’ The police officer took a tentative step towards her.

Alison let go with one hand to wave him away. ‘I’m fine, thanks. On you go.’

‘Hey! Two hands, love, all right? Hold on with both hands! Please?’ the officer said.

He spoke quickly into his radio. ‘Uh, Tango Three… I’ve got a code zero on Westminster Bridge.’

Alison laughed. ‘Code zero is officer in danger…. It’s state zero you want for immediate assistance.’

He corrected his call.

‘I was a copper… once,’ she said. ‘Only briefly, though. You’re new.’

‘Yeah?’ He took another step closer. ‘I am. What happened?’

‘It all went tits up.’ She wasn’t minded to tell him her entire sorry story. What she wanted right now was for him to sod off so she could get back to deciding whether or not to jump.

‘Look, love… this isn’t the smartest idea, is it?’ he said. ‘One second after you let go… you’ll regret it.’

‘I doubt that,’ she mumbled.

He took a step towards her. She could see he was tall and looked strong. Probably agile enough to lunge for her quickly. She doubted he’d be strong enough to pull her back over, though.

‘Stay back!’ she snapped. She let go with one hand again to ward him off and he stopped.

The pair of them remained perfectly still, silent for a moment. Then the copper spread his hands as though he was asking, What do we do now?

‘Christ, you’re really green, aren’t you?’ said Alison.

‘It’s my first solo,’ he conceded.

She smiled. ‘That was me too… first solo…’ She nodded at the radio clipped to his vest. ‘It’s scary… when that little thing is all you’ve got on you… for backup, isn’t it?’

He nodded. It crackled with incoming comms. He hit the button. ‘Westminster Bridge, Tango Three… I’ve got a potential jumper.’

‘So… how old… are you?’ she asked. He had a prominent Adam’s apple that bobbed like a cork.

‘Thirty-two.’

‘Thirty-two?’ She laughed. ‘You look like you’re straight out of school.’

He smiled. ‘I get that.’ He paused. ‘So… what about you?’

‘Thirty-four,’ she slurred.

His radio crackled. Help was on its way.

‘Look, PC Babyface… It’s been a-w-wwfully nice chatting… but please just bugger off now,’ she said.

‘You know I can’t do that, love.’

She could see blue lights blinking, weaving through the stop–start traffic on Millbank, racing towards the bridge.

‘I’m serious!’ She raise one hand. ‘I don’t… want to… to have a big chat… with some… patronising first responders… I’m just sitting here… okay? Having a think… Not doing any –’

‘Thirty-four?’ he said.

‘Huh?’

‘That’s a stupid age to do something stupid like this,’ he said.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘You’re still young. D’you know Colonel Sanders didn’t come up with KFC until he was in his sixties?’ he told her. ‘I read it somewhere.’

For some reason she found that hilarious. She snorted. The baby-faced police officer took the opportunity to step closer. He was near enough now to lunge for her.

‘Look… I know you’re just doing your job.’ She nodded. ‘I’m very impressed by the way… but honestly… I think I’m done. Please… with all due respect… can you please fuck off now?’

‘Listen to me,’ he pressed. Then he said something she’d heard before. Something that she would remember tomorrow when her head finally cleared.

24

Minter stepped into the letting agents in Brighton. It was tiny inside, with just a little more space than the average freight container. The shopfront window was cluttered with available properties taped to the glass. There was one desk, one computer, one woman, two seats and a wall of filing cabinets all crammed in. Very obviously this place handled the budget end of the lettings market.

‘Are you Mrs Ormand?’ he asked the woman.

The woman, who was perhaps in her late thirties, glanced up from her monitor. ‘Yes.’

Minter held up his lanyard. ‘Hastings CID,’ he said. ‘You called…’

‘Oh crikey, you’re the detective who did the press thing on TV!’ she said.

‘Yes. I’m DI Stephen Minter. You called our helpline about…’

‘The dead woman in the hut, yes,’ she finished.

He grabbed the other chair from beside her desk. ‘Mind if I…?’

‘Of course, yes, take a seat.’ She cleared her lunch away from the desk and snapped the lid onto her Tupperware. ‘Oh, right, yes… I wasn’t expecting a visit so quickly. The person I spoke to said there might be a call back first.’ She shrugged. ‘I can’t remember his name.’

‘You called to say you recognised the likeness of Katie Smith?’ Minter said.

Mrs Ormand nodded. ‘I checked my books before I called and yes… I had a client by that name – well, Katherine. She came to me four years ago, after the second lockdown ended. That picture made me think of her straight away.’

‘Okay.’ Minter smiled. ‘That sounds promising. What can you tell me about her?’

‘Well, I remember she came in here looking for something cheap to rent. She had very unrealistic expectations, though.’

‘What do you mean?’ Minter asked.

Mrs Ormand shook her head. ‘If I recall correctly, she was hoping to rent a house for six hundred or less a month. And I told her that was pretty unlikely, even in Southwick. We’re too close to Brighton for rents like that. Maybe further along the coast in Bexhill or St Leonards, but not here.’

‘And this was four years ago?’ said Minter.

She nodded.

‘You seem to have a pretty clear recollection of it,’ he said.

‘Yes, I do.’ She shrugged. ‘Because back then I thought she looked vaguely familiar. I’m very good with faces, you see. I’ve got a photographic memory for them.’

Minter pulled out a copy of the image he’d presented at the press briefing and slid it across the desk. ‘So, where do you think you recognise her from?’

‘I remember thinking when I met her that I’d seen her face on the telly,’ Mrs Ormand said. ‘But I couldn’t put my finger on what show.’ She shook her head again. ‘Something like EastEnders maybe. I recall her wearing a police uniform. Or, I don’t know, it might have been The Bill or Casualty. I just remember that face, a white blouse, tie… police epaulettes.’

Minter jotted that down in his notepad.

‘And you know how it is…’ she continued. ‘Sometimes the actors on those shows end up in a sorry state years down the line, after they leave the show. Like that poor Sherry Goodwin… five years serving behind the bar in the Old Vic, and then she’s found homeless, using food banks and everything. It’s so sad.’

‘Right,’ Minter said.

‘I remember she spoke quite poshly… like she’d been to some finishing school. And I know, like, half the cast of EastEnders don’t speak like their characters do. They’re all rather lovey-dovey, aren’t they?’

Minter shrugged. He had no idea. He’d never watched it. ‘So, you think she was once in EastEnders, then?’

‘As a policewoman. Maybe… Or, like I said, it might have been The Bill, Casualty… perhaps even something like Silent Witness.’

‘Okay.’ He jotted down the names of those TV shows . ‘And you told my colleague that she ended up renting a place from you, is that correct?’

Mrs Ormand nodded. ‘She said she was used to London rents and was disappointed not to find more for her money down here. But yes… I managed to find her a place for only a little bit more than she was hoping to pay.’

Mrs Ormand got up from the desk and went over to the row of filing cabinets. She opened one drawer, then another, then rifled through a concertina of cardboard folders before finally pulling out several sheets of paper.

She returned to her chair, sat down and pushed a lettings form across the desk towards Minter. ‘This is the form she filled in for me….’ She pushed another over. ‘And this is the one she filled in when she vacated the place.’

Minter reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pair of forensic gloves.

Mrs Ormand’s eyes rounded. ‘Oh… is this going to be forensic evidence?’

He nodded. ‘I’m presuming only you and Katherine Smith will have touched these forms?’

She nodded. ‘It’s only me that works here.’

‘Right, if it’s all right with you, can I take these back to the police station?’

‘Go ahead. You going to fingerprint them?’

‘We’ll test for DNA,’ he replied. ‘If we get a match, we’ll know it was her in that hut.’

She clicked her tongue. ‘Dead for a year, you said in the press briefing. That’s awful. So tragic. What happened? Did she get trapped inside?’

Minter shook his head. ‘No, they’re not that sturdy. We think she may have sheltered in it, then possibly died of natural causes.’

‘Oh gosh. That seems even worse. Was she homeless?’ Mrs Ormand asked.

Minter shrugged. ‘We’re just trying to work out what her movements were over the last few years.’

‘I’m pretty sure she was struggling with money,’ said Mrs Ormand. ‘I think she was having problems paying the rent. That’s why she handed the keys back.’

Minter pulled an evidence bag out and teased the forms into it.

The woman sighed and tutted. ‘I do remember wondering how somebody who sounded so, you know, well-to-do… so proper could be in financial difficulty.’

‘Did she say anything about it?’ Minter asked.

Mrs Ormand shook her head. ‘No… the closure interview was quite brief. I gave her the form to fill in; she handed me the keys. And that was that.’

‘I presume you visited the property after she was gone?’ said Minter.

‘Yes, it was all in fair order. Tidy. Clean. The garden had been neglected a bit, but there was nothing there that required me to deduct anything from her deposit.’

Minter sealed the evidence bag, tucked it into his jacket pocket and stood up. ‘Right then, Mrs Ormand. Thank you for your time.’

‘That’s no problem. I hope I was some help,’ she said.

He smiled. ‘You have been, thank you.’

She walked him to the door. ‘Will you let me know if it is the same woman?’ she asked. ‘I’d like to know.’

He nodded.

‘I mean… I’m really hoping it isn’t. She seemed very nice…’ She sighed. ‘I’d hate to think that some other face from the telly had ended their life like that.’

Minter returned to the station intrigued by what Mrs Ormand had said about ex-TV stars and typed ‘celeb+Katie+Katherine Smith’ into Google. The search brought up an American basketball player and a KT Smith who was married to some famous country and western singer, but that was about it.

If his Katie/Katherine Smith had ever been on TV, particularly something as well known as EastEnders or The Bill, then presumably she’d done it under a different name.

‘So, Minter, was it a useful lead?’ asked DC Goh, breaking into his thoughts. ‘Or was it a crank?’

He looked up from his monitor. ‘Sounds like this time it might well be our lady in the hut,’ he said. He pushed the evidence bag across the table. ‘Letting form and closure form. Can you take them over to Magnusson? We’ll need her to swab them. There’ll be two profiles: the woman I just spoke to and one other.’

Goh nodded. ‘Did you learn anything about her? Our lady in the hut?’

‘Apparently, she might have been someone on the telly,’ he told her.

‘Really?’

He nodded.

‘So famous?’

He shrugged. ‘She’s not coming up on Google, so obviously not that famous.’

25

Alison Jones sucked in a deep breath and briefly examined her reflection in the glass doors of the third-floor lobby. She’d lost a stone since coming off the booze. Not a huge amount to anyone counting numbers, but on her modest five-feet-nothing frame it had made a noticeable difference. She was back – almost – to the shape she’d been when she’d been filming Crime Line.

Friedmann and Stone Literary Agents was tastefully etched in the frosted glass and through it she could see the fuzzy outline of a receptionist reaching for a button to buzz her in. She pushed the door open and stepped through.

‘Alison Jones,’ she said. ‘I’m here to see Janice Friedmann.’

The receptionist smiled. ‘I’ll let her know. Take a seat.’

Alison sat down on the leather couch and gazed at the framed book covers and author publicity photos on the wall opposite. The agency represented some big names, intimidatingly big names. The kind of household names that made her wonder why she’d been invited here.

The door to an office on her left opened and a tall woman emerged. She had short grey hair and wore a navy-blue dress and spectacles on strings that dangled and bounced against her chest.

‘Alison!’ She beamed as she came over. ‘Thank you for coming in!’

Alison stood up and found that her eyes were level with Janice’s shoulders. She went to extend a hand to shake, but Janice had already stooped down to air-kiss first one cheek and then the other.

‘Oh… uh, right.’ Alison did her best to accommodate the greeting.

The agent chuckled. ‘You’ll get used to publisher kisses. Come on in, my lovely.’

She led Alison into her office. ‘Coffee?’ she asked.

‘Oh, um… yes, all right. Thanks,’ Alison replied.

Janice stuck her head out of the door. ‘Coffee and accompaniments please, Claudia.’ She closed the door. ‘Have a seat, Alison.’ She rounded her desk and sat down.

‘And yes,’ began Janice, ‘to answer your first question: I have read your manuscript… and I love it!’

Alison felt the hairs on her bare arms tickle as they stirred. ‘Oh God… Oh, thank you!’ she managed.

‘I think it’s very saleable and still very relevant, especially given those awful bombings in London not so long ago,’ Janice continued.

Alison had been aghast at the images on TV: the blown-out side of the London bus, the wreckage of Tube train compartments, the harrowing sight of discarded handbags and shopping bags amid pools of drying blood.

‘Your story,’ Janice continued, ‘the bravery you displayed taking down that gunman, and the horrible way you’ve been treated ever since by some of the tabloids… well, I think that’s a very compelling narrative.’

‘Thank you,’ Alison said again.

Janice indicated the manuscript printed out on her desk, bound with a large bulldog clip. ‘One immediate thought I had was about the title you’ve given your autobiography… “Fallen Girl”?’ She pressed her lips. ‘If you don’t mind me saying, it does make it sound as though you’ve turned to prostitution. I mean, I get that it is a fall-from-grace story, an unfair one, and having “fall” in the title is suitably on the nose, but may I make a suggestion?’

Alison was quite happy for Janice Friedmann to call the manuscript anything she bloody well wanted if she was about to agree to be her literary agent. ‘Of course,’ she said.

‘The other very compelling part of your story, and the very mysterious part, is this “guardian angel” of yours. What’s his name again?’

‘Beanie,’ Alison supplied.

Janice smiled. ‘Yes. I love how you characterized him during the first encounter. And then again later…’ She raised her spectacles, put them on her nose and began flicking through the manuscript. ‘Particularly… where is it? Ah, yes, particularly the bit where he meets you again on Westminster Bridge.’ She looked down and began reading.

‘It was only a few days later, after the hangover had cleared, after the brain fog had evaporated and after I’d come to terms with the enormity of what I had seriously considered doing, that I realised my guardian angel had visited me again. This time in the form of a baby-faced, inexperienced police officer. It wasn’t wasted on me that whoever had sent him – and honestly I don’t believe in God or angels, seraphim or cherubim – had thought to appear as an echo of the police officer I had once been…’

Janice looked up from the manuscript. ‘I don’t want to detract from your story at all, but that’s such a wonderfully mysterious ingredient you’ve included.’

Alison smiled. ‘Thank you,’ she said, yet again. She realised she hadn’t held onto a smile for this long in more than a decade. Her cheeks were beginning to ache.

‘One thing, though,’ Janice said. ‘I want to ask you… how certain are you that it was the same young man as the one who came to your aid after you were shot?’

‘I’m pretty sure,’ Alison replied, then she corrected herself. ‘Certain. I mean… his appearance was a lot different obviously. He had short hair and there was no scruffy, wispy beard any more. He was still skinny and tall…’ She closed her eyes and what came to her was the one thing that never, ever changed in a face. ‘It was his eyes. I’ll never forget those. The same kind penetrating, searching eyes. It was like he was looking right inside me.’

Janice smiled. ‘I like it. I really do. You’ve created quite an enigmatic presence in your story and it adds a whole other dimension to your autobiography. Who was he? Who is he? Does he even know that he’s this angel character in your story?’

Alison nodded. ‘I did think about trying to find him. But, crikey, where do you even start? I searched for “Beanie” on Facebook, but…’ She shrugged. ‘It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.’

‘But, good grief, it would be such a coup to put a name to him, wouldn’t it?’ said Janice. ‘Especially just prior to… or, no, even better, after the book’s launch. Give it a second big marketing lift, so to speak.’ She glanced at Alison. ‘He is real?’

Alison nodded vigorously. ‘Oh God, yes! And I know it was the same man both times,’ She paused. ‘It wasn’t just his eyes. There was something else… He said something that was, word for word, the same both times.’

Janice nodded and smiled. ‘You’re too young to die. That gave me goosebumps. I mean I think this is why the script works so well. You’re writing about fate. The central message that comes through is so incredibly reassuring: that there’s a way things should be and fate will work in all its mysterious and quirky ways to quietly nudge everything in the right direction.’ Janice picked up her coffee. ‘And given how bloody uncertain and unsettling the world feels these days, that’s a compelling message.’

Alison hadn’t thought about any central message to her story. She’d just told it. But, thinking about that now, yes, that was a big part of what had stopped her from jumping off the bridge – that someone, something was looking out for her.

‘I think when I did Stephen Black’s show and –’

‘Oh my God! I loved that bit!’ blurted Janice. ‘That’s such a good bit of stardust to have sprinkled over your story!’

‘That I was lucky to have my very own guard–’

‘Guardian angel,’ Janice finished. She grinned. ‘That is marketing gold, Alison!’ She tapped her lips thoughtfully. ‘I wonder whether we might even be able to contact him for a cover quote?’

Alison shrugged. ‘I don’t think he’d remember me.’

‘If you don’t ask, you don’t get! Also, Alison, that leads me back on to what I wanted to suggest. A different title for your book. Perhaps we go for My Guardian Angel?’ Janice pulled a face at her own suggestion. ‘No, that sounds a bit like My Little Pony. How about… A Guardian Angel?’

Alison hadn’t even thought of going down that route. ‘I like it,’ she said.

There was a light tap on the door and the receptionist brought in a tray of coffee and biscuits, set them down on Janice’s desk and retreated out of the office.

‘The important thing is, Alison, if he is an actual, real person…’ She caught herself. ‘I mean, obviously he is – rather than, you know, something spooky and weird. But wouldn’t it be wonderful to identify him? To find him?’

‘I’d love to,’ Alison replied. ‘If only just to say thank you for saving my life. Twice.’

26

Minter had decided to take DC Goh with him this morning. She’d been dropping unsubtle hints towards the end of yesterday’s shift that she ought to be getting to know Hastings and the surrounding area, rather than being left in the office like a tethered dog while he was out and about having all the fun.

‘It’s very pretty,’ said Goh as she gazed out of the passenger window at the glimpses of sea, the rolling fields of yellow rape, the hedgerows and elm trees. ‘Certainly beats London’s shitty estates and choked high streets. You know… London seems to be all off-licences, kebab shops and vape shops.’

‘What about America?’ Minter asked her.

‘It’s all out-of-town retail,’ she replied. ‘That’s America these days. Big fuckin’ retail hubs, malls and acres and acres of parking lots.’

‘Which bit did you say you’re from?’ said Minter.

‘Maine.’

Minter knew next to nothing about it. ‘What’s it like?’

Goh turned to him. ‘You mean what’s it like economically? What’s it like culturally? What’s it like geographically? What’s it like geologically?’

Her brand of acerbic banter was really beginning to grate on Minter. She seemed to have a constant supply of comebacks and ‘gotcha’s lined up and good to go.

And it was fucking exhausting.

‘The weather,’ he replied eventually, taking a deep breath. ‘What’s that like?’

‘Oh my God. You guys are obsessed about that.’ She looked out of the window again.

‘Hot summers, cold winters. Great autumns. We get actual seasons over there.’ She sighed. ‘Over here it’s just different versions of –’ she glanced at the sky, overcast today – ‘grey.’

‘Why are you here, then?’

She raised her brows as though it was the dumbest thing she’d heard all morning. ‘Cos it isn’t half-filled with MAGA assholes.’

They arrived at the address on the letting form that Minter had grabbed and bagged yesterday. Number 67 Oldham Street, Southwick. It was what he’d expected to find. A narrow street hemmed in by 1960s pebble-dashed terraced houses with scruffy front gardens and pavements crowded by wheelie bins. The plan was to doorstep the neighbours on either side, starting with the immediate neighbours and maybe checking one or two doors further along, to see if anyone remembered the woman who had lived at Number 67 a couple of years ago. If she spoke a bit posh, she would probably have stood out like a sore thumb on Oldham Street.

DC Goh took Number 66 on the left, so Minter started with Number 68. He walked up the short front yard, sidestepping a mini trampoline that was growing a ring of moss around its plastic rim, and pressed the doorbell.

It opened quickly. A woman with a robust frame opened the door. She had short hair fluffed up at the back and a highlighted fringe at the front. She wore a vest and jeans that had been cut down to make frayed denim shorts. There was altogether too much skin on show for Minter. He focused on her face.

The woman eyeballed him briefly, then looked over his shoulder. ‘Not Sky, then?’ she said.

He shook his head. ‘Sorry, no… Not Sky. I’m –’

‘Shit. I’ve been waiting since eight for them. They said eight. Eight.’

Minter raised his lanyard. ‘I’m DI Minter, from Hastings CID.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Police? This about the burglary over the road?’

He turned briefly to look where she was pointing. ‘No, it’s about your former neighbour.’ He nodded at the front door to the left, on the other side of a hip-high wooden fence that separated the front gardens.

‘Kat?’

‘Kat?’ He raised his brows. ‘Maybe. The woman I’m after is Katherine Smith. She lived here from the end of 2020 up to 2022. She was white, late forties, very short, very slim.’

The woman nodded. ‘Uh-huh, that’s Kat.’

He opened his notebook and jotted the name down. Kat. Another ruddy variant to add to the list. Katie. Katherine. Kat.

‘Did you have much to do with her?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, quite a lot, actually,’ she said. ‘We got on quite well. She okay?’

‘Perhaps not.’ Then Minter explained the situation briefly.

‘Oh my God! That was on the news! That was Kat?’ The woman looked shocked.

‘Well, we don’t know for sure yet. Can I take your name, please?’

‘Manda Brooks,’ she said, mouth still hanging open.

‘Manda, short for…’

‘Nothing. Just Manda. Oh my God… I hope that wasn’t her. Did the fire kill her?’

‘No,’ Minter said. ‘We think the person was dead for a whole year before that happened. We’re working on the theory that she’d died from natural causes. Possibly hypothermia, some pre-existing health condition….’

‘Was she… Did she end up homeless?’ Manda asked.

‘Well, that’s what we’re trying to work out… How she ended up in there.’ Minter glanced across at Goh; her distinctly American-flavoured voice was carrying across to him from number 67’s garden.

‘You say you got on well with her,’ he said, swinging his attention back to Manda.

She nodded at the garden. ‘We used to sit out here quite often. You know, on warm days. The front gets all the sun on this side, see? She’d be out in her garden, me and my little ones in ours. Chatting about this and that.’

‘About what things?’ Minter asked. ‘Anything in particular? Anything that might help us?’

‘It was just general stuff, you know? It was lockdown, so we was chatting a lot about that. Did the pots and pans thing together. Remember? Clapping the NHS workers?’

Minter gestured to the terraced house next door. ‘Did she have anyone else living with her?’

She shook her head again. ‘No. It was only her in there. I mean, it seemed daft to me that she was renting a whole house by herself, given she was always worrying about money.’

‘She was having difficulties on that front, was she?’ he asked.

‘Uh-huh. It’s not like she was always saying, “I’m poor, I’m poor!” but I got the sense she was struggling to make ends meet. But then…’ She sighed. ‘I mean, during Covid we all was, right?’

Minter jotted ‘money issues’ down. ‘Do you know if she was taking any substances at the time?’

‘Drugs?’ Manda chewed her bottom lip for a moment. ‘Okay, well… she smoked roll-ups. And I know sometimes they had a little bit of the good stuff in them.’

‘Cannabis?’

She nodded. ‘You can’t mistake that smell. And she drank a bit.’ She smiled guiltily. ‘But then I think we all did, a bit more than usual back then. Wasn’t easy being stuck at home all day every day.’

‘Did she drink much?’ Minter asked.

‘When we was sitting out front, she’d usually have a can of something with her. Cider. Lager… Nothing too hardcore. Just some tinnies in the garden.’

‘She didn’t have any partners? Boyfriends?’

She shrugged. ‘Never saw her with anyone. And I mean never. Not friends, not family. It was only her. On her own. Which is why I used to chat to her. I felt sorry for her, you know?’

‘How would you describe her?’ said Minter.

‘Posh,’ said Manda. ‘She spoke like someone who come from loads of money, if you see what I mean. But she wasn’t stuck-up or anything. She was really nice and friendly. I just got on really well with her.’

He wondered about what Mrs Ormand had said about thinking she recognised her from TV.

‘Did Kat talk about her past at all?’ he asked.

Nah. That wasn’t something she liked to talk about. I mean, I asked once or twice, because she’s posh, right, and I was curious how come she was living here. But she was a closed book about all that stuff. And I suppose if she did start out rich and ended up here –’ Manda shook her head – ‘making do with Poundshop and Lidl… Well, it’s not something you’d want to shout about, is it?’

‘Not really, no,’ Minter agreed.

‘But I did get her to tell me about the tattoo she had,’ Manda said.

‘Tattoo?’ Minter asked, interested. ‘Can you describe it?’

She nodded. ‘Oh, yes. It was on her… Here.’ She pointed to her right collarbone. ‘I noticed it when we was chatting outside one time.’

Minter noted that down. ‘What was it?’

‘An angel,’ she replied.

He jotted that down. That might be something useful. If Dr Palmer could take a closer look at the parched skin on the burnt body, she might be able to make something out. ‘Did it have wings? Harp? Halo? That sort of thing?’

Manda shook her head. ‘She let me have a good look at it. It was a bit like Jesus with wings, to be honest. It looked a bit shit, to be honest.’

‘What did she tell you about it? Was it important to her?’ Minter pressed.

‘She said it was her own personal angel.’ Manda smiled. ‘She was a bit – what’s the word? Intense about it. Yeah… intense.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, she told me it was her guardian angel. I was like, “okay, that’s nice. We all got one of those, eh?” And she said no. Just a very lucky few.’

‘She said that?’

‘Yeah. At the time I thought she was being a bit sort of… arsy. Like she thought she was something special. Anyway, you don’t take that stuff too seriously. It’s, like, a figure of speech, isn’t it? Guardian angel. Another word for “luck”, really. But she seemed pretty fixated on hers.’

‘In what way?’ Minter asked.

‘She said he’d saved her life a couple of times,’ she replied.

‘Did you ask her about those times?’

‘I did, but she wouldn’t say how or what happened. But she did tell me one thing that I remember that was a bit weird.’

‘What was that?’

‘That her angel wasn’t some spooky, floaty, spirit thing. He was an actual, real person. You know… with, a job, a name.’ She shrugged.

‘Did she tell you his name?’ Minter asked, his pen poised.

Manda nodded. ‘Beanie. Weird fucking name for an angel.’

27

‘Bill!’ gasped Charlotte.

He almost slammed the brakes down at her sudden cry, which wouldn’t have gone down very well with the muppet driving the white van behind him. The twat had been tailgating him since they’d emerged from Ashburnham Road.

‘What?’ he said.

‘That was him!’

Charlotte was pointing out of her window, towards the pitch and putt and the Pelham Boating Lake, which was now receding into the distance.

He checked his rear-view mirror. The seafront was already getting busier, even though it was only a week day in mid May. The schools weren’t out yet, but he could see kids wandering around with ice creams and candyfloss.

‘Are you sure?’ he asked.

‘Yes!’ Charlotte said. ‘He was on the low wall by the lake!’

They were on their way to the White Rock Theatre, where Charlotte had a meeting with a booking agent. She was in the process of agreeing the theatre’s winter programme. Boyd pulled left into the bus lane, then bumped the car onto the low curb of the promenade and came to a halt on the terracotta crazy paving. The muppet who’d been pestering him honked several times as he rolled on past.

Boyd nodded at the theatre, only a few hundred yards ahead of them. ‘You go and take your meeting,’ he said.

It might not have been Dan, he reasoned. She’d probably spotted yet another random skinny young lad wearing a hoodie and tracksuits bottoms. He’d lost count of the number of times this had happened.

‘Bill, I can reschedule –’

‘No, you go,’ he said, unbuckling his seatbelt. ‘I’ll nip back and take a look.’

He got out of the car and strode back towards the Pelham Arcade, leaving her standing beside his abandoned Captur. If he got a ticket for parking it there, so be it.

Boyd picked up the pace from a strident walk to a half-jog, weaving his way past mums with toddlers and buggies, through small flocks of tourists and unyielding knots of students from the art college, blowing vape clouds at each other as they chatted idly.

He was now beside the boating pond, looking around for someone on the low brick wall.

There was no sign of Dan.

‘Bollocks!’ he muttered. Another wishful sighting. They seemed to be clocking up a few a day at the moment.

He sat on the wall, facing the seafront shops. Looking around, he picked out a darkly dressed figure standing on the periphery of the pitch and putt course, watching a pair of middle-aged woman knocking their golf balls around the final hurdle.

The figure had Dan’s distinctive slouch: sloped shoulders, head hung low, hands in his pockets. He had a duffle bag on one shoulder.

It was Dan. It had to be.

Boyd got up and hurried over towards the figure, certain that he’d finally found him. As he approached, he slowed down so that his heavy pounding footsteps wouldn’t spook the lad.

He reached out and gently tapped the young man’s shoulder.

‘Dan?’ he said tentatively.

The figure slowly turned round to look up at him.

‘Hey?’ he replied, offering a weak smile. ‘Mr Boyd’

‘Dan, mate… Jesus, why did you do that? Where have you been?’ Boyd tore the sugar sachet and poured the contents into his paper cup of coffee.

‘You didn’t want me in your house any more,’ Dan replied matter-of-factly. He sipped his steaming cup of tea. ‘And I get why.’

‘I didn’t want you in the house for that one night, mate,’ replied Boyd. ‘And you said you had your mum’s place to go to.’

Dan looked up at him. ‘So, I guess you know now?’

Boyd nodded. ‘Yeah, I know… now. Why the hell didn’t you tell us you’ve got no one?’

Dan shrugged. ‘Makes me sound like a total loser.’

Boyd shook his head. ‘Dan, mate, being a foster kid doesn’t make you a loser.’

The young man stared out across the pebble beach at the brisk waves rolling in. It might have been patchily sunny this afternoon, but the wind blowing in from the Channel was distinctly chilly.

‘Where the hell’ve you been staying?’ asked Boyd.

Dan shrugged again. ‘Around town.’

‘Jesus Christ, Dan. Seriously. Me, Emma, Charlotte… We’ve all been worried sick about you.’

‘I didn’t mean to… to cause you guys any hassle,’ Dan said.

Boyd set his paper cup down on the pebbles carefully so that it didn’t topple over, then he reached out an arm and put it around Dan’s narrow shoulder. ‘You bloody fuckwit. You’re coming back home with me, all right?’

Dan began to sob.

28

‘Dr Pienaar?’ Okeke repeated.

He could hear her sucking in air on the other end of the phone.

‘Yeah, he’s the right one to call. Young people are his area. He’s expensive, though. That said, I think he does a fair bit of pro bono work.’

‘If I have to pay, I’ll pay,’ said Boyd. ‘I can afford it. Do you think he could see Dan tomorrow?’

‘Jesus. I’m not his booking service.’ Okeke sighed. ‘You call him. I’ll give you his number.’ She read it out and Boyd scribbled it down.

‘Thanks, Sam,’ Boyd said. ‘How’re things going with Jay?’

‘Don’t ask,’ she huffed.

‘I just did.’

‘Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Karl suggested that we buy another hooky passport for the boy Jay’s got with him.’

‘What?’ Boyd said.

‘Jay said he’s not going to dump him,’ Okeke said.

‘Well, no, but…’

‘He wants to bring him back to the UK,’ she clarified.

‘What?!’ Boyd shook his head. ‘This is a child, not some bloody pet!’

‘Tell me about it,’ Okeke said. ‘I don’t know what we are supposed to do once we get the two of them back here. I mean, Jorge would need to be handed over to the police.’

‘He’ll go into care,’ said Boyd. ‘Does he speak any English?’

‘He does,’ Okeke said. ‘Fluently. To be honest, from what I’ve heard in the background, he sounds just like Bart Simpson. But he’s going to need a lot of help with the stuff he’s been through.’

‘Like what?’ Boyd asked.

‘Well, his mother was shot dead in front of him, for one,’ she told him.

‘Shit,’ Boyd said.

‘I’ll get you up to speed when I come back to work on Monday,’ Okeke said.

‘You really want to come back on Monday?’

‘I need to,’ she replied. ‘I’m getting stressed just sitting around. I’d rather be busy doing something useful.’

Emma held Dan’s hand as they walked across the sloping green of West Hill, one dog each on a long lead. The late-afternoon sun was casting long-fingered shadows across the town below them.

‘How bad does it get?’ she asked.

‘Pretty bad,’ replied Dan. ‘Pretty noisy. Sometimes it feels like I’m being crowded out of my own head.’

‘And they’re all saying bad things?’

He nodded. ‘The majority of them.’ He looked at her. ‘I feel like I’m the only adult in the room sometimes. It’s… It feels like a house party that’s got out of control. Some arseholes have gatecrashed it and now they’re stomping around, shouting, breaking things, pushing me, shoving me… and I’m just trying to get them to leave, you know?’

She smiled at his metaphor. ‘A house party that’s gone crazy?’

He nodded.

‘But that’s good, Dan… That’s good. You’re still you. You’re still the one in charge, eh?’

‘Barely,’ he said.

She glanced at him. He was a bit more like his old self now that he’d had a bath, shaved and put on some clean clothes. When Dad had brought him home earlier, she almost hadn’t recognised him.

‘When did this start happening?’ she asked him.

He looked away.

‘Did you have this when we first met?’

‘No.’ He turned back to her. ‘I… I mean, I’ve always talked with myself. In my head. I mean, we all do that, right?’

She nodded.

‘But these voices just literally crashed in… one after the other. I thought it was the dope at first.’

‘The dope doesn’t help, Danny. It can trigger all sorts of things,’ she told him.

‘Not weed.’ He shook his head.

‘It can,’ she replied. ‘Too much of it can lead to psychosis. To depression. Even suicide.’ She looked at him. ‘Did you think about… doing that? You know, taking your life?’

He nodded. ‘I thought about it a lot over the last week.’

‘Did you… take it any further than thinking about it?’

He stroked his jaw absently. ‘I went to a couple of places…’ His gaze darted across to East Hill and the craggy cliff that overlooked Rock-a-Nore. ‘I stood up there for a few hours, a day or so ago.’

‘Oh God…’ Emma said.

‘I don’t want that, though,’ he said. ‘I want to push through this. I want to get better.’

She squeezed his hand tightly.

‘You know, when I spoke with your dad in the pub that night… when he talked about having me sectioned, I think I just panicked. I didn’t want to end up being shoved into some loony bin.’

‘You know that it wouldn’t be forever? It would only be while they balance your meds and get you back to a steady place,’ she said.

‘I know,’ he replied. ‘And I really want that now. I want to be there for you and Maggie.’

Emma pulled Dan towards her and wrapped her arms around him. He buried his face into the crook of her neck. She realised right then that she was signing up for a lifetime commitment of caring for this fractured person. A lifetime of making sure he kept on top of whatever mood stabilisers he was going to have to take. Those medications weren’t a once-and-done fix; they were a chemical walking frame that had to be used for the rest of his life.

They stayed like that for a long while, until the insistent and impatient lead-tugging from both Ozzie and Mia almost pulled them off their feet. Emma let Dan go and took a step back.

‘No more drugs, though, eh? No more weed.’

‘No more,’ he replied. ‘They don’t work.’ He smiled. ‘There’s a song there.’

She smiled. ‘They just make things worse.’ She sang it tunelessly. ‘Do you think, once this is all sorted, you’ll eventually want to go back to making music?’

Dan shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You’re good at it,’ she reminded him.

‘Yeah… I know. But one thing at a time, eh, Ems? I’ve got to get these wankers in my head to shut up and move out first.’

29

‘An angel?’ sighed Goh. ‘And the lady next door didn’t elaborate on that at all?’

Minter idly scrolled down the shorter misper shortlist that LEDS had come up with. A little over a hundred possibles to look at based on the filtering tags he’d entered: female; 40–55; white British; dark hair; 1.5m height; slim build; angel tattoo; drug addiction; 2022–2024 report period. And the problem with a not-so-short list like this was that virtually every name was close enough to be deemed a credible lead.

‘She described the angel tattoo as Jesus with wings,’ he said, and laughed.

‘Because you know there are different types of angels, right?’ Goh scoffed. ‘I mean, there are arch-angels, fallen angels, guardian angels, biker angels, drug-gang angels…’

‘It was a Jesus angel,’ repeated Minter. ‘On the upper right side of her chest.’

‘Like, on her boob?’ asked Warren, looking up from his monitor.

Goh rolled her eyes. ‘I don’t think it would have been on her actual breast, Warren. You obviously have no idea how sensitive a woman’s titty is.’

Rajan chuckled and Goh swung round to look at him. ‘Seriously? Because I said “titty”?’

‘Come on, folks,’ cut in Minter. ‘It’s not a playground.’ He settled back in his seat and rubbed his eyes. ‘All right… We’ve got a total of one hundred and seventeen possibles here. Which is a manageable number. I think we need to divide the list and take a section each. Goh, you’re on A to G. Warren, H to O. Rajan, P to U.’

‘Right.’

‘And I’ll do to the end of the alphabet,’ added Minter.

‘Wait…’ Rajan scanned the list. ‘I’ve got all the bloody S’s. The Smiths. That’s like almost a quarter of the whole list!’

Minter sighed.

‘I’ve got a lot Joneses in my group,’ muttered Warren unhappily.

Minter rolled his eyes. ‘For fuck’s sake. Just get on with it, will you?’

30

‘Now you may remember the name Alison Jones. She was the brave Met officer who single-handedly took down a gunman back in 1999. In fact, it was ten years ago today, wasn’t it?’ said Roslyn, the host of BBC Radio London’s Book Cupboard programme.

Alison adjusted the heavy BBC standard-issue headphones she’d been given. ‘Yes, it was ten years ago. The publishers were keen to time the release of my book with the anniversary.’

‘And you were also a presenter on Crime Line for a couple of years, weren’t you?’

‘“Presenter” is a big word,’ Alison replied. ‘I was only there to give updates on the calls coming in.’

Roslyn picked up Alison’s book. ‘And so out today in a beautiful hardback edition is your story, On My Own: A Memoir.’ She set it down gently on the studio table. ‘I believe you had a lot of interest from publishers, didn’t you?’

Alison nodded, then reminded herself this was radio. ‘Yes, yes, there was a lot of interest. I think we had three different big-name publishers bidding on it. In the end, though, we went with Martin Press, a smaller independent publisher.’

‘Because?’

‘Oh… it’s – my agent explained this to me – it’s not really about the advance; it’s about the effort a publisher’s prepared to put into the marketing. With a bigger publisher, your book can kind of get lost along with all the other things it’s putting out. I mean, there are books by Dan Brown and Sarah Palin coming out in the next few months. For Martin Press, this is their lead non-fiction title so…’

‘Their full focus is on you – and they are this marketing hard,’ Roslyn said.

‘That’s exactly right,’ replied Alison.

‘So, the title. On My Own…’

‘Oh, it wasn’t my title,’ Alison said. ‘They wanted to go with something that resonated with female readers. And I mean, yes… I was alone when I had to face Tyrone. I had no choice. I was there and nobody else was. But also in life, generally, no one seems to have your back as a woman. If you trip up, make a mistake, put on a little extra weight, the media come after you like a pack of hounds. But if you’re a man, if you put a foot wrong, you’ve got those very same papers doing all the hand-waving and explaining on your behalf.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s a man’s world.’

Roslyn nodded. ‘I hear you. So, it sounds like On My Own wasn’t your choice.’

‘I wanted to call the book A Guardian Angel,’ Alison said.

‘Ah, yes.’ Roslyn nodded again. ‘The mysterious young man who saved your life?’

‘Right. He kept me alive while we were waiting for an ambulance, and then in 2007 when I was at a really low point – the lowest point in my life, to be honest – he turned up out of the blue once again…’

‘He was the police officer who talked you down from jumping off Westminster Bridge?’ Roslyn asked.

‘Yes. And all I know about him is that he called himself Beanie.’

‘I read that part last night,’ said Roslyn. ‘It was very moving. But what struck me was that you didn’t realise that the PC on the bridge was him until the next day. Is that right?’

‘I was in a bad way at the time – the night before,’ Alison explained. ‘I could barely focus on anything I was that drunk. So, yes, it wasn’t until the next morning that I recognised his face, his eyes… his voice…’

‘And that thing he said?’

Alison nodded. ‘Yes. There was this phrase he used, on both occasions: “Today’s not your day. You’re going to live long, have babies and grandbabies and achieve, um, great things.” Which are just really odd things for someone so young to say, right?’

Her agent, Janice, and her editor, Shannon, had insisted she italicize those words in her book for emphasis.

‘You know, that encounter was so powerful,’ said Roslyn. ‘I found myself wondering if there was perhaps some, and I hate to use the term but… chemistry between you?

Alison laughed softly. ‘I… Look, he wasn’t bad-looking, if I’m being honest. I know this sounds silly, but it felt like he could see my future, you know? That he knew there were meaningful things ahead for me.’

Roslyn raised a brow. ‘Like politics, perhaps?’

Alison laughed. ‘Oh gosh, no!’

‘I don’t know. “Prime Minister Alison Jones” has a nice ring to it,’ Roslyn said.

‘Oh, really… no. That’s not me. But I do feel that there’s something that the world… that fate wants me to do, and Beanie was sent to make sure I stayed around to do it.’

‘Sent?’ Roslyn noted.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘That does make this young man Beanie sound, dare I say, like some sort of divine being?’

‘God?’ Alison shook her head. ‘I’m not someone who really believes in that kind of thing. And obviously I know he wasn’t some sort of supernatural presence. I think he’s just a very normal bloke who was, I suppose, nudged to be in the right place at the right time on both occasions.’

Roslyn smiled. ‘“Fate” is a word you use a lot in the book.’

‘Yes. I really do think that fate plays a large part in all our lives. I mean… another word you could use could be “coincidence”. And those happen all the time, right? The world is chock-full of them. The Titanic, for example – the “unsinkable ship” sinking on its maiden voyage. The British private who spared a German corporal’s life when he surrendered in 1918. And that corporal went on to become…’

‘That was Adolf Hitler, wasn’t it?’ Roslyn said.

‘Yes. But I think when the same coincidence happens to you… twice, then you have to start asking yourself whether the universe is trying to tell you something.’

‘This angel storyline does have an otherworldly feel to it, doesn’t it, Alison?’ said Roslyn. ‘Perhaps Beanie is listening this morning. What would you like to say to him?’

Alison smiled. ‘Oh gosh, I would love to meet him again. If only to say thank you.’

‘Well, that’s something we might be able to help you with,’ Roslyn said. ‘Beanie, if you’re out there – or if there’s someone listening who thinks they know who Beanie might be – please do drop me a line here at…’

31

Boyd arrived at work just before midday, well aware that he was now officially taking the piss with his time-keeping. A half-hour late for a shift on the rare occasion was excusable. An hour late was a privilege of rank, but the whole morning was really taking the mickey.

Dr Pienaar had left with Dan earlier this morning and taken him to Grayson House, a psychiatric intensive care unit in Rye. Dan was going to be voluntarily sectioned. He had been ready and willing to go with Dr Pienaar and had gathered a few things in a bag. ‘It’ll be for a few weeks while they try different medication combinations and monitor the results, Dan,’ Dr Pienaar had said.

Boyd logged onto LEDS and looked at his in-tray. On the very top was his notepad and clipped-together printouts from Dr Palmer for the still-unidentified body on the rail track. It had been twelve days since the incident, and he’d done very little to advance the case, but at least he now knew that the man have been in his late mid to late forties and almost certainly had been a member of a biker gang at some point.

He spread the sheets of paper across his desk. He’d been looking at a partial tattoo showing the wheel struts of a bike, the spread-out feathered tip of a wing and the left side of a face that, bizarrely, looked like a frog wearing goggles and a coal-scuttle helmet, like the type that German soldiers wore in the Second World War.

The frog made him think of that stupid crazy-frog meme that had somehow taken hold of the country twenty years or so ago. He remembered Julia playing that damned song as a ringtone on her phone for Emma. How old had Ems been? Four? Five maybe?

Boyd’s brief bit of research on biker tattoos and the layers of symbolism baked into them had revealed that the frog-on-a-bike motif had been a biker thing long before the crazy frog fad. It dated back to the seventies. The frog was, apparently, the symbol of a free spirit, an outsider, and was a common tattoo for bikers. But as he looked again at the close-up photo Dr Palmer had taken of a patch of skin, he noticed the faint smudges of four letters: HANE.

He googled ‘HANE’ and scrolled past a lot of unhelpful suggestions before he thought it might be an acronym. A quick search of ‘H.A.N.E.’ gave him a more credible answer. Hells Angels – Nomads England.

He had the their website up a moment later. Contrary to the first impression he’d got from the helmet, they weren’t a bunch of neo-Nazis but were in fact at the fluffier end of the Hells Angel spectrum. The ‘About Us’ tab had a lot to say about their members being a force for good. ‘Travelling Samaritans’ apparently.

With a little more digging, he found out that while they didn’t have anything that could be considered a HQ – perhaps the clue was in their name – there were a couple of pubs in the UK where they regularly met. He realised he’d just missed a chance to mingle with the bikers he’d ever want to meet by a fortnight. Hastings had been overrun by a sea of gleaming chrome and tatty leather a week and a half ago. It was an annual event that overlapped with the Jack in the Green festival.

That was bad timing. But he discovered there was a pub not a million miles away that had a regular Black Sabbath tribute band and a large-ish gathering of ‘friendly two-wheeled Hairy Biker types’. The Seven Bells in Chiddingly.

Boyd arrived there at seven in the evening to find he’d timed it just about right. Broke Sabbath were getting ready to perform and the pub’s car park was already half filled with motorbikes, among them a fair number of Harleys, their peanut fuel tanks customized with intricate paint jobs. He noticed the frog motif on a number of them. The secluded beer garden at the back was busy, every rickety wooden table occupied and a haze of cigarette smoke and vape clouds hovering above them like eavesdropping ghosts. The bikers were mostly older than him, their heads a frizzy quilt of grey hair and pink bald patches.

Boyd spied a table that was occupied by half a dozen elders and walked over to join them.

‘Good evening, gents,’ he said.

They stopped talking and looked up at him. For a fleeting moment, they resembled a conclave of cardinals interrupted from discussing some profoundly important matter of scripture. Then a thick grey beard parted with a friendly, pink-lipped smile.

‘All right, mate?’

Boyd dug into his jacket and pulled out his warrant card. ‘I’m DCI Bill Boyd, Hastings CID,’ he said. ‘I was wondering if I could pick your brains for a few minutes?’

The smiling man nodded. ‘So you’re not here for the band, then, son?’

Son? That was refreshing. Boyd smiled. ‘Black Sabbath’s a bit before my time.’

‘So you’re here on police business?’ the man asked.

‘I’m afraid so,’ Boyd said, looking around for a spot to park himself.

‘Shift along, lads,’ said the biker.

They budged along enough for Boyd to perch his bum on the end of the bench.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

The biker offered Boyd his hand. ‘I’m Degsy.’

Boyd shook his hand.

‘And this old fart is Baz,’ Degsy said, pointing at the man opposite. ‘That’s Rocking Ronnie, Steve, Bennie, Nige and Jimbo.’ He turned back to Boyd. ‘What can we help you with, mate?’

Boyd nodded at them all. ‘Thanks. Look, this is a bit of a buzzkill, I’m afraid, but I’m trying to identify a body that was found on the rail track just outside St Leonards.’

‘Oh yeah, crap. Yeah, I heard about that,’ Degsy replied. ‘You think he might be one of ours?’

Boyd nodded. ‘He had the letters HANE as a tattoo.’

The old men around the table collectively sighed and shook their heads.

‘We’re none of us getting any younger. Every year we gather and there’s another one of us gone,’ sighed Degsy.

‘Prostate cancer most of the time,’ said Baz.

‘On the tracks? You’re thinking it might have been a suicide?’ asked Nige.

‘Almost certainly,’ Boyd said. ‘I was hoping you gents might be able to help me ID him.’

‘How old was he?’ Degsy asked.

‘He was in his mid to late forties,’ replied Boyd.

‘A mere foetus,’ joked Baz.

‘White, slim, tall,’ Boyd added. Dr Palmer had estimated from the parts she’d assembled that he would have been about six foot one. An intact photograph of his face would have helped, but there was no chance of that.

‘Not seen Catweazle turn up at the last few gatherings,’ one of the other bikers said. Boyd had already forgotten which name went with which hairy face.

‘Catweazle?’ he repeated.

‘Like the Geoffrey Bayldon scarecrow character,’ said Degsy. ‘You old enough to remember him?’

‘Vaguely,’ replied Boyd.

‘He got that nickname from day one,’ Degsy continued, ‘on account of the fact the best he could manage on his face was a patchy fanny tickler.’

‘Hope it’s not him,’ said Baz. ‘Nice lad, that one.’

‘This Catweazle… Was he a regular?’ Boyd asked.

Baz nodded. ‘Heart of gold. Didn’t ever seem to have much money, but he was never tight when it came to his round.’

‘Wasn’t he in a band once or something?’ asked one of the others.

Baz nodded. ‘I think so. Not famous, though.’ He stroked his beard thoughtfully. ‘Last time I recall chatting to him was just before the first Covid lockdown, I think.’

Boyd pulled out his notebook and jotted that down, and the nickname, and the fact he’d been in a band. He smiled slightly as he made his notes. Not for the first time he felt a certain affinity for the John Doe in cold storage back at Ellessey.

‘He was a proper Nomad,’ added Baz. ‘A drifter. Bit of a dreamer. Always a good guy, though, you know? A good Samaritan.’

‘How did he seem?’ asked Boyd. ‘When you last spoke? Did he have anything that was causing him problems? Debt? Marital problems?’

‘No, he wasn’t married.’ Baz puffed his cheeks. ‘He was a bit down on himself, to be honest.’

‘Did he say why?’ Boyd asked.

‘Dunno. He said something about the way the world seemed to be heading. Said he felt like he was hanging around in the wrong place.’ Baz shook his head. ‘Same thing we all feel these days, eh? The world’s gone crazy. Computers everywhere. Everyone’s head’s buried in a bloody phone. Robots and AIs taking over the world. Kids don’t know whether they’re boys or girls. No one talks to anyone any more… right, lads?’

They all nodded.

‘When did you last speak to him?’ said Boyd.

‘This time last year, mate. Right here in this beer garden,’ Baz said. ‘I really hope that rail-track body isn’t him. He was a really nice lad.’

‘Tell me, do the Nomads have anything like a membership book?’ asked Boyd. ‘A membership list or something?’

Laughter rippled around the table. ‘We’re not exactly the local Conservative Club,’ said Degsy.

‘So how would I go about finding his actual name. Does anyone know what his name was?’ said Boyd.

‘Joe something,’ chimed in one of the others.

‘No, it was John Something,’ said Baz. He frowned. ‘I know it… Gimme a second. I know it… Began with C.’

‘Carter?’ offered someone.

‘John Carter?’ Baz smiled. ‘That’s an Edgar Rice Burroughs character, you plonker.’

Boyd had ‘John C’ scribbled down, his pen poised and waiting on Baz.

‘Got it!’ Baz said. ‘His name was Crispin… John Crispin.’

32

Alison paused outside the Works and gazed at the stack of books in the window. Her book was at the top, catching the sunlight fading the glossy cover. A large red sticker in the corner proclaimed it to be a bargain at £1.99.

She dropped her cigarette on the pavement and stepped on it to stub it out.

‘Look, Grace. There’s Mummy’s book!’ she said, pointing.

Grace looked up from the buggy at the mention of her name. She gazed listlessly at the shop window, then down at a butterfly that had settled on the windowsill. Her daughter was far more interested in the butterfly as it fluttered off the sill and bumped against the glass a couple of times before flitting away.

‘Alison Jones’ stood out in embossed foil beneath the photo they’d used for the dust cover – a much younger, fresher face, taken when she was in uniform, back in 1997. She’d recently graduated from Hendon and had been ready to join the Met and begin her probation.

She was Alison Peters now.

She’d met Ben shortly after accepting the publishing deal from Martin Press. Ben Peters – the rather charming, Jarvis Cocker-like head of marketing for Martin Press. She wouldn’t have described it as love at first sight, not that pulse-racing, heart-pounding moment of ‘this is the One’ recognition. But after she was introduced to him and began working with him on the promotional campaign that would precede the book’s launch date, she discovered he could make her belly-laugh with his quirky humour and old-school mannerisms.

Oh God, and her mother’s eyes had lit up with joy when she first met him. He was well spoken, well mannered and well connected. A perfect match for her daughter. Six months after first meeting him and with two months left until publication day, in 2009, she became Alison Peters.

That had been ten years ago.

Grace started grizzling in the buggy. The butterfly had flown off and she was now getting bored and frustrated.

Alison glanced at her sun-faded book one more time. It hadn’t exactly set the world on fire when it had first come out. The first months of its publication had been overshadowed by the threat of a global recession, Jade Goody’s death from cervical cancer and the sudden overdosing of Michael Jackson.

With all that going on, her autobiography hadn’t made much of a splash, despite a heroic effort by her publishers (and her husband) to make the book a success. The generous advance of seventy thousand hadn’t even come close to earning out for Martin Press.

‘Come on, Grace,’ she said. ‘Let’s get you back home to see Granny.’

Her mother opened the door, and Alison wheeled the buggy through the hall, into the kitchen.

‘How was Grace’s session?’ Violet asked.

‘Good,’ Alison said. ‘We were working on hand control, grabbing and holding, weren’t we, Grace?’

Grace was wriggling in the buggy, eager to be unstrapped and lifted out.

Alison shed her jacket and popped the kettle on. ‘Coffee, Mum?’

‘I already have one, thank you…’ Violet paused and sniffed. ‘Oh, Alison, I really wish you wouldn’t smoke in front of Grace!’

‘She’s never going to become a smoker, Mum. Trust me.’

Violet unclipped the belts, eased Grace out of the buggy and sat her on her lap at the kitchen table. Alison took a seat too. Her mother had her sudoku book out and had been listening to the radio.

‘Oh God, not LBC,’ sighed Alison. ‘I can’t stand that station.’

‘Dear… you might want to listen to it this morning,’ Violet said.

‘Why on earth would I want to listen?’

‘You’ve just been mentioned on it,’ Violet replied.

Today marked the twenty-year anniversary of the shooting. Tyrone Nelson would have been thirty-seven. Alison had woken this morning suspecting that somebody, somewhere would dust the story off and make a column filler out of it. Anniversaries of old news were always a good opportunity to create content for a slow-day news cycle.

She found herself reaching across the table and turning the radio up to hear it over the burbling kettle. The host – she didn’t catch his name – was taking a call.

‘Look,’ said the caller, ‘it was never satisfactorily dealt with by the Met. They made a show of an investigation at the time, but –’

‘But glossed over it?’ said the host.

‘Right. Jones was suspended but not fired. She was allowed to resign and of course there were no legal repercussions for her.’

‘Well, Simon… the police did follow due process and found nothing to substantiate the theory that she, as you wrote, “executed Tyrone in cold blood”.’

‘But there were a number of convenient oversights regarding the forensics report and, as I state in my article today, there’s an eyewitness who claimed she saw Alison Jones standing over the prone body of Tyrone just moments after the first gunshot.’

Simon Fulwell.

Alison clenched her teeth. The bastard hack who’d been hounding her ever since she’d had a go at him for being a sexist prick.

‘I notice you don’t name this eyewitness in your article,’ countered the host.

‘Because they are wary, rightly so, of being harassed by the Met,’ Simon replied.

The host sighed. ‘Well, if you’re out there somewhere listening in, Alison Jones, perhaps you’d like to have your right to reply? The number to call is…’

Her mother was glaring at her across the table, shaking her head. ‘Don’t you dare.’

One commercial break later, Alison found herself live on air. The producer she spoke to quickly ran her through a short checklist of legalese yes/no questions, then patched her through to the studio.

‘Good morning,’ the host began, ‘and thanks for calling in, Alison.’

‘Morning,’ she replied, trying to keep her voice from fluttering with nerves and, more to the point, to keep her outrage in check. ‘So, I just heard what Mr Fulwell was saying on your show and, to be frank, I’m absolutely appalled that he’s still after – all these years – trying to portray me as a cold-blooded murderer! He’s been haranguing me for dec–’

‘If I may just cut in,’ the host said, ‘Simon reminded us of some interesting points in his article today. That the forensics from the incident failed to support your version of what happened.’

‘The forensics were incomplete,’ Alison stated. ‘They were a complete mess. And that did me absolutely no favours. But the point is that I was all alone when I confronted Tyrone Nelson. No backup, no support – it was just me and him. He had a gun, and I didn’t!’

‘Which Simon Fulwell is not denying…’

‘And Tyrone Nelson had only moments before – literally, just moments before – fired that gun into a McDonald’s and killed two innocent girls!’

‘And Simon’s not denying that either…’ the host said.

‘I had to react quickly. I had seconds to respond once my patrol car had hit his van. If I hadn’t stepped in when I did, how many others would he have shot?’

‘Well said, Alison. But Simon does raise a valid point. The Met didn’t do due diligence on the forensics. And Simon asserts that there was nothing presented that supported your account, which some might say was convenient.’

‘Inconvenient, I’d say!’ Alison replied.

‘And now Simon says he has an alleged witness who claims that they saw you standing over Tyrone’s body.’

‘Well, that’s impossible! There was no one there!’ Alison replied.

‘Except for that mysterious guardian angel of yours,’ the host pointed out.

Alison paused for a moment. Calm. Stay calm. The last thing she wanted or needed was a carefully clipped snippet of her voice circulating on the internet making her sound like a shrill banshee. She sighed. ‘So… someone did read my book, then?’

The host laughed. ‘Yes, actually I did when it came out. It was very interesting.’

‘Thank you. The point is, I didn’t compress the wound myself. Right? I couldn’t have. I was losing blood quickly; I was losing consciousness. There was only one other person in the vicinity: the young man who actually kept me alive.’

‘This Beanie chap?’

‘Yes. Obviously it’s a nickname. And, believe me, I would love for him to come forward. To be identified. Not just to, you know, thank him for saving my life… but to corroborate what actually happened. He was close enough to have arrived quickly. He must have seen or at least heard the gunshots, and maybe he saw what happ–’

‘Here’s the thing, though… Alison,’ the host interrupted. ‘And this is something else that Simon wrote in his article today. He claims that you might have invented this character.’ The host let out another long, sceptical sigh. ‘I’m sure you can see how this looks to the average person. I think it’s within the realms of plausibility that some good Samaritan came to your side, gave you first aid, then excused himself when the paramedics arrived. I can buy that. I can even accept that the young man didn’t want to come forward afterwards. But what I struggle with is your story that it was the same man again, now a copper, who talked you down off the bridge some years later. And some – I’m not saying me – but some might just call that a very clever piece of publisher marketing.’

‘He’s very real!’ Alison replied as calmly as she could. ‘He was a police officer when he saved me the second time. I’m sure there could be police logs or duty rosters from back then that would help identify him.’

‘Did you or your publishers try doing that?’ the host asked.

Alison recalled that Ben and the rest of the Martin Press team had argued that some well-placed adverts in the Metro and Time Out would be more than enough.

‘No, they didn’t contact the Met. We couldn’t. The Met wouldn’t have handed over that kind of information anyway,’ she said.

‘Or maybe your publishers hadn’t wanted to ask… because it might have been the unravelling of your story? Destroyed the whole premise of your book?’

Later, Alison regretted slamming the phone down. Her mother had been right. She should never have dialled the call-in number in the first place.

33

Boyd heard a muted voice over the music he was listening to on his headphones. He was working his way through the tracks he’d downloaded from Danny’s old band’s website. Tracks Danny had written. They were bloody good.

He looked up to find that Okeke had arrived at her desk. She’d shed her leather jacket and shoulder bag, switched on her monitor and was looking around the largely deserted CID floor.

He paused the song and pulled the headphones off. ‘Good to see you back, Sam.’

‘The plastic tent! It’s gone!’ she exclaimed, gesturing at the windows. ‘We’ve got daylight again!’

Boyd glanced at the blue sky outside. ‘Yup, all gone, finally.’

‘Thank fuck for that,’ she sighed.

He got up, rounded his desk and gave her an awkward hug.

‘How’re you doing?’ he asked quietly.

She nodded. ‘Okay. Yeah, I’m okay.’

‘Hey! Hello?’

Okeke stepped to one side and glanced at the woman approaching them, Minter not far behind her.

‘Hi,’ Okeke replied, then asked Minter, ‘Who’s this?’

‘All right, Okeke… This is our newbie,’ he began. ‘DC Alex Goh. And Goh, this is DS Sam Okeke.’

Goh held out a hand. ‘Hey, good to meet you.’

Okeke raised a brow. ‘You’re American?’

‘British American,’ Goh replied. ‘If Trump wins this November… then let’s just say British.’

Okeke shook her hand. ‘Good to have you.’ She smiled. ‘And relax – he won’t win.’

Goh shrugged. ‘We can but hope.’

Okeke nodded over her shoulder. ‘I’m going to grab a coffee. Want one?’

‘I’ll come with,’ said Goh.

The two women abandoned Minter and Boyd. They were already deep in conversation by the time they reached the kitchenette.

Minter looked at Boyd. ‘Do you think we’ll have love hearts and roses between those two, boss, or is it going to be fireworks?’

Boyd suspected his DI had got it right: they’d either be as thick as thieves… or clash violently. Okeke and Goh were too alike to rest somewhere comfortably in the middle.

‘I suppose we’ll know soon enough. How’s your misper going?’ he asked.

‘It’s still a bit of a slog, to be honest,’ Minter said. ‘I’ve got Goh and the lads trawling through our list of possibles… The only name we’ve got for her is almost certainly a ruddy alias. How’s yours going?’

‘I’ve got a legit name, I think,’ Boyd said. ‘John Crispin. I’m just about to run it through LEDS.’

‘Are you still thinking our two Does might be related somehow?’ Minter asked.

The bikers Boyd had spoken to on Friday night had mentioned that their friend Catweazle aka Crispin had appeared to be down here this time last year. If they were going to entertain a possible link between the two, then the timeline worked – though the premise was tenuous at best. Still, he reasoned, leave no stone…

Boyd told Minter what the old bikers had said about their friend.

Minter stroked his chin. ‘Well, that’s… interesting.’

Boyd nodded. ‘It is very tempting to consider a link,’ he replied.

‘Your Crispin knew my Smith?’ muttered Minter thoughtfully. ‘Romantically maybe?’

‘They were both about the same age. It’s not a wild idea, is it?’ Boyd shrugged. ‘Let me see if LEDS has got anything on him before we explore this any further.’

‘Righto,’ Minter said.

Boyd returned to his desk, tapped John Crispin’s name into the LEDS database, pulled his headphones back on and unpaused the track he’d been listening to, taking in Dan’s lyrics.

Can you see the sky?

Want to learn how to fly?

Can you stand at the edge…

And not throw yourself off the side?

Is there anything you wanted to try?

Is there anything you wanted to see?

Is there anyone you begged to stay?

Is there anyone you wanted to be?

LEDS finished its database trawl and presented what it had found. To Boyd’s surprise, John Crispin had served in the police force seventeen years ago. His record was a short one, though. He’d done his basic training at Sidcup and gone into his probation period in the Met. But after a couple of months of street duty, he’d received a lukewarm report from his tutor constable.

‘John is competent enough with the basic operational knowledge, but he lacks the kind of street smarts and mentle (sic) strength to cope with a public-facing role in the force. He often seems overly stressed after each shift and unable to cope with the aftermath. He is not a good team player and his interactions with the rest of his colleagues do not sit well with the teamwork culture. I would recomend (sic) that he relocates within the force to an administrative or support role.’

The next entry on Crispin’s personal record was his letter of resignation.

Boyd remembered his own probation appraisal. It hadn’t exactly been a glowing report either. There’d been a long list of items for improvement that had made him question whether or not policework was going to be the right fit for him. The work-culture’ comment stood out in particular… Boyd’s mentor had offered a similar judgement, and it reminded Boyd that within the uniformed environment there’d been a certain amount of conformity that he’d been expected to adopt. Certain views and opinions that he’d not been entirely comfortable with. But, without any other obvious career alternatives on the horizon, he’d decided to toe the line and stick with it.

John Crispin, it seemed, had been too much of a free spirit to do similar.

To conform.

LEDS had also found a criminal record for the same John Crispin. It wasn’t anything too serious. A couple of speeding fines eight years later. There had been a caution for possession of a class C drug. And two years ago, in 2022, he had been arrested for violent affray at an Extinction Rebellion rally.

Boyd looked at the booking-in picture on his monitor.

Finally, a face to look at.

Despite Crispin’s age of forty-six, his facial hair still had the wispy, patchy look of a teenaged lad trying too hard. He had long, sandy-coloured hair that was starting to thread with greys. This was tucked behind his ears and hanging down to his shoulders in lank tresses. His eyes were set deep, glinting from shadows cast by a pair of thick eyebrows. His face was narrow almost to the point of being gaunt. His lips were ever so slightly stretched into what might have been the start of a smile. Any more of a smile and the booking-in sergeant taking the picture would have told him to knock it off.

He wore a dark T-shirt with a faded design. Boyd thought he detected within the head-and-shoulders shot the very tip of the iconic Dark Side of the Moon prism. Boyd looked again at the eyes and noticed a smudge near the right one – to the side, and slightly above it, almost lost among the wiry hairs of his brow.

Boyd zoomed in.

It was a tattoo.

A very faint one.

A teardrop.

He scrolled down to review the notes on the booking-in form. Crispin had been unable, or unwilling, to give them any next of kin nor a permanent address. For ‘occupation’, the word ‘traveller’ had been typed in. He could just imagine the booking-in sergeant asking Crispin again for something more sensible, then getting the same answer over and over before eventually wearily settling for it.

Once again, Boyd experienced something that he could only describe as a fleeting connection with the man. A suspicion that if they’d randomly crossed paths, there’d have been common ground between them. Not that Boyd knew the first thing about motorbikes or Hells Angel lore… but he sensed their outlook on life would have been unexpectedly aligned.

Sadly, John Crispin was a very strong candidate for his Doe.

He pulled out his work phone and rang Dr Palmer.

‘Ah! DCI Boyd, good morning!’ she answered almost at once.

‘The body on the rail track,’ he began without preamble.

‘Please tell me you’ve finally got a name for me,’ Palmer said.

‘Actually, I think I do,’ he replied.

‘Go on,’ she said.

‘There’s one thing I want to check before I give you a name,’ Boyd said. ‘The man I’m looking at on our system has a small teardrop tattoo just beneath the right… no, that would be his left eye. Just above his cheekbone.’

Palmer remained silent, waiting for more.

Boyd sighed. ‘Well, does the body have –’

‘Boyd,’ she interrupted, ‘you saw what was delivered to me. There isn’t much in the way of a face for me to work with.’

‘There was some of it still intact,’ he countered.

‘You want me to piece together what I’ve got… in the hope of finding a shred of skin with a tiny tattoo on it?’ she asked. He could hear the eye-roll in her voice.

‘Yes. Basically,’ he replied.

She sighed. ‘All right/ I’ll have a go… but don’t hold your breath. Everything I have that’s head-related is in a small kidney dish. It’s basically bolognese.’

Boyd thanked her and ended the call. He was willing to put money on the body with Dr Palmer being that of John Crispin.

But a match on the teardrop tattoo would seal the deal.

34

Boyd returned from his quest to locate a tuna-mayo sandwich. For some reason, the idea of having one for lunch had nested in his head and refused to budge. The canteen upstairs didn’t have any among their small library of cellophane-wrapped offerings so he’d nipped out of the station and headed up Bohemia Road to the cluster of shops opposite what used to be Eagle House.

He found what he wanted and added a packet of crisps before walking back down the hill to the station. As he entered the car park, he spotted Okeke outside the main entrance having her end-of-lunch fag.

‘All right, there?’ he said.

She nodded.

‘What do you make of our new DC?’ he asked.

‘Seems pretty solid,’ Okeke said. ‘She comes with some decent experience.’

He nodded. ‘Yup. A lot, I believe.’

Okeke eyed him warily. ‘Think she’ll get fast-tracked straight past me and Minter?’ she said.

He smiled. You could count on Sam to come straight out with whatever she was thinking. He shook his head. ‘That’s not how it works, Sam. She’s got to put the time in just like anyone else. She’s got to build up her local knowledge too.’

Okeke nodded.

‘Any more news your end?’ he asked. ‘Karl got the passport yet?’

‘Not yet. Still waiting,’ she said glumly. ‘Honestly, it’s fucking crazy that you can get a perfectly good fake one from Taiwan in just a few days but…’

Boyd raised his brows. ‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, Sam.’

She smiled and changed the subject. ‘Hey… Marcus told me he’d been in touch with Dan.’

‘Yup, he’s getting what he needs now. Thank God. He managed to pull some strings and get him straight into a place in Rye. He’s a good man, your Dr Pinnear.’

‘How’s Dan doing?’ she asked.

Boyd shook his head. ‘They won’t let us see him for the first week, so I’m not too sure, really.’

He and Emma had taken a call from the supervising psychologist at Grayson House. She’d been keen to stress that Dan needed an adjustment period before having any visitors.

‘Have you heard from Jay?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘He’s still insisting on bringing Jorge with him.’ She sighed. ‘I get that he’s bonded with him, but… short of reporting him, I honestly don’t know what to do.’

‘He’s always said he wanted to be a dad one day,’ Boyd said, glancing at her.

Her eyes widened. ‘Fuck that. Absolutely not! We are NOT adopting a stolen seven-year old!’

Boyd sat down at his desk, pulled out his sandwich and released it from its cellophane prison. He peeled off the top slice of bread, opened the crisps and began to customise his tuna mayo with a bit of salt-and-vinegar crunch.

There was a ping from his email. It was Dr Palmer. He opened it and immediately wished he hadn’t. Palmer had attached two photos: one of the kidney dish she’d mentioned, presumably adding the image to clearly make the point that he’d asked her to look for a needle in a haystack, and another that showed she’d managed to find the metaphorical needle.

It was an extreme close-up of a flap of skin speckled with dots of dried blood and red smears where an alcohol rub had been applied to clean it. And, to make matters worse, Boyd could see a couple of wiry hairs that must have been part of John Crispin’s eyebrow.

But there – unmistakably on the cleansed skin – was the faint blue smudge of a teardrop tattoo.

Boyd felt the last thread of hope for John Crispin softly snap.

Looks like this is your man, Dr Palmer had typed in her email. Can I have a damned name now? Please?!!!

He tapped out a quick reply, giving her John Crispin’s name and date of birth, then sat back in his seat. With the exception of the paperwork, this case was pretty much done. There was no next of kin to inform. It was just one more case file to be marked as resolved and closed.

‘Boss?’

He looked up to see Minter.

‘I’m just going to herd the troops into the Incident Room for an update – if you want to tag along…’

‘So,’ Minter began, looking from Raj to Warren in a bid to shut them up about the prospect of Coventry FC dropping out of the Premier League.

‘Let’s see where you lot are up to, shall we? Goh? You were doing letters A to…’

‘G,’ she supplied. ‘Yeah, I’ve been through them all. I’ve called and interviewed most of them. None seem to fit our Jane Doe. Either the ages don’t match up, the ethnicity doesn’t match, or they’ve got medical or physical markers that our Doe doesn’t. And so on…’

Minter looked at Raj.

‘P to U,’ he replied, then shook his head. ‘Nearly done, but nothing so far that feels like a lead we should put time into chasing down.’

‘Warren?’ Minter asked.

He shrugged. ‘I’m uh… I’m only halfway through mine. We underestimated how many Jones, Johns, Johnstons there were. There’s loads of them! I’ve got another twenty or so calls to make.’

‘I can help out,’ offered Boyd.

Minter looked his way, surprised at the offer.

‘Yup. I’m all done with my case,’ Boyd said. ‘The body on the track has almost certainly been ID’d as John Crispin.’

Minter nodded thoughtfully. ‘Any further thoughts on whether our cases could be linked?’

Boyd stroked his jaw. ‘I don’t see any solid evidence to say that they are,’ he said. ‘To be brutally honest, I think it was just wishful thinking.’

‘But this Crispin jumped to his death about a year after we think our Katie Smith died,’ Minter pointed out. ‘If my Doe died in May last year… that makes it an anniversary, right? It’s worth considering, surely?’

‘No one knew there was a body inside the hut until the day after Crispin jumped,’ said Magnusson.

‘But there’s the chance he knew that she was in there maybe?’ Minter asked.

Boyd hunched a shoulder. ‘Possibly.’ He recalled what the old biker – Baz – had told him. ‘I spoke to some fellow bikers who’d last seen Crispin about a year ago… They said he’d seemed very down on himself.’

‘That could fit,’ Goh said. ‘Maybe he knew she was dead; it was the anniversary of her death or thereabouts, and if he was responsible for her death somehow, maybe that’s why he jumped? It wouldn’t be the first time something like that has happened.’

‘So, he murdered her?’ Warren said. ‘Perhaps they’d been having a relationship? Perhaps they got into a fight? Perhaps she’d been seeing someone else?’

Goh nodded. ‘A year ago, our lady in the hut is dead. A year ago, your man seems down. A year later, he takes his life and the hut burns down. A lot of coincidences right there.’

‘There’s no evidence of any violence on the woman’s body,’ Magnusson reminded them.

Goh shrugged. ‘All right, so perhaps not murder. But maybe he knew she was dead.’

‘A suicide pact?’ Warren offered.

‘In my opinion, we’re looking at an overdose and then hypothermia,’ said Magnusson. ‘We have that butterfly tobacco tin with a spice kit in there.’

Minter. ‘That’s true. Although I don’t think we can rule a connection out just yet.’ He looked at Boyd. who shrugged.

Minter reached for a whiteboard marker and squiggled ‘Crispin’ and ‘Jane Doe’ on the board with an arrow linking them. He wrote ‘Relationship?’ above.

‘Were there any associates or friends and family mentioned in Crispin’s misper?’ he asked.

‘There was actually no report raised for him,’ Boyd replied. ‘He had no next of kin. No partner and no apparent family. No one seemed to know he was missing.’

The Incident Room was silent for a few moments.

‘That’s a bit sad,’ said Magnusson finally.

‘I’m sorry, Minter. There are no leads to follow from my side,’ said Boyd. ‘But I’m happy to assist with your investigation. I’ve got a spare hour or two this afternoon. Do you want me to help Warren out with his Joneses?’

Warren pushed three of his printed pages across the table. ‘Thanks very much, sir,’ he said with a grin.

Boyd picked up the pages and scanned them. Most of the names were accompanied by a picture – some clearer than others – and basic details: date of birth, ethnic classification, distinguishing features and case number.

As he skimmed his way down the list, Minter resumed speaking. ‘Great! Goh, Raj, so you’re both done with your lists?’

Goh nodded. Raj shrugged. ‘Nearly.’

‘I’ll give you some of the remaining Smiths, Smithers and Smythes to trawl through, then.’ Minter checked the clock on the wall. ‘Let’s make those calls and see if we can clear our lists by the end of the day, okay?’

There was a murmur of agreement in the room, which Boyd barely registered. His eyes had been drawn to a photograph on one of the pages in his hand.

Magnusson had mentioned a butterfly tobacco tin.

And now he was looking at a face he recognised.

35

The Covid lockdown was proving to be a mixed blessing for Alison.

On the one hand the media – more specifically the gutter-press end of the news spectrum, including tabloid hacks like Simon Fulwell – had far more interesting things to write about than the fading story of PC Alison Jones.

Just before Covid had hit the UK, she’d received an email from Fulwell stating that he was planning to write a book about the Tyrone Nelson shooting and asking if she would be interested in doing an interview.

Of course she wasn’t bloody interested, and he’d known that when he’d sent the email. He’d only sent it so that he could say that she’d ‘declined to comment’. Which of course he would use to imply her guilt even more.

But with the arrival of Covid, it seemed Fulwell’s interest had been drawn to newer, shinier things, and he was now using his daily column to bang on about some secret lab in China being responsible for the global pandemic.

Unfortunately, Alison’s impromptu interview on LBC radio eighteen months previously had triggered a new slew of shit-stirring true-crime hobbyists, who were little more than idiots with a webcam, a few hundred followers and time on their hands. Her email had pinged every now and then with random requests to do podcasts. It seemed they all wanted to know about this mysterious Beanie, and the debate raged as to whether he was real or a figment of Alison’s overactive imagination.

Ben and her mother were constantly telling her that she should ignore them, stay well away from social media and stop watching and listening to their wild and unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. And under no circumstances should she interact with them. They were worse than Simon Fulwell – if that was even possible.

But it was hard not to. Since the lockdowns had been put in place, she’d found herself sitting around all day with Grace, locked up in her own home and gazing out at the ghost town that Lambeth had become in recent months.

According to medical research, Grace – being a Down’s syndrome baby – was at far greater risk from Covid than others. The articles Alison had read had talked about ‘immunity abnormalities’ and significantly higher mortality rates.

So, there was absolutely no chance that Alison was going to risk breaking their relentless isolation for a walk to the local playground. Grace was only three and it was virtually impossible to prevent her sticking her fingers in her mouth. Just one recently touched, infected surface and her little girl could be gone within days.

Life was still relatively routine for Ben, however. His publishers had managed to arrange their workspace so that the department heads could use their individual office spaces, while the rest of the staff who’d worked in the open-plan area now worked from home. Ben got to escape their house every morning, masked up and slathered in disinfecting hand gel, to catch a virtually empty commuter train into London.

And interact with actual people. Lucky Ben.

Some people were having a ‘great’ lockdown… Others less so. And it became a point of contention between them. Alison was struggling. She was alone all day every day, with a child who needed constant supervision. And there was no help. No company. And for Alison no social media, because the moment she tapped on one of those little apps, there was a fair chance that another random person would have found her page and sent some sort of abuse her way.

Every new day loomed long ahead of her. Her days were filled with nothing more than listlessly gazing out of the window, watching Grace stare at Disney cartoons, or scraping the Netflix barrel for something new to watch in the seemingly fleeting moments that Grace took a nap.

Alison vaped now, having managed to quit smoking as a result of Ben’s and her mother’s endless scolding. It left no lingering smell, and she whipped the vape out the moment Ben left for work. It felt like a minor win. A middle finger of protest quietly raised behind their backs.

But there was absolutely no wine. Ben had laid down the law very firmly. There was to be no day drinking and no evening drinking. In fact, no drinking whatsoever. Particularly while the lockdowns were ongoing.

‘It’s a slippery slope, Alison. I know things are really hard right now, but it’s best to avoid the temptation for just one glass to get you through the day….’

It was easy for him to say. He got to escape their prison every day.

Not her.

The two bottles of Malbec in their modest wine rack remained firmly capped, collecting dust. Alison hadn’t had touched even a sip of alcohol in months. But with every monotonous same-as-the-last day that passed, she could feel her resolve beginning to crumble.

36

North of the Thames, in Shepherd’s Bush, in a terraced house with a bay window that looked across a narrow car-lined street at the bay windows opposite sat a man upon whom Covid-19 had had absolutely zero discernible impact.

For Bill Boyd, the last six months of national chaos – the lockdown announcement of Big Bouncy Boris, the daily rising death tolls, Dominic Cummings’ bizarre trip to Barnard Castle to test his eyesight – all those things felt as though they’d gone on in another country, in another world.

Boyd had slipped into indulging the fantasy that there existed another Boyd household in Shepherd’s Bush where he, Julia, Noah and Emma were all still well – the four of them driving each other nuts, locked up in their two-up, two-down terraced house.

Noah would have been driving Julia potty by now, especially as the schools were closed. The little chap had been a constant chatterbox, like one of those wind-up sets of joke false teeth, or, worse, like the Duracell bunny with an endless lithium battery. Noah hadn’t been boisterous or badly behaved. He hadn’t been loud or rude or messy. He was just…an incessant chatterbox!

Emma, of course, would have been driving them crazy in an entirely different way. Lots of forlorn sighing and huffing that her entire gap year had been utterly ruined by the global pandemic.

The fantasy world made him smile. But the real world – the one with just himself and Emma – was very different.

His window had the same view of the same unmoving parked cars. The same pigeons fluttered overhead.

His endless days were filled with BBC News 24 and Netflix… He’d watched The Tiger King three times now… And there were the cans of lager. Over the last few months, he’d consumed enough that he’d actually developed a brand preference: Heineken. He’d grown to like the metallic taste of it, and it was surprisingly effective at dulling the long mornings.

The afternoons took care of themselves as he slept off the hangover.

‘Dad?’

He turned from the bay window to look at Emma as she entered the front room. She had her glasses on her head, and her MacBook was open in her hands.

‘Hey, Ems,’ he muttered.

She sat down in the armchair in the bay window, deliberately centring herself in his listless gaze. He suspected she was getting ready to give him another lecture about the binge drinking. They’d done that conversation countless times. Their positions remained unchanged. She was worried he was going to drink himself into an early grave and he was worried he wouldn’t. There really wasn’t much room for negotiation.

‘Dad,’ she said again, setting her MacBook down on the coffee table. ‘We can’t go on like this.’

So, yes… another chat about the drinking, then.

‘Dad… We need a reset.’

‘A reset?’ he repeated.

She nodded. ‘We need to move.’

‘Move?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Can we have an actual conversation? You know… one that’s more than you just repeating the last thing I said?’

He tried to look more alert. ‘Okay, love.’

‘We need to move,’ she said flatly.

‘Move… You mean move… house?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘Not right now. Obviously, we can’t now. But when they ease this lockdown, when the rules change, we should try putting this house on the market.’

They’d been living here for nine years. Ever since Emma had started Year 7 at Harlington Academy. That was one of the reasons they’d picked Gilbert Street. It was perched just within the school’s catchment area.

He sighed. ‘Why?’

She looked around the room. Their home had remained unchanged, virtually untouched since the day of the accident. Julia’s choice of pictures and ornaments, Julia’s choice of furniture. The ‘groovy’ rolled cane blinds in the bay window screamed the seventies; the house had become a museum diorama displaying a world that used to be. Noah’s bedroom was even worse. Emma knew that Boyd hadn’t opened the door to it in weeks. The wonky, peeling stickers spelling Noah’s name on the door were difficult enough to look at.

‘We need to be somewhere else,’ she said sombrely. ‘This isn’t good for either of us.’

‘Give me a break, Ems… It’s only been two or three months since we buried –’

‘It’s been eight months, Dad,’ she said, tears filling her eyes.

That surprised him. Eight? It really did feel as though it had only been a few weeks ago that he’d been in the church, with his parents and Emma on one side and Julia’s parents on the other.

Eight months.

God.

‘Dad?’

He looked at his daughter again.

‘I’ve been looking at property prices,’ she said. ‘To see what we’d get for this place.’

He shook his head. ‘No one’s buying or selling anything right now, Ems.’

‘Do you want to know what the market value of this place is right now?’ she demanded.

They’d bought this place for £160,000 in 2008. He had absolutely no idea what it was worth now.

‘Three hundred and twenty-five!’ she told him.

Boyd raised his brows. ‘Christ. That’s… more than I thought.’

‘And do you want to see what that can get you outside London?’ she asked.

No. He really didn’t. It was the last thing he gave a flying fuck about at the moment.

‘Emma, love,’ he said. ‘You should be thinking about what uni you want to go to when this corona thing is over.’

She sighed and lowered the screen of her laptop. ‘I’m delaying that for a while,’ she said.

‘Please tell me that’s because of this pandemic,’ he said with a sinking feeling.

She looked at him, her eyes brimming again.

‘Because… of me?’ He buried his head in his hands. ‘For fuck’s sake, Ems… Don’t screw your life up because you think you’ve got to sit around and babysit me!’

‘But I do, Dad. I actually do,’ she replied. ‘I’m not going anywhere until you’re back to…’

He looked up. ‘Normal? Well, that’s not going to happen, is it?’

‘I was going to say, back to work,’ she said, swiping an arm across her eyes.

He glanced down at the dented can in his hand.

He shook his head. He couldn’t see that happening for a long time, if ever. The truth of it was that, if it hadn’t been for Emma, he’d have done something stupid by now.

‘I… want to move, Dad,’ she tried again. ‘Okay? I want to! Even if you don’t give a toss about anything any more!’

‘I can’t deal with this right now,’ he mumbled.

‘I’ll deal with it,’ she said. ‘I’ll sort it.’ She squatted down in front of him. ‘You’re totally buggered at the moment, Dad. I get it.’

He smiled wryly. ‘Sounds about right.’

‘I’m going to sort everything out, okay?’ She stood up, pulled her glasses down from her forehead and stared over them. ‘Coffee?’

He looked again at the beer can in his fist. It was still a quarter full.

‘Coffee, she said again more firmly. It wasn’t a question.

‘Right,’ he sighed. ‘Okay.’

37

Alison woke up to the sound of screaming. An awful, wretched screaming made worse by that fact that it had reached the higher register of a woman but had come from a man. From Ben.

She jerked awake and realised with a start that she’d been dreaming. She wasn’t in the seventeenth century watching Ben being burnt at the stake, accused of being a sorcerer. She was on her sofa, and the smell of burnt toast wafting into the room had triggered the bizarre dream.

She pulled herself up onto one elbow, her head thumping from the two – no, three glasses of wine that she’d had while heating spaghetti hoops on toast for Grace. She must have nodded off after lunch, hoping that Grace would take the opportunity to have a nap too. The TV was off. Which was odd, because she was sure they’d settled down on the sofa after lunch to watch Thomas the Tank Engine.

‘Grace?’ she said, looking round.

Then it started up again: that wretched, high-pitched wailing. It was coming from the back room of their flat.

‘Ben?’ she called out, feeling the very first tingle of panic. ‘Ben? Is that you?’

‘OH GOD, NO!’ he sobbed loudly. And repeated it again and again, over and over.

She was on her feet now, wobbly. Not tired wobbly but drunk wobbly. She staggered round the sofa into the doorway of the lounge.

‘Ben? Ben?! What’s…’ Then she switched gear as Ben’s crying intensified.

‘Grace?’ she cried out. ‘Grace! Ben, what’s happened?’

She shoved open the door to Grace’s darkened bedroom. They’d installed a blackout blind on the window to help Grace settle. It had been Alison who’d insisted on it and it had helped. It really did manage to trick Grace into going to sleep at any time of the day.

In the gloom, she could make out Ben rocking back and forth on Grace’s bed. Alison reached for the light switch and pressed it, but nothing happened. She pressed it again. Once and then twice.

Still nothing.

‘Ben? What’s happened What’s going on?’ she asked, her heart racing.

Ben didn’t seem to hear her.

She hurried round the end of the short bed and pulled down hard on the cord for the blind. It rolled up easily, spilling daylight into the room as the blackout material spun on its spindle and the plastic pull chord clattered noisily against the window frame.

The daylight picked out a thin skein of smoke hanging across the room at shoulder height, like swamp mist. It had an odour. Passably similar to toast, but… The memory came fast – as odour-related recollections do – of a young Alison with a magnifying glass, burning ants on the patio.

Ben had Grace in his arms as he continued to rock back and forth. It looked as though she was sleeping. Her eyes were tightly closed, her lips slightly parted. But her hair looked wildly backbrushed and one pale, plump little arm was flopped over Ben’s shoulder, banging against his back as he rocked.

Alison tried to focus. It looked as though Grace was wearing a dark mitten on her hand. Then, with a growing sense of dread, she realised she was looking at a completely blackened hand.

It was burnt black.

Grace’s lamp was lying on the bedside table. The socket was empty and there was no bulb. It seemed to have grown a crust of… of … There was no bulb because… Alison remembered now. Earlier, sometime between glass numbers two and three, Grace had wandered into the kitchen with the dud bulb. At the same time, the toast had started to burn and the doorbell had gone to let her know there was a Waitrose delivery waiting on her doorstep.

Just like the day she’d confronted Tyrone Nelson in a south London backstreet, the reality around Alison collapsed down to a pinprick and vanished like a twist of candle smoke in a strong wind.

38

Boyd tossed the tennis ball into the carpet of suds withdrawing back into the Channel and Ozzie charged down the sloping beach, barking furiously at the sea for stealing it away from him.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Charlotte with a confused smile that was teetering on the point of disappearing. ‘Could you say that again, Bill?’

‘There’s…’ He paused. If he changed the wording the second time round, it might imply he had something to hide, or had a guilty conscience, so he ploughed on. ‘There’s… this woman.’

That teetering, confused smile on her lips vanished. ‘Oh.’

‘I… Well, nothing’s certain yet, but I have a strong feeling that…’ He paused once more. He was making a hash of this, so he tried again. ‘Look, you know the body that was found at Rock-a-Nore?’

She nodded.

‘I think I knew her. Well, kind of knew her.’

‘Kind of knew her…’ she repeated. ‘Bill, what are you trying to tell me?’

He realised that maybe he’d opened this confession a little too dramatically. ‘We’ve been trying to identify the body in the hut – and I think I recognise one of the possibles,’ he said.

‘Oka-a-y.’

‘Alison Jones.’

She shrugged.

‘That name doesn’t mean anything to you?’ he said.

She frowned. ‘No. Should it?’

‘What about PC Alison Jones?’

Charlotte shook her head. ‘Is the PC bit important?’

‘Did you ever watch Crime Line on TV?’

She shook her head again. ‘I’ve never watched that much TV, Bill – you know that.’

He explained what the show was… and a flicker of recognition passed across her face.

‘The show with Jill Dando?’ she asked.

‘No, that was Crimewatch,’ he said. ‘This one was on ITV or Channel 4 – I’m not sure which. It was big in the late nineties, early noughties. Alison was one of the presenters for a few years.’

Charlotte stopped walking and turned to look at him. ‘Please, Bill… don’t tell me you had an affair with her.’

‘God no,’ he said. ‘But I met her a few times.’

‘Met her?’ Charlotte’s eyes narrowed. ‘While you were with Julia?’

‘No, not like that… No. Christ no. You could say our paths crossed, rather than we met.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘That does make it sound grubby, doesn’t it?’

‘Just a bit,’ she agreed.

Ozzie returned with the soaking-wet tennis ball and dropped it into Boyd’s hand for safekeeping. Then he did the canine equivalent of Boyd’s eye-roll as his human tossed it straight back into the sea.

‘It’s hard to explain, Char…’ Boyd said. ‘Our lives have kind of overlapped a number of times.’ He looked at her. ‘Over several decades.’

‘Decades?’ she repeated.

‘Since I was in my twenties. Since before I even met Julia,’ he said.

Her face paled. ‘All right, now you’re really scaring me.’ She swiped a tress of hair away from her face. ‘Please tell me she was just a… an informer or something. A drug person maybe? A dirty copper?’

Boyd couldn’t help but laugh. Partly out of relief that he wasn’t having to confess an illicit past affair nor some dodgy dealings. ‘No, good God, nothing like that.’

She cocked her head. ‘You’d better explain, then.’

Where to begin?

‘There was a Lambeth shooting in 1999. It was in the news for a few weeks,’ he said.

Charlotte shrugged. ‘I was far too busy trying to survive life with Ewan back then,’ she pointed out.

‘Well, Alison Jones was a newbie officer in the Met and she basically single-handedly took down a gunman who’d just shot dead two girls.’

‘Oh gosh,’ Charlotte said.

‘She was shot doing so… and nearly died, in fact. But she became a sort of national hero for a short while.’

Charlotte’s brows flexed slightly. ‘Oh, hold on, … I do vaguely recall that.’

‘Then not long after that,’ Boyd continued, ‘while she was still a copper, she got a job presenting on Crime Line.’

‘And you knew her? How?’ Charlotte asked.

‘Well, I kind of knew her,’ Boyd said. ‘But I’ll get to that in a minute. There was some controversy. She lost her job. She –’

‘What controversy?’ Charlotte interrupted.

‘When I said “took down” the gunman, I mean his gun went off. He took a bullet to the head,’ Boyd explained.

Charlotte frowned. ‘Hold on – was that the one where the policewoman wrestled with the chap and his gun accidentally went off in the struggle?’ she asked.

‘That’s it! That’s the one. But some journalist claimed a few years later that her account was a complete fabrication. That it wasn’t an accident.’

‘Oh.’ She shook her head. ‘I didn’t know about that bit.’

‘The journalist claimed the bloke dropped the gun – or that she got it off him – then shot him in the back of the head. Execution style.’

‘Goodness.’

‘Then, allegedly, she shot herself to make it look like it was an act of self-defence. There were no witnesses,’ he continued. ‘None at all. It all happened in this narrow lane. Nobody actually saw what happened.’

It was tempting – oh-so very bloody tempting – to add that the closest Alison had ever had to a witness was himself.

‘So,’ he continued, ‘it was her story versus the journalist’s allegation.’

‘Did she?’ asked Charlotte. ‘Did she “execute” this gunman?’

Boyd shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Most likely not. I can easily imagine – with four hands grappling for a small handgun – that something like that could have happened. But that’s beside the point. Just the accusation was enough to ruin her. She lost her TV presenting job and was suspended from the Met.’

‘Was there ever any proof though?’ asked Charlotte. ‘Any proof at all?’

He shook his head. ‘Nope.’

Charlotte frowned again. ‘Well, that’s not exactly fair, is it? If some random person can just come up with an allegation and –’

‘The problem for Alison Jones,’ Boyd said, ‘was that there were no forensics that could firmly validate her account of what happened. None. And that wasn’t very helpful. You have to remember the Stephen Lawrence thing had only happened a few years earlier and that tainted things for her, I think.’

‘Ah.’

Ozzie returned once more with the ball – this time entrusting it to Charlotte’s care. She tucked it into the pocket of her jacket.

Bill sighed. ‘I only found out about all this years later. The news story about it wasn’t particularly on my radar at the time.’ He smiled. ‘Christ, I was nipple-high up my own arse back in 1999. Busy. It was before I’d met Julia, before I joined the MET…’

She looked at him. ‘You were busy doing…?’

‘The whole wannabe-a-rockstar thing.’ He smiled. ‘I was desperately trying to become the next Kurt Cobain.’

She stared at him blankly.

‘The whole grungy, hairy, skinny-arsed, Nirvana-wannabe thing.’

‘Oh, right.’ She squeezed his hand gently. ‘I can’t really imagine you as some willowy young pop musician.’

‘Rock musician.’

She looked at him. ‘So, how does you being a musician relate to this Alison woman?’ She looked at him again suspiciously. ‘Is this why you were so keen for a beach walk this evening? To tell me all about her?’

He nodded. ‘It’s not a conversation I wanted to have at home, in front of Emma.’

‘Why ever not?’

‘Well, it sort of – well, some of it overlaps the bad time we were both going through, after losing Julia and Noah.’

She squeezed his hand again. ‘Okay. I can understand that.’

The sky had become cloudy, and the first drops of rain began to patter onto the shingle. She nodded at the White Rock Theatre, across the road from the pier.

‘Coffee and cake?’ she suggested.

He smiled. ‘Sounds good.’

‘Then you can explain to me exactly how you and this Alison Jones knew each other.’

39

‘It’s the same woman?’

‘Yes! The very same woman… She’s called Alison Peters now, but she was the PC Alison Jones who faced those allegations about the Lambeth shooting back in the nineties…’

‘Oh my God…’

‘I mean, obviously she’s now facing questions about what happened to her daughter. She could even face criminal charges for child neglect. There are rumours that she was on drugs when the accident happened. That she just left her child… and, look, her daughter had Down’s syndrome, so –’

‘Oh my God.’

‘Right. So some people have now started asking whether, in some way, she’d, you know, rejected her daughter and this was almost a deliberate act of negligence…’

Emma felt a tap on her shoulder. She paused the podcast and pulled her headphones out.

‘Ems,’ said Boyd, ‘I’m heading down to the corner shop for some milk.’

She looked up at her dad. He’d shaved. He’d put on some clean clothes. He looked a little more like his old self this morning. ‘Just milk, Dad?’

He nodded and smiled. ‘Just milk. No beers.’

‘Can you see if the Greek yoghurt’s back in stock?’

He nodded.

‘Oh, and can you get some M and M’s?’

He reached for the door keys, which were in the bowl on their kitchen table. ‘Yoghurt, M and M’s, milk,’ he recited to himself as he stepped out of the kitchen and into the hallway.

Emma heard the front door open and put her headphones back in, ready to resume listening to the Jury’s Out podcast. The woman they were discussing this morning sounded like a vile piece of work. She was about to hit play when her dad walked back into the kitchen.

‘Mask,’ he explained, and mimed putting one on at the same time. There was one balled up on the counter.

‘Hey, Dad,’ she said as he was about to leave for the second time.

‘Yeah?’

‘Can we talk about houses when you get back? I’ve found one that I think you might like.’

‘Where?’ he asked.

‘South coast. Sussex. Hastings,’ she replied.

He pulled a face.

‘Just take a look at it. Please?’ She raised her iPad and swiped the screen to reveal the Rightmove page and a bookmarked house.

‘All right, all right,’ he sighed. ‘I’ll take a look when I get back.’

Boyd walked down Gilbert Street and turned right onto Uxbridge Road. There were some signs of life. The loosening of lockdown rules a couple of days ago had brought some activity back to Shepherd’s Bush. Most of the shops seemed to be open again in one form or another, albeit with signs in the windows stating ‘one customer at a time’, and the pavements were covered in stickers indicating two-metre intervals where customers waiting to enter should place themselves.

He took a stickered spot outside Adewale’s, which had been their reliable go-to for shit-we-forgot-to-pick-up-from-Tesco over the past nine years. His mind flicked through a zoetrope of countless fleeting memories – hurrying out to Adewale’s to pick up milk, paracetamol, ketchup, Wheetos, Calpol for the kids, and croissants for Julia. It was all a little overpriced, but everything (literally everything) was a convenient minute away from their front door.

Maybe Emma was right. Shepherd’s Bush was a minefield of painful memories. Every shop, every bus stop, every corner, every little park with a swing or a seesaw had a faint imprint of Julia and Noah on it.

A moment. A memory. A trigger.

He glanced at the rack of tabloids on the pavement as he shuffled forward onto the next pavement sticker. The headlines were all about Boris loosening the shackles of lockdown, and his chancellor, Rishi, talking up the idea that we all needed to start eating out to help out.

It was probably about time he reconnected with the world outside and a cheeky-chappy tabloid rather than a heavy-going broadsheet felt like the best way to make a start. He grabbed one randomly just as the door to Adewale’s opened and the bell jangled. He took a respectful step back for the woman coming out and then went inside.

He added an iced caffé latte from the fridge and a packet of Embassy cigarettes to his shopping list, paid for them and headed back out into the street.

The sun had come out this morning, as if it too was taking the opportunity to mingle a bit. Boyd decided to take a walk to sneak in a fag before returning home. Emma had started nagging him about smoking. He’d smoked before the accident, of course, but not at home. Because of the kids and mostly because Julia wasn’t a big fan of the smell. Boyd had been a card-carrying member of the Ten O’Clock Puffers Club outside New Scotland Yard.

He walked down Uxbridge Road in the direction of Shepherd’s Bush Green, pleased to see that, despite the dystopian tones of yesterday’s evening bulletin and the daily death toll on the news, that Shepherd’s Bush still looked and felt as it used to. He found a bench in the small, still-deserted park, pulled down his mask, popped the lid open on the iced latte and dug out a cigarette from the packet.

He lit up, took a deep puff followed by a slurp of his latte and raised his face to the morning sun, savouring the warmth and savouring the fact that he didn’t feel hungover this morning – though he wouldn’t be sharing that with Emma, because there’d be an annoying ‘I told you so’. He wasn’t missing the lingering taste of stale beer in his mouth.

He scanned the newspaper’s headline story about Boris and Rishi, then turned the page and saw a face he recognised.

40

‘So, I was twenty-four, I think… I was actually on the way to a rehearsal session,’ Boyd said.

‘With your band?’ Charlotte asked.

He nodded and gazed out of the bay window at the busy pier across the road.

‘We were called Happy Human Beanz.’

Charlotte smiled. ‘What a peculiar name for a band.’

‘Probably why we never made it,’ Boyd said. ‘It was a play on “human beings”… “beanz”.’

She nodded. ‘No, I got that.’

‘We had band nicknames to go with it: Heinz, Chilli… Mine was Beanie.’

‘Oh, good grief,’ Charlotte said, laughing.

He sighed. ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.’

She sipped her coffee. ‘So… you were on your way to a band rehearsal.’

‘Yeah, it was about half nine, nearly ten. That’s when I heard the car crash. The female copper – Alison Jones – had smashed her patrol car into the side of the gunman’s van to stop him escaping. I heard it. I was hurrying to see what had happened when I heard the gunshots.’

‘Gunshots?’ Charlotte exclaimed. ‘And you thought it was a good idea to go and see what was going on?’

Boyd shrugged. ‘I was twenty-four.’

She shook her head.

‘I ran round the corner and I saw this white van scrunched against an archway. The patrol car had rammed into the passenger side and wedged into it…’

He closed his eyes and tried to recall as much detail as he could: the driver’s door was open; there was some kind of small alcove that gave the door just enough space to swing out. Alison Jones must have got out of her car, hurried round the front of the van and pulled the guy out… That or he’d clambered out, gun in hand, and the rest was what she’d said.

‘I saw two bodies on the ground,’ he resumed. ‘One was PC Alison Jones – and I could see she was struggling.’

‘And the other was…?’

‘The gunman. He was dead already.’

‘Good God, Bill. This is… Why have you never told me about this?’

‘I never told anyone about it. Not even Julia or Emma.’

‘Why ever not?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. To be honest, I was in a bit of a state at the time.’

‘A state?’

He sighed. ‘All right, I was high at the time. I’d had a heavy one the night before, and I was still a bit, you know…’

‘Stoned?’

‘Uh-huh. So, anyway, I rushed over. She was bleeding badly from a gunshot wound and I did the whole put-your-weight-on-it thing to slow down the bleeding.’

‘You were first-aid trained?’

‘No!’ He laughed dryly. ‘I just did it like you see it done in the films.’ He shrugged. ‘It worked, though. She lived.’

Charlotte shook her head again at him.

‘I heard the ambulance approaching… It was really close. So I scarpered.’

‘You just left her?’

‘It wasn’t my finest moment. But it looked like she was going to be fine… The paramedics were going to be with her in seconds… and the police too.’

‘Oh, Bill…’

‘I had a fair bit of stuff still on me… in my guitar case.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Drugs?’

Boyd nodded. ‘Enough that, well… Enough that some overzealous copper might argue it was more than plenty for personal use.’

Charlotte looked at him reproachfully.

‘Jesus, I wasn’t dealing, for crying out loud! I’d just got enough so me and the lads could have another couple of…’ His voice trailed off. There was no sentence he could come up with that was going to make himself sound anything other than feckless and irresponsible.

‘But look – it turned out okay,’ he concluded. He slurped his coffee and eyed his chocolate muffin. ‘Anyway, that’s how I met her.’

Charlotte sat back in her seat, shaking her head once more. ‘Good grief… When are you going to stop throwing surprises at me?’

He peeled the paper case from his muffin. ‘To be honest, this has kind of surprised me too.’

‘You’re not going to tell me in a few months’ time that you’re a sleeper agent for the KGB or something, are you?’ she said, only half joking.

‘Well…’ he began.

‘Oh, stop it!’

‘No, I’m serious,’ he said. ‘There’s more…’ he continued. ‘That was only the first time I met her. We actually ended up meeting for a second time…’

41

‘Janice Friedmann speaking.’

‘Oh… I wasn’t expecting to get straight through,’ Boyd said.

‘Our receptionist is off today. How can I help you?’ Janice said briskly.

‘You’re Alison Jones’s literary agent, right?’ Boyd said.

There was a short pause. ‘Well, I was. I’m afraid we’ve dropped her as a client.’

‘Ah. Because of the story in the Sun?’ he said.

‘Because of the potential manslaughter of her little girl? Yes. Absolutely appalling. Frankly, I’m, well, I’m embarrassed and ashamed that we have… had her on our client list.’ Janice Friedmann paused. ‘So which bloody paper are you calling from?’

‘I’m not calling from a paper. I’m not a reporter,’ Boyd told her.

‘Another flipping podcaster, then?’ Janice said.

‘No. Not that either,’ he replied. ‘I’m actually a policeman.’ He felt disingenuous saying that. He was, in effect, a civilian right now, currently on an extended compassionate leave and giving serious thought to making that permanent.

He heard her take a deep breath. ‘Oh gosh, we’re not in any trouble, are we? I represented her and her memoir in good faith. I honestly thought she was telling the truth about the shooti–’

‘No,’ he replied. ‘It’s nothing like that.’ How do I do this? He paused to consider the best way to segue into his next statement. Directly, perhaps.

‘I’m Beanie,’ he said.

There was a long pause, then finally…

‘You’re…’

‘I’ve just read her book,’ Boyd said. He’d ordered a copy from Amazon the same day that he’d spotted Alison’s face in the paper. He’d been surprised that Amazon hadn’t taken it down, given recent events. But you could still buy Mein Kampf there if you really wanted to. The book had been a welcome distraction for him… A timely grief-displacement therapy of sorts.

‘I’m pretty sure I’m the bloke she’s referring to,’ Boyd confessed.

‘Her guardian angel?’ Janice said.

‘I’m the one who provided the first aid. And, if you’re wondering, I’m also the police officer in the book who talked her down from throwing herself into the Thames.’

There was another long pause.

‘Oh. My. God. You’re actually real?’ Janice said, not even trying to disguise her excitement.

He sighed. ‘I’m very real, yes.’

Janice Friedmann chuckled. ‘The genuine article! An actual guardian angel!’

When he’d read that bit in Alison’s book – the bridge chapter – the memory of the encounter had come flooding back to him. He remembered a very similar encounter with a distressed woman on Westminster Bridge. Not entirely trusting his own memory, he’d called work to ask someone to check his duty logs going all the way back to 2007… and they confirmed that he’d been on that beat and in that locale at the right time.

‘I’m sorry…’ said Janice. ‘Look, I’m a bit flustered. I should… Sorry, I didn’t get your name.’

‘I’m Bill,’ Boyd said. ‘I’m a still-serving officer in the Met… and obviously this isn’t police business. So, if you don’t mind, it’s just Bill, okay?’

‘Fine,’ she replied quickly. ‘I get it. Just Bill is fine. Funny even.’

‘Hmm?’

‘The Bill? The Old Bill?’

He ignored that. He’d heard it a million times already and had never found it as funny as everyone else seemed to. ‘So, the reason I’m calling is, I think I should contact her.’

‘You want to meet her?’ Janice asked.

‘Well, I was thinking of giving her a call, actually. If you still have her number?’

Boyd arrived at Hyde Park half an hour earlier than they’d arranged. The Italian Garden café was busier than he’d anticipated. Which was, with hindsight, a little dumb considering the sun was out and pretty much most of the inhabitants of London had been confined to their homes since March.

The place was packed.

The Italian Garden’s four small ponds were surrounded by visitors in socially distanced clumps, throwing bread to the ducks and pennies for wishes. She’d said she’d almost certainly recognise him, but, just to be on the safe side, he’d brought his copy of her book and was holding it in his hand as visibly as he could.

At bang on eleven, a short, slim woman with dark hair, sunglasses and a face mask approached the bench he was sitting on.

‘Bill?’

He nodded. ‘Are you Alison?’

She nodded back and lowered her mask. He glanced at the cover of the book: a very different-looking woman was smiling from the dust cover. One with a younger, much rounder face.

‘Do I call you Beanie?’ she asked. ‘Or Bill?’

He laughed softly. ‘God, no. Not Beanie. That was a long time ago.’

‘You bought the hardback.’ She smiled. ‘Thank you.’

‘I hate paperbacks,’ he replied. ‘They fall apart.’

‘May I sit?’

He budged up to one end of the bench where a sticker had been placed on the backrest. She sat down at the other end.

‘Thank you so much for agreeing to meet me,’ she said.

‘That’s okay. I realise now, having read this, that you’ve been wanting to do this for a while.’

She nodded at the book. He’d marked a number of pages with folded-down corners. ‘I see you’ve got some bits bookmarked.’

He smiled back. ‘All the bits with me in. You’ve made me unintentionally famous. Well, pseudonymously famous.’

‘Hardly,’ she replied. ‘It really didn’t sell that many copies. And I imagine whatever copies my publishers had left have been pulped by now.’

‘I read that you made some sort of an attempt to find me,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘At the launch we posted ads in the Metro, the Big Issue and Time Out. But I’m pretty sure the publishers just saw it as a bit of a publicity gimmick.’ She looked at him. ‘I’m glad you brought the book… I’m not sure I’d have recognised you without it.’

‘Twenty-one years and three stone makes quite a difference,’ he said.

She glanced his way. ‘That’s right… You were thin as a rake the first time we met. I remember that.’

He could see frown lines above her sunglasses, and wrinkles below. He guessed she was narrowing her eyes, squinting.

‘But your face hasn’t changed much. That’s how I recognised it was you on the bridge. You have distinctive eyes, Bill.’

‘You recognised me after the fact,’ he said, tapping the book.

She conceded with a flat laugh. ‘In fairness, I was somewhat out of my skull at the time.’

There was a pause and they both turned to gaze at the Italian Garden café and the Serpentine lake to fill the silence.

‘I have to ask… Why did you finally decide to contact me?’

‘I heard about what happened recently… to your baby,’ he told her.

‘Grace was three,’ Alison said quietly.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he offered. ‘Losing a child is… well, it’s a life-changing experience.’

She nodded. ‘Life-ending. I’ve tiptoed to the point where I’ve considered that a number of times.’

‘I’ve been in the same place,’ replied Boyd. ‘I lost my son last year.’

‘Oh, God,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. How?’

He gave her the essentials. He’d lost his wife and his little boy because a truck driver had wanted to change a song on his smartphone.

‘I’m so, so sorry, Bill,’ she said again.

‘I suppose that’s mostly why I decided to contact you. I know what it’s like to live through something horrific like this. I know how deep down it can drag you.’ He looked at her. ‘And with all the other things you’ve been going through… I thought that meeting you might help.’

He could see the muscles in her jaw clench, the lines on her lips deepen as she pressed them together. She looked as though a gentle nudge would shake her to pieces.

‘My solicitor says that mitigating circumstances may just spare me from prosecution. But that won’t change the emails and the letters I keep getting.’

‘Are they bad?’ Boyd asked.

‘You’re a murderer! You’re a monster! First a cold-blooded execution… now your own child!’ She sighed. ‘That seems to be the general tone.’

‘That’s shitty.’

She shrugged. ‘That’s how I’m seen. A monster. A cold-blooded killer.’ Again, her gaze went to the Serpentine. ‘My husband thinks the same.’ She turned to look back at Boyd. ‘He’s threatening a civil case if the police and the CPS decide to drop theirs.’ She took in a long deep breath. ‘He’s left me, obviously. He’s put our home on the market, and he wants me out.’

‘Do you have somewhere to go?’ Boyd asked.

‘Not really. My mother’s, maybe. But at the moment she won’t talk to me either.’

‘She won’t?’

Alison shook her head. ‘She absolutely adored Grace. Ben told her that he’d come home to find me “passed out drunk”. I wasn’t, though. I wasn’t. I was just resting. I’d had a glass of wine at lunch, and I dozed off with her on the sofa beside me… ’

She let that hang there. The rest was a matter of public knowledge.

He leant towards her and squeezed her hand. Covid rules notwithstanding, it felt like the right thing to do.

‘Everyone who’s been trolling me about that shooting has put these two things together like they… they reinforce each other or something.’

‘Confirmation bias,’ he said.

She nodded. ‘And it’s stirred everything up. Yet again. All the old articles, all the old headlines, the same fucking trolls after my blood once more…’ She dug into her bag for a tissue, than dabbed at her eyes behind her sunglasses. ‘Look, I’m sorry… I didn’t intend to offload everything like this. I’ve just had no one to talk to. No one to listen.’

She pulled out a tobacco tin and lifted the lid. ‘Do you smoke?’

‘I’m trying to quit,’ he replied.

She nodded. ‘Me too.’ She looked down at the lid. It had a butterfly on it. ‘Grace loved butterflies.’

‘Go on, then,’ said Boyd. ‘I’ll take one.’

She handed him a cigarette and lit it for him, before lighting one for herself and taking a long, deep pull.

‘Anyway…’ She sighed. ‘that’s me. I’m so grateful to you for agreeing to meet me like this, Bill.’

‘I’m at a bit of a loose end, to be honest,’ he said. ‘I’m still on compassionate leave. I’ve been off work for seven, no, eight months now with nothing to do. It’s been hard. Really hard.’

She looked at him. ‘How are you?’

There was only one word that seemed to fit, so he used it. ‘Broken. It’s difficult to get up every morning, let alone think about going back to work. And I went down that slippery slope of medicating myself with booze to blur it all out…’

‘The trouble is… it works,’ she said.

He nodded. ‘Too bloody well. But… I’ve been off it for a week now.’ He glanced at the cigarette in his hand. ‘Should probably quit smoking these things at some point too.’

‘Broken…’ she said. ‘That’s a good word for it.’ She nodded, then huffed a laugh. ‘Two broken sods on a park bench.’

‘Wasn’t that an album by Radiohead?’

She chuckled and dabbed at her eyes again. ‘Very good.’

There was another pause, both of then blowing clouds of smoke and watching Hyde Park, buzzing with visitors.

She smiled at him. ‘I’ll be honest, there have been times when I thought you might not even be a real person. That I’d just manifested you like some sort of genie.’ She reached across and poked his arm gently. ‘Yep… you’re definitely real.’

‘I’d like to think so.’

She stared at him intently. ‘I’ve been wanting something like this… for so long. A chance to say thank you.’

He shrugged. ‘That’s not really necessary, Alison.’

‘Oh, but it is,’ she said. ‘You saved my life. Twice.’

‘All part of the job,’ he replied, slightly embarrassed.

‘As a police constable… or as my own personal guardian angel?’

He pulled a face. ‘I just happened to be standing in the right place at the right time, that’s all.’

‘That’s all, huh?’ She lowered her head enough that he could see her eyes just over the top of her sunglasses. It was the first time he’d seen them. The whites were stained pink, the pupils dilated and intense.

‘Do you believe in fate?’ she asked him.

He wasn’t a big fan of the idea. Not if it was something that had consciously chosen to pancake his wife and son between two trucks. He stayed silent.

‘Fate can present itself like that, Bill,’ she said. ‘Like something completely random. It placed you exactly where you needed to be… in 1999 and again in 2007.’ She smiled. ‘And you’re here again. Right now.’

Boyd took a pull on his cigarette. ‘Alison, I’m here because I chose to contact you. Because I recognised your face in a newspaper. And I could see that you needed someone to talk to.’

She smiled. ‘And fate placed that newspaper in your hand.’

He could see this was could become a circular argument and he wasn’t here to discuss whether greater forces had brought them together. He’d come because he knew how devastating it was to lose a child.

‘Look, Alison, for what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re a monster,’ he said.

Her gaze dipped to her lap. Eventually she puffed out a small breath and raised her head. ‘You’ll never truly know how much that means to me.’ She turned to look at him. ‘I’d hug you… if I wasn’t breaking about ten different laws.’

He smiled and waggled his elbow towards her. ‘Will this do?’

She slid along the bench a little and bumped his elbow with hers. ‘Ridiculous this, isn’t it?’

‘Just about everything is ridiculous right now.’ Perhaps it was time to make a move. He’d said what he wanted to say and he’d given her what she wanted: proof that he was a living, breathing, person. ‘So, uh, look,’ he said. ‘I should probably head back home.’

‘Where are you?’ she asked.

‘West London,’ he replied. Nothing too specific.

‘Before you go, could I ask you a big favour? Could I have your number? If that’s not too forward of me?’

His phone was a graveyard right now. The commiseration messages had dried up some time ago and apart from his once-a-week courtesy calls from Mum and Dad, the Met’s HR department and his union contact, it sat silent.

Which was how he wanted it.

‘I won’t abuse it,’ she pressed. ‘It… it would just be reassuring to know that there’s someone out there, someone on the other end of a phone who doesn’t want me burned as a witch.’

He nodded. ‘All right.’ He read it out to her, and she tapped it into her phone.

‘I promise I won’t ever use it,’ she added. ‘Well, maybe, just once every twenty years. How’s that?’

He laughed. A little awkwardly. ‘My consultation fee is quite expensive, to be fair.’

She laughed. ‘You coming here has probably saved me thousands in therapy sessions.’

He smiled. ‘It was good to meet you, again. You make sure you take good care of yourself.’

She nodded. ‘I’ll try.’

42

‘Do you mind if I ask you something?’ said Charlotte.

Boyd screwed up the muffin paper on his plate and coaxed the crumbs into a small pile. ‘Sure.’

‘Did you see her again?’

Boyd paused. ‘Do you mean, did we actually meet up again? Face to face?’

She nodded.

‘No. That was the last time we met. The only time.’

‘Did she ever get in contact with you again? Did she call you?’ Charlotte asked.

It would have been easier if his answer had been no. He nodded. ‘She left it a couple of months before she used my number. But then she called me… out of the blue.’

‘What was that like?’

He cast his mind back. ‘Tearful. She was struggling a lot with everything that was going on in her life. She was facing the threat of civil cases from her husband and the parents of the young man who died. She was having to pack her things up to put them into storage. Her house was on the market… She was getting a lot of trolling on social media…’ He sighed. ‘She wasn’t in a very good place.’

‘And how were you with her?’ She paused. ‘Sorry, that sounded a bit accusatory, didn’t it? I mean… how did you respond?’

‘I…’ He looked down at his plate of crumbs and balled-up paper. ‘I could have done better.’

His recollection of that call was that it had been awful. It had literally blindsided him. He’d presumed, naively, that their meeting in Hyde Park had been the closure she’d long been seeking. As far as Boyd was concerned, he’d given her what she needed and that was that. He’d walked out of Hyde Park feeling a little better about himself too. He’d done a good thing, both for a stranger and himself. Two troubled souls providing each other with a bit of healing park-bench therapy in a busy London park.

‘How do you mean, you could have done better?’ Charlotte asked.

‘I did a lot of listening, a lot of reassuring. But, beyond that, there wasn’t much I could do for her.’ He looked at Charlotte. ‘I wasn’t in the best headspace to be her therapist.’

Emma had shown him the property in Hastings: 30 Ashburnham Road. They’d even taken a trip down to the seaside town to take a look at it. The house was the perfect antidote to the little terraced house full of emotional triggers, which they’d been confined to. It was large and light, and it had huge bay windows with glimpses of the sea and the hills either side of the town. It had been a beautifully sunny day, and the sunlight had flooded in. The owners had already moved out, leaving a blank canvas of empty walls and original wooden floors.

They’d wandered down to the seafront and had a pub lunch… and had both agreed that this was the place that they were going to start the healing process.

But putting Gilbert Street on the market and packing away Noah’s toys and Julia’s craft projects to make their home ready for viewings had taken a heavy toll on him.

He was pretty sure he’d had some kind of a breakdown around that time. A deferred emotional collapse brought on by boxing up their old life.

‘Look, I did what I could for her,’ said Boyd. ‘I told her things would get better. I told her that starting over somewhere else might not be a bad thing for her too. And, as far as I recall, the conversation ended with her sounding a lot better. But then she called again a few days later. And again… and again.’

‘It sounds as though she was in need of some proper help,’ Charlotte said.

He nodded in agreement, then he shrugged. ‘But the calls sort of changed in tone…’

‘In what way?’ Charlotte asked.

‘Basically, she wanted me to come forward as a witness.’

‘To the shooting incident?’

He nodded. ‘She wanted me to clear her name. I mean… it started with her asking if I’d write down my recollection of what happened that day, just to help her with her own memory of it. She said from the moment she rammed the van to the moment I turned up and started tending to her… it was all a blank. I told her over the phone that I really hadn’t seen anything. I’d just heard the crash, followed by the two gunshots…’

‘Was she was trying to, I don’t know… manipulate you?’

‘I don’t think so. She was just desperate, Char. Desperate to have something… Some evidence to show that she wasn’t the monster that everyone was making her out to be.’ He shook his head. ‘I told her that I couldn’t provide an eyewitness account because I hadn’t seen anything. That I’d arrived after the fact.’

‘But you heard it happen.’ Charlotte pointed out.

‘I heard it. Yes.’ He looked up at her. ‘But…’

‘What?’

‘I heard two gunshots. But look, she was calling me twenty years after the incident and my memory at that time wasn’t reliable. Yes, I heard two gunshots. But not in quick succession. Not bang-bang. But bang…’ He paused. ‘Then the second one.’

Charlotte cocked her head, not sure how that was important.

‘The second shot would have been the one that killed Tyrone Nelson,’ he explained. ‘If things had happened as she said they did, and they’d been wrestling with the gun when it went off …’

‘It would have been a bang-bang?’ Charlotte said slowly.

He nodded. ‘But this was one shot… followed by a pause of…’ He shook his head and closed his eyes as he tried to dig out the faded memory and count the seconds that had elapsed between the shots. ‘A few seconds maybe?’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘A long enough pause for…’

‘Long enough that it’s possible she’d successfully managed to disarm him. Got him down on the ground… and I dunno…’

‘Oh my gosh.’ Charlotte clapped her hand to her mouth.

He leant forward. ‘It’s not reliable evidence either way. Christ… it’s a memory of a memory. The point is I couldn’t give her, in all good conscience, what she wanted. The bang-bang version.’

‘So how did you leave it?’

‘How did I leave it?’ He sighed. ‘I ended up blocking her number.’ He sat back in his seat and looked out again at the pier. ‘Not my proudest moment. But honestly… I couldn’t… I had a lot of my own problems to deal with.’

She squeezed his hand.

‘I couldn’t help her, Char. I wasn’t strong enough to be the crutch she needed and I wasn’t going to lie for her. So, not to put too fine a point on it, I abandoned her.’

Charlotte nodded slowly. ‘And you think the body in the hut might be…’

He nodded. ‘Alison Jones.’

43

As he entered the CID floor, Boyd nodded at Sutherland, who was hastening towards the gents. ‘Morning, sir.’

The DSI looked concerned. He nodded curtly, clearly in a hurry.

‘Something going down?’ asked Boyd

Sutherland slammed open the door to the gents. ‘In a manner of speaking,’ he called out, then disappeared.

Boyd dropped his car keys on the desk, parked his jacket on the chair and spotted Minter who was catching up with his small team.

Okeke, who wasn’t part of Minter’s team, was alone at her desk.

‘Minter not roped you in yet?’ Boyd asked.

‘Nope. And I’m perfectly happy about that,’ she said, nodding at her overflowing in-tray. ‘Not my circus, not my monkeys. I’ve got a shit ton of backlog to work through.’

Boyd crossed the floor to join Minter and his three DCs.

‘Here he is! Morning, boss,’ Minter greeted him.

‘Morning. Minty… How’s things?’ Boyd asked.

‘I’m just gathering a heads-up for Sutherland. Apparently, Her Madge wants us to knock out another press briefing this afternoon, to let the local journos know where we’re up to.’

‘You got a moment?’ said Boyd.

Minter nodded. ‘Sure.’ He turned back to the others. ‘All right – get your action logs updated and on you go.’

Boyd waited for Rajan, Warren and Goh to return to their desks before turning to his DI.

‘I think there’s a name on your shortlist you should prioritise,’ Boyd said.

‘Oh?’ Minter’s dark brows arched with surprise. ‘Who’s that, then?’

‘Alison Jones,’ Boyd said.

Minter looked down at the printouts he had in his hands, flicking through them to get to the Joneses. He stopped, pulled out the relevant sheet and handed it to Boyd. ‘This one?’

Boyd glanced at the photograph on the page and nodded.

‘Why? What do you know about her?’ Minter asked.

This was the question Boyd had been expecting and the one he’d been pondering last night as he lay in bed, unable to sleep. How much was he prepared to share with Minter? If he admitted any kind of link to Alison Jones, then the whole story would have to come out. He wasn’t prepared to bare his soul to the whole bloody team and have them dig back into the not-so-distant, painful past.

‘I don’t suppose you remember a shooting in Lambeth back in 1999?’ Boyd asked.

‘Oh, blimey… 1999? I was still in school, trading Pokémon cards then, boss,’ Minter said.

‘A copper, PC Alison Jones, tackled a young black man with a gun. There was a scuffle. He ended up with a fatal gunshot wound; she was struck by a nearly fatal one,’ Boyd said. ‘She was hailed a have-a-go-hero for a while. She actually ended up on TV after that. Crime Line. Does that ring any bells?’

‘Oh, now, hold on,’ said Minter. ‘The show with Jill Dando?’

‘No, the other one. Alison Jones had a minor presenter role on the show for a few years. Thing is, allegations were made…’

‘What?’

‘That she shot him in cold blood.’

‘She was an ARU?’

‘No, no… with his gun. The allegation was that she’d got it off him, had him lying down on the street, then put one in the back of his head.’

‘Jesus.’

‘That’s the Alison Jones I’m talking about,’ said Boyd, pointing at the smiling face in the photograph.

Minter glanced down at the printout. ‘Blimey, boss. You’ve got a bloody good memory,’ he said, clearly impressed.

‘She was suspended from the Met and lost her presenting job. She wrote a book about it all,’ Boyd said, ‘… and it had butterflies on the cover.’

‘Butterfly on the tobacco tin,’ said Minter to himself.

Boyd nodded.

‘So you think our Katie Smith from the hut is this Alison Jones?’ said Minter.

Boyd shrugged. ‘She also lost a child, her only child. And that made the news too. For all the wrong reasons.’

‘Wrong reasons?’ Minter echoed.

‘She was accused of being wilfully negligent. She was blamed for her daughter’s death.’

‘Blimey,’ Minter said.

‘So yes. I think it’s worth look into here.’

Minter’s email that there’d be an important update in the Incident Room after lunch had managed to pique the interest of both Sutherland and Chief Superintendent Hatcher, and now they sat at the conference table like a pair of X Factor judges waiting for someone to impress them.

Boyd had all but said Minter could take the credit for spotting Alison Jones on the list of mispers, if he wanted. It would have been the perfect opportunity to bank some brownie points with Sutherland and Hatcher, but Minter had declined to steal the limelight and even asked Boyd to partner with him on assembling the slides and delivering the briefing. However, as the meeting began, he very swiftly tossed the ball Boyd’s way.

Which wasn’t exactly what Boyd had been hoping for.

He began with a slightly fuller version of the explainer he’d given Minter, backed up with a slideshow that he’d assembled in the last hour. The image currently on the screen was of a thread in an online forum. Boyd had highlighted several of the most accusatory comments.

Child murderer…

Baby killer…

Cold-blooded bitch…

He turned to the screen. ‘And this is just Mumsnet. The comments on social media are even harsher.’ He flashed a composite image of some of the comments with the tag #PCAlisonJonesKiller. He spotted, too late, the C-bomb.

‘Charming,’ said Hatcher flatly. ‘Thank you, DCI Boyd.’

‘Sorry about that, ma’am,’ he replied. ‘Anyway, as you can see, she was getting a lot of heat. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. She’d been getting the same kind of trolling for years.’ He flashed up a screenshot from an old AOL forum called TruthHunters.

… police bitch who gunned down that boy in Lambeth, London…

… cool and calculated execution of a black boy on a UK street…

He flicked through some tabloid headlines from 2004 – the year Alison Jones had been suspended from the Met.

CRIME LINES ALISON – A KILLER IN PLAIN SIGHT?

IS THE MET COVERING FOR POLICE ‘HERO’?

Then a montage of headlines from 1999:

HAVE-A-GO HERO!

WPC JONES: THE BEST OF BRITISH!

He turned back to his audience and commented, ‘Something of a contrast there, eh?’

‘You can say that again,’ said Sutherland.

‘Obviously I’ve cherry-picked those screengrabs,’ continued Boyd, ‘but the tone is essentially the same. She was a national hero in 1999 and a villain by 2004. And it stayed that way thereafter. Well, it died down but kicked off again in 2020 when her daughter died.’

‘I know this story,’ said Hatcher thoughtfully. ‘I remember reading her book when it came out. So… the daughter bit?’

‘That happened long after the book,’ Boyd said. ‘She had a Down’s syndrome baby called Grace. There was an accident at her home and Grace was electrocuted. She’d stuck her fingers in an exposed live socket.’

The entire room winced.

‘Yes. It was quite horrific. Alison was living in Horsham at the time and I believe she was investigated by the police, but there was insufficient evidence to take it forward.’

‘Brighton would have handled that,’ said Hatcher.

‘Poor bloody woman,’ sighed Sutherland.

‘Careless bloody woman,’ Magnusson responded.

Boyd nodded. ‘You mentioned her book, ma’am…’ He turned round and tapped the clicker; the book’s cover appeared onscreen.

‘Butterflies,’ said Boyd, pointing. ‘See them?’

Hatcher squinted. ‘Oh yes… in the corner. Faintly.’

‘The body in the hut had a butterfly tobacco tin,’ added Magnusson.

Goh nodded. ‘Goddam. You’re right.’

‘And,’ siad Minter, ‘the lady at the letting agency, Mrs Ormand, mentioned that she’d recognised Katherine Smith as having been on TV in a police uniform. She thought that she’d been on EastEnders or something but actually it was…’

‘Crime Line,’ said Boyd.

‘Right.’

There was silence as the information sank in.

‘Well,’ said Hatcher at last, ‘if our woman in the hut is this Alison Jones, it’s going to attract a lot more press interest. Let’s try and keep this theory to ourselves for now. We need to handle this carefully.’ She glanced around the whole room. ‘There’s a narrative here that isn’t a very particularly good look for the Met or for Sussex Police.’

Boyd glanced her way. ‘Which is?’

‘That we don’t look after our own particularly well. If you’re suggesting all of what happened led her to spiralling into a life of drugs and destitution, then there’ll be questions asked about why no one from the police reached out to a troubled ex-officer. Why no one showed any concern for her welfare. And I could imagine less sympathetic news sources might argue that the Met let her become a scapegoat to deflect from any blame that they might have received for not showing due diligence over the shooting. Just keep it on the down low for now.’

Boyd nodded. ‘Will do, ma’am.’

Hatcher turned to Sutherland. ‘Are we switching SIO on this to Boyd, then?’

Sutherland shook his head. ‘I don’t think that’s necessary, ma’am. DI Minter’s been doing a good job so far. And he’s already taken a press briefing. Switching SIOs isn’t a good look either.’

Boyd nodded. ‘It’s Minter’s case. I just got lucky recognising Alison Jones’s face.’

Hatcher shrugged. ‘Fair enough. But if it does turn out to be her… just make sure we don’t present this in a tone-deaf way.’ She tapped her lips thoughtfully for a moment. ‘The narrative will either be “poor woman, neglectful police, sad story” or “bad apple got what she deserved in the end”. Just be mindful of that, Minter, when you get your press briefing together.’

‘Of course, ma’am,’ Minter replied.

‘So, Minter,’ Sutherland began, ‘the next steps are what?’

Minter glanced at Boyd. ‘Interview her mother?’

Boyd nodded. ‘Interview her mother.’

44

‘Awkward question,’ Minter said as he pulled out of the station car park. ‘A point of procedure question, really, boss.’

‘Go on,’ said Boyd.

‘Well, as I’m SIO on this case and you’re…not… Do you refer to me as “boss” or “guv”?’

‘Oh, very fucking funny,’ Boyd said.

Minter seemed to think so. He slid into the middle lane and overtook a coach. ‘I’ve got to say, that was quite a gotcha – you recognising her like that.’

Boyd glanced his way. Was Minter suspicious?

‘I mean, you know, spotting her in the misper list,’ Minter added.

He was definitely suspicious. ‘It’s probably because I read her book,’ replied Boyd. ‘Her face was on the cover.’

‘Ahh… right,’ Minter said. ‘Was it good?’

‘Not really,’ Boyd said. ‘I read it more from morbid curiosity back when it first came out… in, Christ, 2005, 2006.’ Another lie. He’d bought a second-hand copy in 2020.

‘And it was all about this shooting in Lambeth, was it?’ Minter asked.

‘Well, it started with the shooting,’ Boyd replied, ‘then went on to all that happened in her life in the aftermath.’

Last night he’d pulled it off the bookshelf in his study, blown the dust from the top and started rereading it. Flicking through the pages – the corners still folded, marking the bits where he’d made his guest appearance as Beanie – had been triggering. He’d found himself tossed back down the rabbit hole of grief he’d been in four years ago.

The sudden wave of sadness had taken him by surprise and his eyes had begun to blur with tears. Charlotte and Emma had been in the lounge avidly watching Bridgerton. He’d had a moment of privacy – in fact, the remaining half-hour of the show in which to cry quietly.

It had been apparent to him that four years was nowhere near long enough to complete the process of grieving. It was all still right there, the raw emotion, waiting for a memory to summon it front and centre. Since he and Emma had moved to Hastings, he’d been so busy that he’d barely spared a thought for Julia and Noah. It had been a stark reminder that there was unfinished business there… in a process that was on pause, that had not run its course.

‘Come on in…’ said Mrs Jones.

‘Thank you,’ replied Minter, leading the way. He looked around the entrance hall. ‘It’s a lovely place you have here, Mrs Jones.’

‘Oh, don’t bother with all that Mrs Jones nonsense. Call me Violet,’ she said.

She led them into a large lounge with a low ceiling bolstered by oak beams. It smelled of old wood smoke and the had the faint nostalgic tang of chlorobenzene – the old trunk-in-the-attic smell. Violet Jones already had a tea tray prepared for them.

‘This place,’ Violet sighed, ‘has been in my family for generations. It’s beginning to look tatty around the edges now, though, and there’s expensive work needs doing on it.’ She gestured to the sofa. ‘Please, take a seat gentleman.’

Boyd and Minter sat down side by side and sank into the tired cushions.

‘You said on the phone, DI Minter, that you might have some information about Alison,’ Violet said.

Minter nodded. He and Boyd had agreed on the way to Horsham that they’d take the position that Alison was only one of a long list of mispers they were checking in order to formally identify the body in Hastings, rather than their most likely candidate.

‘As I mentioned,’ Minter began, ‘unfortunately, Violet, we’ve found a body that we haven’t been able to identify so far and we’re going through our missing persons database to rule out as many of those as we can. And, of course, your Alison is on that very long list.’

Nicely done, thought Boyd.

Violet poured tea from a teapot. ‘Milk? Sugar?’ she asked, as though she hadn’t heard.

‘Just milk,’ they both replied in unison.

She stirred in a little milk and handed them their teas. ‘So how can I help you?’

‘You reported Alison missing in September 2022,’ said Minter. ‘Can you explain the circumstances around her disappearance? What made you feel concerned for her welfare?’

Violet nodded. ‘Well, I’m not sure how much you know about Alison,’ she began.

‘We know about her past,’ said Boyd.

Violet shook her head and sighed. ‘It was all a bit of a storm in a teacup, if you ask me. A lot of nonsense dreamt up by people who should have known better. Alison didn’t murder that gunman… She did what I dare say a lot of policemen these days wouldn’t have the guts or gumption to do and tackled a very dangerous armed individual. You know that she was shot and very nearly died?’ she added.

They nodded.

‘Alison may have her faults, but what she did back then was heroic,’ Violet went on. ‘And it makes me absolutely bloody furious when I hear the nonsense suggesting she was a murderer because she was a white police constable and he was a black criminal!’

‘Did you read her book?’ asked Boyd

‘Of course I did,’ Violet replied. ‘And I think she more than adequately dealt with those ridiculous accusations.’

‘But it took a toll on her, didn’t it?’ said Boyd.

She nodded again. ‘And that’s the reason she turned to drink. And I presume the two of you knew where that led?’

‘To the death of her daughter?’ offered Minter, quietly.

‘Yes!’ Violet sipped her tea. ‘I’m afraid I’ll never be able to forgive Alison for that. But I also blame the people who were out to destroy her! The people who hounded her for decades!’

Boyd nodded sympathetically.

Violet set her cup down heavily enough that it clacked loudly in its saucer. ‘I put it down to all this political correctness! All this… this anti-whiteness going on. I’m telling you, if she’d been a Muslim police officer, none of those allegations would have been raised! None!’

‘Can we talk about the last time you spoke with her?’ asked Boyd, steering the conversation back on track. ‘What was her state of mind in 2022? How was your relationship with her?’

‘It was non-existent,’ Violet snapped. ‘I downright refused to talk to her after Grace died. It was absolutely shameful neglect that led to Grace’s death. It was unforgivable.’

‘Social services reported that she’d been suffering from profound depression at the time. She was on antidepressants,’ said Boyd.

‘She was drinking herself stupid!’ snapped Violet. ‘And smoking too… despite what Ben and I had told her about that.’

‘You mean Ben Peters, her husband?’ clarified Minter.

‘Yes. A lovely, lovely young man. I liked him from the first moment I met him. We still stay in touch, you know?’

‘They separated?’ Minter asked.

‘After Grace died,’ she said. ‘Yes. And I honestly did not – still do not – blame him one bit for him leaving her. He was utterly destroyed by Grace’s death.’ She paused and raised her chin. ‘Alison and I spoke just the once after that. When I found out from Ben that she’d been drunk at the time.’

‘And when was that?’ Minter asked.

‘A couple of weeks or so after Grace died. She’d tried calling me, then she finally turned up here and we had, I’m embarrassed to say, a screaming match on my front doorstep. I’m sure the next farm along heard us.’

‘What was said?’ Minter prompted.

‘She wanted to come home because Ben was selling the house. I told her in no uncertain terms that she was not welcome here.’

‘And this was when?’ asked Minter, pen poised over his open notebook.

‘2020. In the summer. July. Alison had the gall to claim that she hadn’t been drunk at the time. But I knew what she was like. I knew she was day drinking and to be entirely honest…’ She took a deep breath. ‘I don’t think Alison even wanted a baby. And certainly not a special little thing like Grace.’

They sat in silence for a few minutes, all sipping their tea.

‘Does she have any siblings?’ Minter asked, to break the awkwardness. He pulled out his notebook.

‘No, she’s an only child. She was closer to her father than me… She was always very clingy with him, always seeking his approval,’ Violet said.

‘Is he around still?’ said Minter.

‘He passed a long time ago. Soon after she joined the police. And I swear she only chose that profession to win his approval and annoy me. Honestly, she could have done so much better. She was so capable.’ She paused, realising she’d been somewhat discourteous. ‘Please, don’t take offence.’

Boyd and Minter shook their heads and smiled politely.

‘And please don’t think of me as a heartless mother. I loved her all her life, but that doesn’t make me completely blind to what kind of person she is,’ Violet added.

‘Which is?’ Minter asked.

‘Selfish,’ Violet said. ‘Everything was always about what she wanted, what everyone thought about her, and why they’re all wrong and she’s right. Ben said she used people. She manipulated people. He even said to me that he wondered whether she’d gone out with him in the first place because she thought, with him being head of marketing, her book would get an extra-special push.’

‘And what about Ben?’ Minter asked. ‘Has she been in contact with him at all?’

Violet shook her head. ‘Not that I’m aware of.’

They lapsed into silence again.

‘I did give her some money towards the end of 2020,’ she said at last. ‘So that she didn’t end up homeless.’

‘And you reported her missing two years later,’ said Minter. ‘In 2022?’

‘Yes,’ she replied.

Boyd sat forward and set his cup and saucer down. ‘Can I ask what prompted you to report her missing?’ he said, going back to Minter’s initial questions. ‘Was there something that happened? Something that had you worried about her welfare?’

Violet set her teacup down too. ‘I needed her signature,’ she said.

Boyd raised his brows. ‘Her signature?’

‘For an investment release,’ Violet explained. ‘My husband, in his infinite wisdom, put a sizeable sum into an investment pot that required both mine and Alison’s signatures to release it.’

45

‘Hey, Kat. That’s lookin’ way better,’ said Manda Brooks, smiling as she appraised her small front yard from the doorstep. ‘I can actually see the path now!’

Alison Jones stood up slowly and felt her knees click. She’d been in a constant squat for the last hour, pulling up the weeds and nettles that had overrun her neighbour’s garden. She swiped the hair out of her eyes and removed her garden gloves. ‘Yes… it’s almost looking like a proper garden again.’

‘Why don’t you take a break?’ said Manda. ‘I’ve got coffee.’

Alison made her way over to join her friend. They sat down on the doorstep.

‘Here…’ Manda said, passing Alison a coffee.

‘Thanks.’ Alison looked out at the grass. ‘I’m not sure if your little hover mower’s going to cope with the grass that high, you know.’

Manda frowned. ‘Really?’

‘All it’ll do is flatten it…’ replied Alison. ‘Not cut it.’

‘Still, you’ll give it a go, though, yeah?’ Manda asked.

Alison reached into the pocket of her tracksuit bottoms and brought out her lighter and tobacco tin. She pulled a Rizla out from the tin and started sprinkling out a modest line of her blend, which was mostly tobacco threads with a bit of weed. This particular habit was one she’d got into since moving to Southwick. It did a better, and cheaper, job of pushing the world away than booze ever had. And it didn’t come with a kitty bitch of a hangover the following morning.

‘Kat?’

‘Huh?’ Alison said. She still slipped up every now and then with the name thing. She’d rented the house next door to Manda’s under the name Katherine Smith, using her middle name and her mother’s maiden name. Manda was the kind of person who shortened everybody’s name to the slimmest possible version, and, to be honest, Kat sounded better to Alison.

‘So when do you think you’ll have it done?’ said Manda.

Alison pursed her lips. ‘Lunchtime, I reckon.’ She looked at her neighbour. ‘You got my pay ready?’

Manda nodded. ‘Tonic’s in the fridge and the gin’s on the side.’

‘Great. Thank you.’ Alison smiled and smacked her lips. ‘I’m looking forward to it already.’

Manda looked across at Alison’s front yard. It was even more wild than hers. ‘You not gonna push through and do your garden next?’

Alison shook her head. ‘Maybe tomorrow. If the weather’s still nice.’

She finished building her joint and lit it. She took a pull and dry-coughed. ‘Sorry, it’s a bit strong this one.’ She took another couple of puffs before passing it Manda.

‘Ta,’ Manda said, as she took it.

‘So…you had any more thoughts on me coming to work in your salon?’ Alison asked.

Manda let out a small curl of smoke before replying. ‘I can’t really afford another trainee yet, Kat. I’m so sorry, love. We’re still only doing half the appointments we were before the pandemic. I mean, when business eventually get back to normal…’ She handed the joint back and flapped her hands and coughed. ‘God, that is rough, Kat.’

‘It’s old tobacco,’ Alison said.

‘You want me to bring you back a new pouch for you later?’ Manda asked.

Alison nodded. ‘Thanks. I’m nearly out.’

They sat in silence for a moment, watching the smoke waft across the swaying grass before it dissipated as it curled over the fence and drifted across the road.

‘What about a spot of receptionist work?’ pressed Alison. ‘Cash in hand?’

Manda pulled a face. ‘I just can’t, love. I’m sorry.’

There was an uncomfortable silence and Manda broke it, clearly feeling the need to explain herself further. ‘It’s really difficult, Kat. My customers are mostly young girls. They want to walk into a place that feels trendy, you know?’

‘I’m not old,’ Alison said, pulling a face. ‘Forty-nine isn’t old, Mand!’

‘Try telling that to some bitchy little cow in her twenties,’ Mand said. ‘Over the phone, you sound perfect.’ She smiled. ‘With your posh chops an’ all your T’s and H’s…’

Alison smiled flatly. ‘Thanks.’

Manda’s forehead suddenly crinkled. ‘Oh no! Please don’t get the hump. I didn’t mean that to sound like it did.’

Alison could feel the awkwardness coming off her in waves.

‘It’s okay,’ she said. She let the joint burn out without relighting it. ‘I get it. I may sound nice, but I look like an old hag.’

Alison pinched out the joint and stuffed it into her little tin for later. She took a swig of coffee, then stood up. ‘I think I should probably get on,’ she said.

Manda got up too. ‘You OK, love?’

Alison shook her head and sighed. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Honestly? If I could find a job for you to do there, I really –’ Manda began.

‘I said, it’s fine!’ Alison snapped back.

Manda’s face was colouring. She dithered on the doorstep for a couple of moments before heading back inside with some mumbled excuse about checking on her dryer.

Alison walked back through the tall grass to where her bucket and trowel waited. She squatted down again, knees cracking, pulled on the garden gloves and resumed the weeding. There it was. Manda’s recent polite murmurs on the subject of giving her a job had finally coalesced into a pretty clear no.

The job… any job would have been welcome right now.

The little terraced house she was renting in Southwick had felt like a bargain when she’d had the money from Mother to play with. Compared to the rents she was used to paying in London, it felt like a steal. But, after nearly two years of living here, that £30K had been whittled down to five, even though she’d been living as frugally as she possibly could.

The thought of giving her mother a call to beg for more money was… unthinkable. The last time they’d spoken, they’d ended up screaming at each other. Her mother had sipped heartily from Ben’s cauldron of poisonous Kool-Aid and was only a gentle nudge away from branding her own daughter a child murderer.

Alison reached under the leaves of a large mofo of a nettle that seemed to have grandiose plans to conquer the small front garden and wrapped her gloved hand round its thick bristly stem. She felt something on the ground. She lifted the lower nettles and found herself looking down at a little grinning plastic orange face topped with a plume of fluffy purple hair.

She recognised it as one of those troll dolls. She remembered Manda telling her last summer that her youngest, Taylor, had been in floods of tears when she came home from school without it. Taylor had been absolutely sure her erstwhile best friend had stolen it from her school bag.

But it had been here the whole time.

Alison picked it up, tempted for the briefest of moments to be Manda’s hero of the day, then she tossed it into the weed bucket, pulled the nettle out of the ground and dumped it on top.

‘Fuck her,’ she muttered.

46

Boyd’s minded drifted to the past as they drove down the A21, heading back to Hastings: a trolley dash of memories that spanned the last twenty-five years. He remembered helping PC Jones as she lay on the street, the blood from her gunshot wound spilling onto the cobblestones. He couldn’t recall what they’d said to each other as they’d waited for the approaching ambulance to find its way into the alleyway. He imagined he’d said all the obvious things: ‘hang in there’, ‘you’re doing great’…

He’d grabbed his bag and bass guitar and scooted off as soon as he spotted the blue lights bouncing off a grimy window on the main road. It wasn’t as if the blood was jetting out of the woman like some Tarantino movie, and – if the cops had accompanied the paramedics – he didn’t fancy any questions about the strong stench of weed coming from his bag.

It would have been a very different story if something like that happened to him now. He’d completed basic first-aid training and he’d done twenty-five years’ worth of growing up; he wasn’t some lanky wally with long hair and a head full of rock-star dreams any more. He also wasn’t in the habit of carrying around enough weed to supply a small commune these days. He’d grown up. Acquired a moral compass. So no – if it happened again, he wouldn’t abandon a fellow copper bleeding out onto the ground.

But it still pricked at his conscience.

‘Ah, bloody buggeration!’ muttered Minter.

‘What’s up?’ Boyd asked.

‘We forgot to ask if the aliases Katherine, Katie or Kat Smith meant anything to her. We need to go back and…’ He paused, signalling to take the next turning.

‘Don’t be a complete plum,’ said Boyd. ‘Just call her.’

Minter glanced at him. ‘I’m driving…’

‘Give me your phone and I’ll do it,’ said Boyd.

Minter reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out his work phone and handed it to Boyd. ‘It’s the last number I dialled.’

‘What’s the code to unlock it?’ Boyd asked.

‘Two-four-six-eight-ten,’ Minter said, having the grace to look a little embarrassed.

‘Very secure,’ Boyd muttered as he thumbed the numbers and went to Minter’s ‘Recents’. He called the last number.

Violet Jones answered almost immediately. ‘Yes?’

‘It’s DCI Boyd here, Mrs Jones. Sorry about this, but there’s something we forgot to ask while we were visiting.’

‘Go on,’ she said.

‘Do the name Katherine Smith mean anything to you? Or variations of that: Katie, Kat –’

‘Smith was my maiden name,’ Violet replied. ‘I got a lot of hilarious remarks when I first married a Mr Jones. Smith and Jones, you see.’

‘I bet,’ Boyd said. ‘And what about Katherine? Kat? Or Katie?’

‘Katherine was Hmm… well, that’s my late husband’s mother’s name. She never allowed me shorten it to Kate or Katie, but my father-in-law sometimes called her that.’ She paused. ‘Is that of any help to you?’

‘Maybe,’ Boyd said. ‘Thank you.’

‘Oh…’ Violet added, ‘and it’s also Alison’s middle name.’

‘And you’re certain about this, are you?’ Sutherland said.

Minter nodded. ‘Pretty certain, sir.’

‘Very certain,’ said Boyd. ‘We’ll need a swab from Violet Jones to know one hundred per cent.’

Sutherland settled back in his seat. ‘You didn’t take one from her while you were there?’ he asked.

‘Uh, it was just meant to be a preliminary chat,’ said Minter. ‘Just to see if we could rule out Alison. But it seems… well, it looking pretty likely that she’s our Doe.’

Boyd nodded in agreement. The truth was that he’d been certain as soon as he’d heard about the butterfly tin and seen Alison on the mispers list. He’d just needed to get Minter up to speed so that he could be the one to confidently claim the body was that of Alison Jones. And the world would be none the wiser that Boyd had crossed paths with her and played a small part in her story years ago.

‘Well, shall we get Sullivan or Magnusson to go back up to Horsham and get a swab, do you think?’ Sutherland asked.

Minter nodded. ‘It’s the second thing on my to-do list, sir. After talking to you, of course.’

Boyd smiled.

‘And send a FLO with her,’ Sutherland added. ‘If we’re swabbing, she’ll want to know why.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Minter said, writing it down.

‘All right.’ Sutherland nodded at Minter to indicate that he was done with him. ‘Boyd, Just a moment with you, please.’

Minter turned and left Sutherland’s office, closing the door behind him.

‘Her Ladyship seemed quite concerned about how this will be managed if it does turn out to be Alison Jones,’ said Sutherland. ‘There’ll have to be another press briefing.’

Boyd nodded.

‘I hate to do this again to the poor bloody sod, but DI Minter…’

‘He’s more than capable of handling it,’ replied Boyd.

‘I know. But public-facing… to the press… I think she’ll be hoping for a more senior officer to present what we’ve found.’ He shrugged. ‘She may even insist on doing it herself.’

‘Well, that would be better than me doing it,’ said Boyd.

‘If that’s the case, Hatcher may well want you at her side for questions… which would mean swapping you in as SIO.’

‘Hmm. I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ Boyd said.

Sutherland glanced over the rim of his glasses. ‘And why’s that?’

Boyd shook his head. There were two reasons he could think of, but only one that he could voice out loud. ‘The whole point of me putting Minter forward was to give him some decent SIO experience. If there’s a new SIO presenting evidence, it’ll be obvious we did a swap. And that’s also not a good look.’ It was a weak answer and he knew it.

The real reason he didn’t want to step up was his personal connection to Alison. He’d created a rod for his back when he’d first flagged her up by not mentioning the real reason her name had jumped right off the page.

‘All right,’ sighed Sutherland, to Boyd’s relief. ‘It’s a fair point. Let’s not pull the rug out from under the poor sod.’

‘Again,’ added Boyd.

‘Again,’ conceded Sutherland.

47

‘All right then, folks… next steps,’ began Minter. ‘Magnusson, you’re going up to Horsham to swab Alison’s mother and we’ll send a FLO with you.’

‘So she’s been informed that we think the Jane Doe is her daughter?’ Magnusson asked.

‘Not yet,’ he replied. ‘I’ll call her. Don’t worry. But don’t expect floods of tears from her; she’s quite a hard-faced customer.’

‘A bit like the matriarchal character in Downton Abbey,’ said Boyd.

‘Violet?’ said Magnusson. ‘The Maggie Smith character?’

Boyd and Minter exchanged looks.

‘Mrs Jones is actually called Violet,’ Boyd said, ‘and she certainly gives off those vibes.’

‘And, Karen,’ continued Minter, ‘can you drop the sample off at Ellessey on the way back. The sooner they’ve got both, the sooner we’ll know if we’ve got a familial match.’

‘Really?’ Magnusson rolled her eyes. ‘Working in forensics, as I do, that would never have occurred to me. Thank you, DI Obvious.’

Minter’s face tinged with pink as a ripple of laughter went around the room.

‘All right,’ Sutherland said. ‘Minter, I just wanted to remind you that Hatcher may want a look at what you’ve prepared for the press, ahead of any briefing.’

‘She’s doing it, is she?’ Minter asked.

Sutherland nodded.

Minter sighed. He was beginning to get irritated, to put it mildly, at the lack of faith Hatcher seemed to have in him.

‘It would have been helpful if Dr Palmer could have given us a clear answer on the cause of death,’ he said. ‘That’s still pretty woolly.’

DC Goh leant forward. ‘She mentioned something about a colleague running a toxicology test, if I recall correctly, but the colleague was on vacation.’

‘Goh,’ Minter replied, ‘give Ellessey a call, will you? Chase it up.’

She nodded.

‘It would be useful to have some idea of Alison Jones’ movements leading up to her being in that hut,’ Minter pondered aloud. ‘We’ve got a blank from her living in Southwick in summer 2022 to the B and B in Barrow Court last year. CCTV will have been wiped by now, but we do have a reasonably precise time window.’ He picked up his notebook and flipped back several pages. ‘She booked the first week of May 2023 at Barrow Court and never returned to settle up with the owner.’ He looked up. ‘So, I’m presuming that’s the week she died.’

‘We’re definitely ruling out foul play?’ asked Raj.

Minter nodded. ‘There were no signs of a stab wound, no blunt force trauma.’

‘She could have been strangled,’ Raj replied.

‘Dr Palmer didn’t mention the hyoid bone showing any damage,’ Magnusson said. ‘That’s the bone that –’

‘Usually breaks when you strangle someone,’ finished Goh.

‘We’ll find out whether she overdosed as soon as we get that bloody toxicology report,’ said Minter. ‘We know she was on spice at the time, so I’m expecting that to be a factor. And if that’s the case, then I think we’ll have to tell the press that she passed out in the hut and quite probably…’

‘Died of hypothermia,’ offered Magnusson.

‘Right.’

‘What about the duty logs?’ asked Warren.

Minter turned to him. ‘What?’

‘The duty logs,’ Warren repeated. ‘If we’ve got a precise week, we could take a look at the duty logs from last May.’ He shrugged. ‘There might be something useful there. A drunk-and-disorderly, perhaps. Or a domestic or some altercation?’ He shrugged again. ‘It might help…’

Boyd nodded. ‘That’s a good shout, Warren.’ He looked back at Minter. ‘If she was buying drugs locally, then her name or one of her aliases might be somewhere in the Rosper intel database. I can have a trawl through that.’

Minter nodded. ‘Once we’ve got her DNA back from Ellessey, we could try a sweep on the NDNAD. Eddie, mate…’

Boyd watched Minter dish out the tasks to his team. Minter was doing just fine now that he was up to speed on Alison Jones; he now knew as much as Boyd did. Minus Boyd’s small part in her sorry story, of course.

‘She might have been on the game,’ said Goh. Her voice drew Boyd back to the here and now. ‘To pay for her stuff.’

He winced at the thought.

Charlotte had said something as they’d sat in the White Rock Theatre’s café. It had been a comment she’d delivered casually – just a meandering thought – but it had found a fertile patch of his mind and taken root.

‘In a different universe, Bill… under different circumstances, do you think you might have been the “missing piece” for each other?’

48

‘So, that’s one half Peking duck, sweet and sour prawns Hong Kong style, spare ribs, an egg fried rice, prawn crackers and spring rolls… That everything?’

The man on the other end of the line was wavering. He sounded drunk and as though he was considering adding something else to the steadily growing order. Alison had the total as thirty-seven pounds and forty-nine pence so far. That was more than she could afford to spend on a week’s worth of groceries.

‘Yeah, love,’ he finally replied. ‘I think that’ll do me,’

She took his credit card details and address for their delivery driver. ‘It’ll be with you in an hour,’ she said. ‘Thanks for calling Mr Tang’s.’

She looked up to find that the queue in the takeaway’s tiny waiting room had grown. Four people now stood in line, all drunk and all looking hacked off that there should be an actual queue in here at 9 p.m. on a Friday night.

‘Sorry about the wait, everyone,’ she said yet again, though there was not a flicker of acknowledgement from any of them.

Alison finished her shift at eleven. The walk back to her place took her past two scruffy pubs and a nightclub called Charmers. Outside all three were clusters of fat, red-faced idiots, all either vaping or smoking, and definitely all out of their little skulls. Without fail, one or more of them, from all three establishments, tried their luck with a wink, a leering grin and an ‘All right, love?’ One even asked her how much she charged.

The part that stung the most was that they all obviously thought that she was old enough, desperate enough and haggard enough that they were in with a fair chance. Five years ago she’d felt she was doing rather well for her age: she’d been slim with no turkey neck nor a bingo wing in sight.

Now she looked, and felt, like an old woman. Slim had become scrawny, her cheeks had become blotchy with rosettes of broken blood vessels, and her hands were as bony and liver-spotted as an old crone’s. And she could see the dreaded smoker’s wrinkles on her upper lip.

She let herself into the hallway of 37 Cork Street, stepping over the junk mail that nobody in this shitty house made any effort to sort or pick up. The hallway stank of boiled cabbage and stale cigarette smoke. The latter she could probably take most of the blame for: her room was just off the hallway and the smoke that she blew out of her bay window tended to curl round and linger by the front door.

She let herself into her room.

Her room. Not her house, or her flat, but a bedroom. She shared the kitchen and bathroom with five strangers. She rarely used the shower or bathtub: both looked horrific with the brown stains around the plugholes and drains and the black mould creeping on the sealant. She preferred to bathe once a week at the community pool, where she splashed out a couple of quid for an early-morning swim session. Although she didn’t bother with the swim.

Alison couldn’t bring herself to use the kitchen either. She had an electric hob in her room (which was against the landlord’s rules) and a kettle. She was more than happy with UV milk in her coffee, so there was no need for a fridge, and meals tended to be single-saucepan affairs. Ravioli, baked beans, spaghetti hoops, whatever was going in the food charity basket in Morrisons. She filled her kettle and washed her saucepan in the bathroom, because a) there was nobody else’s crap to have to clear out of the sink first, and b) she wouldn’t have to talk to anyone.

She shared the three-storey terraced house with mostly men who all made her feel uneasy in one way or another. The man in the room directly above hers was also a spice user. She occasionally saw his smoke drifting down from above and curling in clouds just outside her window. The smell was incredibly triggering, which was why she’d started to keep her sash window permanently closed until she was ready for her single spliff of the day.

Even though the spice she was getting was significantly cheaper than the real stuff, she couldn’t afford to spark up every time she caught a whiff from the chap upstairs. Spice did a much more efficient job than regular weed of calming her down and making this shitty world just fuck off for a while.

For her, spice was a lifesaver. For her, it was affordable medication.

She saw the other men briefly, either in the hallway or waiting outside the bathroom. They made her skin crawl. She could feel their eyes on her as she went about her business as briskly as possible and she dreaded having to push past them at the various chokepoints in the cramped house. To be fair, none of them had ever laid a hand on her, or propositioned her outright, but the tone of their chirpy ‘All right there, love?’ chatty exchanges were laced with innuendo. She refrained from speaking to them, because, apparently, a little bit of posh in the house seemed to rouse their hopes. She wondered at what cognitive level it had been decided that her accen, and her ‘excuse me’s and ‘thank you’s somehow made her more likely to be ‘up for it.’

The only other woman in the house was eastern European, barely spoke a word of English and lived in the bedroom opposite hers on the ground floor.

Alison put the kettle on, turned on her small TV for some background company and began to roll her ‘Goodnight, Alison’ joint while listening to Graham Norton chuckle along with yet another couch of celebrity guests. Tonight, they were Helen Mirren, an actor she recognised from Game Of Thrones and two other supposedly famous people she had absolutely no idea about.

She glanced at the TV screen. Once upon a time that would have been her and Robert Daunt… That wonderfully kind man. That wonderfully wise man.

Perhaps he’s your very own guardian angel, he’d said about Beanie.

Now he was tragically gone. It had struck her when she’d first heard the news that he’d taken his life. She’d also wondered that if someone so kind and wise, so rich and famous, so at ease and confident, was struggling to live in this world, what the hell chance was there for anyone else?

She finished rolling her joint, lifted the sash window and swung her legs over the sill so that her feet crunched on the gravel outside. She lit up.

So much for her very own angel. Where the hell was he now when she needed him?

Meeting Bill in person back in 2020 had been a profound experience for her. Alison remembered walking away from the park, feeling that she’d found not just someone who could become her friend, her soul mate even, but a direct connection with whoever was responsible for running the universe. Bill’s number felt like a safety net. Like the gateway to a carefully guarded helpline that bypassed all the call centres and automated call-management menus in the world.

She knew that sounded stupid and suspiciously like spiritual woo-woo … but on all three occasions, when she’d been dangerously close to an end, he’d turned up.

And his manner in Hyde Park had seemed so authentically angel-like. He’d been self-effacing, down-playing what he’d done and even mildly amused at his romanticised depiction in her book.

Everything about Bill was ‘right’. Down to his dishevelled appearance, his slightly earthy vowels, the small razor nicks on his neck and the fact that he smoked cigarettes and had a faint coffee stain on his shirt. He was also broken in his own way, having lost his son and wife. And, damn it, that’s exactly how an angel would be, right? A forlorn melancholic figure seeking atonement for some misdeed in the past and saving someone else’s life to earn their wings and get that ticket back to heaven.

And, as ridiculous as that all sounded, it made some sort of sense to her. She’d left Hyde Park with a sense of elation. Despite the hell she’d been through, something larger than her was quietly at work with a greater plan.

Then Bill had destroyed everything by calmly and cold-heartedly blocking her number.

‘And angels just don’t do that…’ she muttered as she blew out a cloud of smoke into the cool night air.

49

‘Uh, sir… you got a moment?’

Boyd looked up. He’d been neglecting his paperwork over the last few days, and his in-tray was beginning him to punish him. Warren was standing in front of him, holding a printout.

‘I think I found something on the Alison Jones case,’ Warren said. ‘Something from last year’s logs that might be helpful.’

Boyd leant back and took the opportunity to stretch his aching back. ‘You’re at the wrong desk, Eddie.’ He nodded at Minter. ‘You want that one.’

Warren winced, realising his mistake and backed away. He lingered beside Okeke’s desk and exchange a few words with her, before casually circling to Minter with whatever his find was. They talked for a couple of minutes, then Minter got up, wagged a finger at Warren to follow him and they both came over to his desk.

Boyd sighed.

‘Boss?’ Minter said. ‘Eddie’s just found something in the police logs from last year.’

Boyd managed to feign surprise at the breaking news. ‘Yeah? What have you got?’

Minter handed the printout to him. ‘It’s from a night shift on the fifth of May, 2023. There was an altercation between two women in George Street. Both were intoxicated. PS Enright’s report says she had to break up the fight. She took one of them back home in the patrol car to separate them. It lines up with the same week that Katie Smith was staying at Barrow Court.’

Boyd scanned the report. There were no extra details in it and no description of either woman. It wasn’t particularly helpful.

‘Nothing else on that night?’ he asked.

Warren answered. ‘Not much There were a couple of domestics, a burglary, a stolen car, a –’

‘All right,’ Boyd interrupted, and he looked at Minter. ‘Well… what do you want to do with this?’

‘I thought it might be worth having a chat with PS Enright. Ask if she can remember it at all,’ Minter said.

Boyd shrugged. ‘Worth a shot, but it’s up to you. It’s your case.’

Minter nodded. ‘Right. I’ll see if she’s on shift.’

Police Sergeant Jennifer Enright joined Minter in the canteen. She was supposed to have clocked off from her night shift over an hour ago, so he’d offered to treat her to a coffee and pastry for making the time to speak to him.

‘DI Minter,’ she said as she set her radio on the table and sat down. ‘You wanted to see me about a duty log from last year?’

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘From the first week of May last year. Friday the fifth of May, to be precise. You were on nights?’

She nodded. ‘If you say so.’

‘There was an altercation outside the Albion pub,’ he went on. ‘A couple of women were having a bit of a scrap.’

Enright frowned for a moment, then nodded. ‘Oh yeah… Yes, I vaguely remember it. They were having a right set-to. Lot of colourful language and hair-pulling.’

Minter had Alison Jones’s misper report with him. He handed it to her. ‘I know it’s a stretch,’ he said, ‘but could this woman have been one of them?’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘Yeah… possibly. I mean…’ She peered at the photo again. ‘She’s a bit like the woman I took home. The hair would have been different, though. Her hair was darker and longer. And she was older. A lot older.’

‘You didn’t put a name down in your report. Why not?’ asked Minter.

Enright shrugged. ‘She was pretty incoherent, sir. Obviously I tried to get her name, but, if I remember correctly, each time I asked, she gave a different one.’

‘Can you remember any of them?’ he asked hopefully.

Enright pulled a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding face. ‘No.’

‘Alison? Katie? Or Kate? Ring any bells?’

She frowned again, then shook her head. ‘Honestly, I don’t recall … But then, like I said, I was pretty sure she was just giving me BS.’

‘What about the other woman?’

Enright shook her head again. ‘Same thing. The pair of them were out of their skulls.’

‘Drunk?’

‘High, by the look and smell of them. I decided they just needed separating. It was bloody cold that night. One of them had a jacket. The other…’ She nodded at the photo. ‘This one, she was wearing a thin top. So I took her home.’

‘Where did she live?’ Minter asked.

Enright cocked her head. ‘Yeah… I remember thinking that was a bit odd. I had her in the back of the patrol car, right? I asked her where home was and she said she lived up on Ashburnham Road. Which. you know, that’s not exactly scrote central. I was expecting Tressell or Broomgrove. But yeah… she said she lived up there. I remember she was a bit posh sounding.’ She frowned once again. ‘Honestly, though, she looked like pretty much any other spice addict. Pretty rough, let herself go.’ She nodded to herself as more details filtered back. ‘She didn’t sound like your average scrote.’ Her frown lifted. ‘Hey, you’re working the net-hut case, aren’t you?’

He nodded.

‘You think this might be her? The body in the hut?’

Minter shrugged. ‘It’s looking more and more like it could be, yes.’

50

On 29 April 2023, Alison Jones spotted her guardian angel’s face once again. She discovered it in such a random and unlikely way that it could only be interpreted as the invisible hand of fate.

She was on the bus back to Southwick from her second job – a night-time cleaning job in Churchill Square Shopping Centre. It was the last one and was filled with an even mix of raucous uni students on their way home and tired late-shift workers staring listlessly at their sallow reflections in the night bus’s windows.

Alison was well aware that she was now one of those sad old prunes gazing into the distance. One of the late-night, grey-haired workforce of women who topped up their state pensions with a little cash in hand from hoovering and emptying bins.

She was off the booze, though.

Again.

With her mother’s money finally spent and having to make do on her three part-time jobs, even the cheap shit she’d bought from Lidl had had to stop. Since moving out of her house next to Manda and into the dingy bedroom, she’d had to quit drinking.

The gear, though… The spice? That was quite literally the only thing in her life that gave her moments of comfort. It was all that was keeping her going. It was cheaper than the booze, certainly cheaper than actual weed and, if she was going to make a case for it, healthier than her former drink habit.

The bus pulled into a stop and the old woman beside her got off. She’d been sitting on a copy of a local newspaper, the Argus. Alison picked it up. It was warm from being sat on. This made her think twice about holding it, but then she caught sight of the front-page headline: Six Tenants Gassed to Death in Shared House in Hastings.

Beneath it were two photos: one of a terraced house with a police officer wearing a high-vis jacket standing outside the front door, and the other of a man standing in front of the Sussex Police crest, taking questions. There was another man next to him – just enough of his face was in the frame that she instantly recognised him… Bill.

Alison instantly read the article. The story itself was of little interest to her. The senior investigating officer was a DI Minter, from Hastings CID. There was no mention of the man standing behind him. But that didn’t matter. It was, unmistakably, definitely Bill.

She felt the hairs on her arms stir and her scalp prickle. She felt what could only be described as a wave of exhilaration pass through her. The inebriated yakking of the students in front of her became a murmur, dulled by the roar of blood in her veins and the sudden throbbing thump of her heart.

Fate had whispered softly in her ear. ‘There he is, Alison. Living in Hastings… not so far away.’

51

‘So…full credit here has to go to Eddie for digging this one out of the duty-log archives…’ Minter nodded at Warren. ‘Good job, Boy Wonder.’

Warren accepted the credit graciously with a small but theatrical bow.

Minter glanced at PS Jennifer Enright, now out of uniform and back in her civvies. She was two hours past her shift and deep into unpaid time. But she had enthusiastically agreed to attend his briefing when he mentioned that DSI Sutherland and Superintendent Hatcher would also be there. Enright, he suspected, was giving serious thought to moving sideways, career-wise, to the CID floor and very much wanted to make an impression on Her Madge.

‘PS Jennifer Enright is here this morning,’ began Minter, ‘because in all likelihood she was the last person to interact with Alison Jones the night she died.’

Hatcher gave her a smile. ‘Thank you for giving up your time.’

‘PS Enright …’ Minter said, ‘do you want to start this off with what you told me upstairs? What you can remember from May last year?’

She nodded, nervously clearing her throat, and looked down at the printout in her hand. ‘On the night of May the fifth, 2023, I was patrolling solo and responded to a report of a fight at 11.27 p.m. on George Street. There’d been a violent altercation between two women outside the Albion pub and –’

‘Just tell it as you remember it,’ said Hatcher gently. ‘There’s no need to read out your log for us.’ She raised a sheet of paper. ‘We’ve all got a copy.’

‘Right. Yes. Okay, ma’am,’ Enright said, and slid the page to one side. ‘So, I turned up and there were two W1 females in a fight with each other. One was in her late twenties, and the other looked much older, late fifties or early sixties maybe.’

‘Early sixties?’ queried Boyd. ‘Are you sure?’

Enright shrugged, then glanced at Hatcher. ‘It’s sometimes quite difficult to guess the age, ma’am, with addicts. They tend to look way older than they are.’

Hatcher smiled. ‘Oh, I know.’

Enright nodded. ‘The older one could have been younger. It’s really hard to say. Anyway… I couldn’t see any indication of serious physical harm. Some scrapes and bruises, but they were both, you know, pretty dishevelled. I think it had mostly been a lot of pushing and shoving and hair-pulling, that kind of –’

‘Who called it in?’ asked Minter.

‘The pub landlord. They’d started rowing inside and he’d turfed them out when they got too noisy… then they continued their disagreement outside. It became violent and he called us.’

‘Carry on,’ said Minter.

‘So I could see they were both highly intoxicated and I could tell they’d also been taking drugs.’

‘Spice,’ added Minter.

She nodded. ‘You could smell it on them. Normally, when we come across spice addicts they’re pretty docile, but when you mix it with booze, they can get a bit salty. I managed to separate them, though.’

‘Did you get any names?’ asked Boyd.

Enright shrugged. ‘They were both pretty fuck–’ She covered her mouth and looked at Hatcher, who simply raised a brow. ‘They were incoherent. When I spoke to the older one later in the car –’

‘Did you get to the bottom of what they were squabbling over?’ asked Sutherland.

She shook her head and smiled. ‘You never do… do you? With addicts. You just get a load of word spaghetti and that’s about it. He said, she said, and so on. So, anyway, because it was extremely cold that night, and the older one was only wearing a thin top – I think it was just a T-shirt or something – I decided she was the one who needed to be taken home first.’

‘Where did you drop her off?’ asked Boyd

Minter stepped in. ‘Well, this is the interesting bit.’ He glanced at Enright to carry on.

‘She said she lived up on Ashburnham Road. Which, obviously, I queried, because, well, that’s a proper nice road. It’s not exactly Cottle Street, is it?’

Ashburnham Road. Boyd did his best to keep his face neutral.

‘That’s your street, boss,’ added Minter.

Boyd nodded. ‘Indeed it is.’

Enright continued speaking, but Boyd’s mind was racing. Alison was actually living on Ashburnham Road?

There was no possible way that that could have been down to simple coincidence, surely? Surely not? He cast his mind back to last year. Had he seen her lingering on Ashburnham Road? No. He hadn’t even thought about her since 2020. Not once. What had been going on at this time last year? It had been the Argyle House case, which Minter had handled. Charlotte had just moved in with him. Emma had found out that she was pregnant but she and Dan had split up. And he’d just found out that he had cancer.

Shit. There had been so much going on back then.

And Alison Jones had been nearby all that time? Christ. Had she been stalking him?

He became aware that Hatcher was talking.

‘She wasn’t actually living there, though, was she?’ said Hatcher. ‘She had a room in a bed and breakfast in…’

‘Barrow Court,’ supplied Minter. ‘For that particular week. Under the name Katie Smith. PS Enright’s duty log tallies with the timeline we got from the lady running the place, who said she didn’t see her after the fifth of May, so, bringing those two things together, I’d say that there is a strong possibility that Alison Jones ended up in that hut on that night.’

‘And where was she staying before this?’ Hatcher asked.

Minter shrugged. ‘The last known address we have for her is under the name Katherine Smith and that was in Southwick about nine months earlier. After that we’ve got nothing until Enright’s account.’

Hatcher frowned. ‘So she could possibly have been homeless?’

Minter shrugged. ‘Possibly.’ He shrugged again. ‘Probably, to be fair.’

Hatcher shook her head, confused, and glanced at Enright. ‘I wonder why she didn’t ask you to take her back to the place she was staying at?’

‘I don’t know, ma’am. She insisted she lived on Ashburnham Road.’

Boyd realised he’d arrived at another crossroads. If he was going to declare a personal connection to the case, now would be his last chance to do it.

‘PS Enright, did you watch her?’ asked Boyd. ‘Did you wait to see if she got in safely?’

PS Enright shuffled on her seat uncomfortably. ‘I was keen to get back down to the other woman, sir. Like I said, it was very cold. It had also started to rain, so…’

Hatcher shook her head at Boyd. ‘Go easy on her, Boyd – she’s got a point. Look, DI Minter, given that we’ve got Enright’s last sighting, I think makes sense to do some door-to-doors along Ashburnham Road. See if there were any further sightings that night?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘It does seem that we have our Jane Doe’s identity now.’ She looked at Sutherland. ‘What do you think, Iain? Are we about there? Have we got enough to put something together for the press?’

‘Let Minter and his team do the door-to-doors,’ Sutherland said. ‘See if that throws up anything else and we can go from there.’

Hatcher nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right.’

52

Alison had managed to build an almost bearable new normal as Kat Smith. Her three jobs paid for her room, her phone contract and her habit. There was just about enough left for some ready meals and the occasional discounted Chinese.

Being Kat wasn’t great, but it was better than being Alison.

Kat had no past to haunt her and no family to speak of. No expectations to live up to.

She’d left Alison Jones back in London, then she’d left Katherine Smith in that terraced house in Southwick.

Then the universe had reached down to her and tapped her shoulder.

Your angel is in Hastings, Alison.

Kat’s response would have been, What the fuck do I care? I don’t need that selfish twat any more. I don’t need anyone.

But fate wasn’t talking to Kat. It was talking to Alison.

‘Something wonderful awaits you, Alison… A new chapter. If you want it, go and find Bill.’

Alison had spent a sleepless night pondering her next steps. She was in Southwick, and Bill was in Hastings, or at least working in Hastings. It took a quick Google search to find the police station off Bohemia Road.

The practical matters to solve were pretty straightforward. She had just over four hundred pounds tucked away in the biscuit tin beneath her mattress – that was for the rent at the end of the month. Which, if she packed her duffle bag with some clothes and toiletries and just walked out of the door, she wouldn’t have to worry about.

That would be her shitty landlord’s problem.

And her three jobs? Sod them. They were all casual, cash-in-hand jobs. No paperwork, no pay slips and no need to work a notice period. The only one she felt obliged to give notice to was Mr Tang’s. She’d been manning their phone and taking orders there for nine months now and they’d always been good to her.

She called Mr Tang first thing the next morning to let him know that she wouldn’t be in for her evening shift and that she was moving on. He was very sorry to see her go and asked if everything was all right. She told him that everything was, and that wasn’t a lie… She felt wonderful.

She took the bus into Brighton town centre, went to the train station and bought an off-peak one-way ticket to Hastings and a cappuccino from the cheerful young lad at the coffee stand inside.

53

‘How much?’

‘One hundred and forty pounds, and that does include a full English, my dear.’

Alison had been expecting the price to be higher. She smiled. ‘Perfect.’

The owner returned her smile and offered her hand. ‘I’m Wendy Maigrette, owner and manager. Now, if you could just review this…’ She handed Alison a laminated card with a short list of rules:

No guests after seven!

No smoking or vaping in the rooms!

No takeaways to be consumed on these premises!

‘Then pop your name into my guestbook…’ She opened a leather-bound book and handed Alison a pen. Alison scribbled down ‘Katie Smith’ in ‘Name’ column. Next to it was another column for contact details. Previous guests had entered either their phone numbers or email addresses.

Wendy noticed her hesitation. ‘Don’t worry. It’s not so I can – what’s the term? – spam you with adverts. It’s just so you can be contacted in case of a problem.’

‘A problem?’ Alison echoed.

‘If there was a fire, for example, or if you left something behind after checking out.’

‘Ah, yes, of course.’ Alison scribbled down a random phone number and a made-up email address.

‘Lovely!’ Wendy beamed. ‘So, are you on holiday or visiting someone?’

‘Just a bit of sightseeing,’ Alison replied. ‘Can I ask… how far is the police station from here?’

‘It’s just west of the town centre. Go along the up until you come to the pier, then head up the hill onto London Road and it’s off there. Why? What have you done?’ she said, laughing.

‘Oh, nothing.’ Alison smiled. ‘My dad used to be a senior officer there twenty years ago, though he’s retired now.’ She waggled her phone. ‘I promised him I’d take a pic or two.’

Wendy Maigrette shrugged. ‘Well, I’d say it’s a good forty-five-minute walk from here, my dear.’ She took the guestbook from Alison. ‘Let me show you up to your room.’

She led the way up a narrow set of stairs. ‘Where’ve you come from, Katie?’

‘Uh, Brighton,’ Alison replied. ‘Well, Southwick actually… the not-so-expensive bit.’

Wendy nodded. ‘Oh yes, it is rather pricey in Brighton, isn’t it?’

‘I heard Hastings is a lot cheaper,’ Alison said.

Wendy chortled. ‘It used to be… but the DFLs finally discovered us.’

‘DFL?’ Alison asked.

‘Down From London,’ she replied. ‘They’re busy buying up places, left, right and centre. They love it here. It’s full of what I like to call “quixotic charm”, my dear… i=It’s got multiple personalities. There’s the modern bit further along towards St Leonards with the shopping mall. There’s the old town and George Street, which is delightful, you know. I’m surprised it isn’t used in more period films, lovely old buildings…’

They got to the landing and Wendy turned to Alison. ‘But I find the really charming part of Hastings is the old fishing village, Rock-a-Nore. There are these tall black wooden huts where the fishermen used to hang their nets to dry. Unique to Hastings, I believe. Unfortunately, though, I think you’re going to be unlucky with your timing this coming week. It looks like we’re in for some particularly miserable weather.’

She pulled out a key and unlocked a door. ‘Room Three,’ she announced proudly. ‘I’m afraid the décor’s looking a bit tired these days. I keep promising myself I’ll stop bookings for a couple of months and have a whizz through to freshen things up. But it’s clean, tidy…’

Alison stepped into the room. It was a damn sight cleaner and tidier than the makeshift bedsit she’d just left behind. Plus, it had its very own en-suite! A luxury.

‘It’s perfect,’ she replied with a smile.

‘Well, now, there’s a kettle and some tea and coffee. The TV’s just the basics, I’m afraid. But I do have some Wi-Fi if you’re one of those folks who prefers everything that’s on the World Wide Web. The code is Wendy1066.’

Alison nodded. ‘Thank you.’

‘Breakfast is between seven and nine. Just pop downstairs into the front room and I’ll be there, serving…’ she said, then she sighed, ‘and cooking.’

She handed Alison a pair of keys. ‘As a general rule, if you’re just popping out for the day and likely to be back before seven, I ask guests to hang their keys on the hooks in the hallway. You’re less likely to lose them, and I’m always here until seven in the evening to let you in. I’ll be in again at seven in the morning.’

‘Okay. I’ll do that,’ Alison said.

Wendy backed out of the room and stood in the doorway. ‘Well, I’ll let you get settled and if you have any questions or problems just ring the bell in the hall. I’ll hear it.’ With that, she gently closed the door.

Alison sat down on the bed, the mattress springs creaking softly beneath her. The view from the window was of a tall terraced townhouse opposite, with a bay window. Above it, was a steep bird-shit-spattered slate rooftop under a sullen grey sky.

She noticed how quiet it was in the room. There was no irritating thump as someone paced around upstairs, and no moaning or muffled shouts. Just the faint tick-tock of a clock from the front hallway and the light murmur of the wind, teasing its way inside through a gap in the window with a soft, haunting whimper.

And it was quiet outside too. There was no traffic and no pedestrians. But then it was mid-morning, on a weekday, and too early for the summer surge of seaside visitors.

Anyone else might have described this moment in time – this quiet street, this dimly lit room with its faded and threadbare furnishings, and the silence, save for the ticking clock and the gently keening sound of wind – as somewhat maudlin.

But not Alison Jones. This moment wasn’t the sad tail end of an even sadder shaggy-dog story. It was the start of her brand-new chapter.

He’s here, Alison. He’s nearby.

Alison smiled. Bill would have all the answers, all the missing pieces. Over the last two and a half decades she’d grown to trust fate. Not to ask what it had in store for her, but she trusted that it had a game plan for her. She wondered whether Bill too had a voice that whispered to him every now and then.

A voice that promised him that everything was going to turn out fine… if he just did as he was supposed to.

54

DC Rajan was working on Ashburnham Road’s even numbers, heading down the hill, while DC Goh worked the doors on the opposite side of the road. About halfway they would eventually meet up with DC Warren and DI Minter who were doorstepping their way up the hill from Old London Road.

Rajan opened the gate, walked past a tidy front lawn and pressed the doorbell for Number 32. He heard it ring faintly, followed by a high-pitched male voice somewhere inside shout, ‘Arse. Fucking arse!’

Great. Another shitty one. At the last house, he’d had to deal with a miserable bastard who’d greatly resented the fact that he’d had to get up out of his armchair and shuffle to the front door to answer Raj’s inane questions.

A moment later, the outline of a figure appeared through the rippled stained glass and the front door opened.

Raj threw on his cheerful interview smile. ‘Good morning… I’m DC Rajan from Hastings CID,’ he said.

The woman looked to be her sixties, but she was dressed as though she’d just returned from Glastonbury. She was all bangles and tie-dyed maroons and oranges. Her hair was a nest of purple dreadlocks held up by what appeared to be a knitting needle thrust into them. Raj was getting used to finding surprises like this lurking behind Hastings’ front doors. What with the weird and bizarre events that went on all year around – the Jack in the Green, Pirate Day, the May invasions of hairy bikers, the bizarre Bonfire Night parades that looked like some creepy satanic ritual – Raj had come to the conclusion that the entire town was barking mad.

He held up his lanyard for the woman. A pair of spectacles danged from a cord around her neck. She raised them to peer through lenses so thick that they made her magnified eyes look startled.

She smiled. ‘Good morning, DC Rajan. How can I help you, officer?’

‘Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck off!’ screamed a male voice in the house.

‘Sorry. Bad time is it?’ he asked.

‘Oh no, that’s just Fergie,’ she replied.

Raj was about to start explaining what he was doing on her doorstep when he saw something swoop across the hallway behind her. He pointed. ‘Oh, uh… excuse me, I think you’ve got a bird or something trapped in your house.’

‘Fergie,’ she said simply, ‘is my potty-mouthed parrot.’

‘Ah.’ That presumably explained the torrent of profanity.

‘Anyway…’ she prompted, ‘I’m presuming this isn’t just a social visit?’

‘We’re canvassing your neighbours over something that happened around a year ago,’ Raj said. ‘Can I start by taking your name?’

‘I’m Angela Brando,’ she replied.

He jotted it down on his clipboard. ‘And who else lives here?’

‘It’s just me and Fergie,’ she said.

He smiled as he made a note of that too. ‘So, we’re working on a missing persons case. I don’t know if you’re aware of the recent fire down among the net huts in the old town at all…’

She nodded vigorously. ‘Awful news, that.’ She suddenly narrowed her magnified eyes. ‘I do believe it’s the Witch of Rock-a-Nore. She’s struck again.’

‘I’m sorry?’ Raj said, confused.

Angela grinned and waved her hand. ‘Just a silly bit of local folklore. Absolute tourist bunkum. Do go on.’

‘Anyway, you might have heard there was a body found in the hut,’ Raj ploughed on.

She nodded again. ‘Yes, I did hear about that. It was on the news.’

‘We’re in the process of trying to identify the body, and we’re working on the assumption that it might have been this woman.’ He lifted the top page on his clipboard and pulled out a printout of the photo from Alison Jones’s misper report. He handed it to her. ‘We’re asking people up and down the road whether they might have seen her wandering along Ashburnham Road the night before she –’

Angela’s eyes suddenly grew wider. ‘Oh, my goodness,’ she muttered as she stared at the picture.

‘Does her face look familiar?’ asked Raj hopefully.

Angela Brando nodded even more vigorously than before, her unruly crown of dreadlocks fidgeting like a maroon tarantula. ‘Yes. Absolutely I saw this woman.’

‘It’s an old picture,’ Raj cautioned. ‘Take your time.’

She continued to nod. ‘She was much older than this, but it was definitely her.’

‘You saw her? Where?’

‘Right outside my house,’ Angela replied. ‘It was pouring with rain and freezing cold.’ She nodded at her front garden. ‘She was standing beneath that tree.’

Raj turned and noticed a stunted willow tree swaying in the breeze, planted in the pavement just beyond her low garden wall.

‘She was in an awful state and soaked through,’ said Angela. ‘That’s why I brought her in. I let her have my spare room.’

55

Alison lit another roll-up. It was one of her batch of ‘good girl’ rollies with just the slightest bit of added spice. Just enough to scratch the itch, but not enough that it was going to knock her flat out.

She needed to remain alert. Plus, it probably wouldn’t be the smartest move to be blowing out a thick cloud of cannabis-scented smoke just across the road from Hastings Police Station.

Yesterday the weather had been kinder. But this morning the sky had been a dense threatening grey from the get-go. The roof of the bus stop she was sheltering beneath tapped with a few tentative drops of rain.

She’d been here since eight thirty, wondering whether she’d left it too late to catch Bill arriving at work. Assuming, of course, that he was on shift today.

She recalled from her short spell in the Met that CID tended to stick to regular office hours. Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. till 5 or 6 p.m. But, of course, that pattern could be altered by the needs of any particular case.

She’d become increasingly certain that fate wasn’t just whispering in her ear. It was whispering in his too. She wondered whether he was as attuned to that quiet voice as she was, or whether for him it was just some subconscious niggling instinct.

She’d watched cars enter and leave all morning, mostly patrol cars and white police vans. There’d been a handful of civvy cars that she’d studied intently as they lingered beside the bus stop, signalling right to enter the station while waiting for a gap in the traffic on the far side. None of the drivers or passengers had been Bill.

She was considering nipping up the hill to the corner shop to grab a sausage roll and a can of pop when she saw a tall man with sloping shoulders and a scruffy beard, wearing an ill-fitting suit, emerge from the station’s main entrance.

That’s him!

Her heart started hammering in her chest. She felt sick and woozy with the surge of adrenaline.

That was Bill. That was DCI Bill Boyd. It was unmistakably him.

He was walking with a black woman who wore jeans and a green leather jacket. They were chatting animatedly about something as they turned right and headed down the sloping road towards the seafront.

Alison got up from the bus stop’s seat, pulled up the hood of her anorak and, feeling slightly wobbly and light-headed, she began to descend Bohemia Road on the far side, matching their pace, but keeping a dozen yards or so behind them.

She followed them round a large white building, which she realised was a theatre as she emerged on the seafront.

As Bill and his colleague waited at the pedestrian crossing, she noticed him glance over his shoulder. For a moment his gaze rested on her, then the pedestrian crossing began to beep and the pair of them crossed the road together.

Was that fate tapping your shoulder, Bill? Did you feel something?

Alison wondered how she was going to go about this, how she was going to make contact with him. Just charging across the road screaming ‘Bill! Bill!’ was out of the question. She didn’t want to freak him out. She didn’t want this reunion to end up being some awkward and garbled middle-of-the-street encounter, with him backing away from her as though she was some wild bag lady.

And when she did speak to him, it had to be just the two of them, in a place where there was time and space, peace and quiet. She wanted him to feel it was a divine moment of providence… and she most definitely did not want him to know that she’d been stalking him like some demented fan.

Bill and the woman had crossed the road and were heading towards the entrance to the pier opposite. There was a young woman waiting for them on the far side. A young blonde girl with two dogs.

Bill and the black woman spoke with her for a moment, then the black woman left and entered a café on the pier. Bill hugged the girl and took the lead of one of the dogs.

That has to be his daughter.

She remembered him telling her in Hyde Park that he had a grown daughter. He might even have mentioned her name, but she couldn’t remember it if he had. The pair of them ambled along the seafront pedestrian path, then headed right onto the shingle beach.

Alison decided to cross the road so that she could keep them in sight as they descended the sloping beach towards the gently churning waves. They unclipped the dogs and threw tennis balls towards the waves for about five minutes. Then they meandered along the beach towards a funfair and a small boating lake. She spotted, in the distance, the tall huts that the B & B lady had told her about yesterday.

‘Unique to Hastings …’

They looked like ridiculously tall versions of regular beach huts and were all painted black. For some reason, a childhood nursery rhyme came to her.

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,

She had so many children she didn’t know what to do,

She gave them some broth without any bread…

Then whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.

Alison watched as Bill and his daughter grabbed doughnuts and paper cups of coffee from a stall, then sat beside a pitch-and-putt green until they’d finished them. Finally, Bill looked at his watch, hugged his daughter and began striding back the way he’d come.

Alison felt panic bubbling up. He was walking straight towards her, his eyes dead ahead… and she’d carelessly allowed herself to drift too close. For a moment their eyes met and she was certain as his mouth spread slightly that she was seeing the start of a smile, the very beginnings of a glimmer of recognition.

She could feel an electric connection arcing between them as they drew closer, an invisible umbilical cord forming, solidifying, thickening as the last few yards dwindled.

But then he stepped to one side, nodded politely at her… and passed her by.

She turned and watched to see if that look of puzzlement on his face had developed into something more substantial, but he kept going, striding swiftly along the pavement towards the pier.

Alison’s wave of elation – and panic – subsided and the adrenaline drained from her veins, leaving her feeling suddenly exhausted. She sat down on a nearby wall for a moment, to steady her dizziness. She should have eaten something at breakfast.

Stupid. Really stupid.

She slumped forward, elbows on her knees, head hanging, thinking for a moment that she was going to throw up. But the nausea and dizziness passed and she looked up again to see the faint outline of Bill in the distance. His daughter was leading the dogs across the road towards the old town.

Alison decided to follow her.

56

Bill’s house was beautiful. It was a large, grand Victorian property, with tall bay windows downstairs through which she could see a high ceiling with a crystal chandelier hanging from it. The house was joined to an identical twin: two small front lawns, two paths, two garden gates and a low stone wall. There was a small weeping willow growing at the exact midway point beside the stone wall and she wondered whether Bill or his neighbour had claimed it.

Alison crossed Ashburnham Road and stood beneath the willow. As she’d followed Bill’s daughter back home, the thick grey carpet of heavy-looking clouds had doubled down and the first tentative drops of steely cold rain became a steady downpour.

The willow’s lowest drooping branches had been trimmed back on the pavement side of the street, but the rest of it dangled low over the front gardens, giving her a curtain of leaves to hide behind. The people who lived opposite might have been curious about the woman lingering beneath the willow, perhaps presuming she was sheltering from the rain, but she doubted Bill’s daughter, now moving around in the lounge, could see her.

A table lamp winked on, followed by the TV beside the fireplace. One of the dogs, a white spaniel with a brown eye patch, hopped onto a sofa to stand guard in the bay window. For a moment she thought the dog could see her and was worried it would let loose a volley of warning barks. But, like a meerkat, it peered first one way, then the other, before Bill’s daughter shooed it off the sofa and sat down on it herself.

A large mirror hung above the fireplace. In its reflection Alison could see the far wall, the one between both houses. The wall was lined with shelves and endless books.

Alison smiled… She’d always imagined Bill as a reader. When she’d met him in Hyde Park, she thought he seemed the bookie type: reflective, intelligent.

Alison checked her phone. It was gone 2 p.m. If he’d headed back to work, then she would be waiting out here in the rain for another three hours, at least before, he came home.

She decided to head back down the road, to the old town, and kill those hours somewhere warm and dry with a coffee and something to eat.

The Fish House was a chippy doing its best to cosplay as a Cornish tea house outside the lunchtime rush. Mid-afternoon, it sat empty, which suited her perfectly. Alison doubted the owners would mind her taking her time over her coffee and iced bun if she sat in the window. It would remind the bedraggled passers-by that the establishment was open for business.

She looked out across a cobblestone road at the nautical bric-a-brac and tall dark huts of what used to be a functioning fishing village. Rock-a-Nore. She smiled at the charming artefacts of the old town’s fishing past: the large anchor on a flower bed; the hull of an old boat, cut in half and standing vertical, and now acting as an information stand for visitors to the town.

Hastings had a creaking, quirky, schizophrenic charm to it, at least at this end of town. Further up opposite the pier’s entrance were grand old seafront buildings with iron-rail balconies and second-floor sun rooms – built at a time when rich Victorians came south for the summer. Like every seaside town, those places had deteriorated over the decades from pavilions for the rich to scruffy seafront townhouses with patches of peeling paint and growing trails of rust stains beneath the veranda rails.

In the space between the pier and the fishing village, Hastings resembled the kind of garish seaside town that would have had her mother’s lips curling with distaste. It was all jangling arcades and bucket-and-spade shops. The contrast between that and this end – with its antique shops, teashops, an art gallery and an RNLI museum – was stark.

Alison imagined she could be happy living in a place like this. Even on an overcast weekday afternoon with unseasonably cold rain drizzling down the old lead-lined window glass, it felt like a kooky little slice of heaven.

It made perfect sense that Bill lived here rather than anywhere else. And it made sense that he lived in that grand old Victorian house, with its fireplace and endless bookshelves. If she’d discovered him living in some modern-build bachelor flat overlooking an inner city canal, complete with gentrified docks that had been turned into clubs and wine bars, she’d have felt let down.

Because Bill Boyd was an old soul. She sensed that. Behind the scruffy, patchy beard, the craggy face and those glinting eyes lurked the kind of wisdom and empathy that could only be accumulated across centuries. He might be in his fifties, but she sensed his soul was far, far older.

She could forgive him for what he’d done a few years ago. Blocking her like that. Alison realised now that it had been the right thing for him to do. Apart from the fact that he’d been shouldering his own personal grief at the time, she had made an unreasonable demand of him. She’d fixated on the idea that she finally had her eyewitness who was going to prove to the world that she wasn’t a cold-blooded murderer. And when Bill had replied that he was reluctant to do so, she’d badgered him. He’d told her, as patiently as he could, that he hadn’t seen what had happened and that making a statement to the contrary would be at best dishonest. At worst, if it ended up in court, it would have been perjury.

Deep down, she knew that fate hadn’t reunited them so that they could fashion a witness statement that would absolve her. Fate, with its crafty knowing wink, had brought them together for a very different reason.

To be together.

57

Alison managed to keep her window table until five, partly because she had pulled out a notepad and pen from her bag and started scribbling her thoughts down. Perhaps the owners of the Fish House hoped they’d just acquired their very own J. K. Rowling and that one day soon they’d have a blue plaque on the outside their chip shop.

At four thirty, the chippy side of the business woke up and customers began arriving, grumbling at the unseasonably cold and miserable winter weather outside. By five fifteen, she was getting looks from the owners that suggested they really needed their table back.

Alison made her way back up Old London Road and turned right onto Ashburnham Road, climbing the steady ascent and feeling the burn in her thighs as the cold rain spattered her anorak.

But none of that bothered her. The surging adrenaline was back in her veins. She felt ecstatic. She pretty much knew how this evening was going to play out. A car would pull up in the next hour or so. Bill would climb out, weary from a long day’s work and let himself into his house. There’d be five or ten minutes of chaotic happy dogs and ‘How was your day?’ from his daughter, then he’d no doubt settle in for the night. He’d have his dinner and then… what?

Alison idly wondered what he watched in the evenings. He’d watch the news, for sure. But not the silly magazine shows or soaps. When they came on, she bet that he’d wander across that grand lounge and pulled a book from one of the shelves. It would be Hemingway. Or Dickens.

Alison reached his house at twenty to six. There was no sign of a car just yet.

From her sheltered spot beneath the willow, she could see that there was a roaring fire in the grate. Quite right. It was getting unpleasantly cold and she suspected a large house like this with its high ceilings needed a good head start to bring the temperature up of an evening.

The dog with the brown patch over one eye was on the back of the sofa again and looking out of the bay window, waiting for Daddy to come home.

She smiled. What a perfect home, a perfect little family.

But… an incomplete one.

There seemed to be no apparent sign of a partner in Bill’s life. There were no discernible feminine touches in the living room. The walls of the lounge had been painted a very masculine dark racing green. The curtains and blinds were a bland and perfunctory vanilla. There was no feminine frippery on the mantelpiece and no warm-coloured cushions to soften the almost ‘gentleman’s club’ look of the lounge.

Bill’s single. There’s no doubt about it.

Through the drizzle, she saw headlights approaching from the bottom of Ashburnham Road. The cloud cover was so thick and heavy over Hastings now that it had produced a preternatural twilight. She decided to move from beneath the willow to the far side of the road so that she wouldn’t be caught in the beam if that was Bill returning home.

She stepped back into the overgrown leaves of a bush as the headlights grew brighter. The car hissed past in the rain and carried on up the hill. A false alarm.

Alison decided it might be more sensible to remain on this side of the road for now. The bush afforded some shelter from the rain, but, more importantly, it concealed her from any headlights. When she finally said hello to Bill… she wanted it to be right. Perfect. Not weird and definitely not because he’d spotted her cowering in a bush.

Another pair of headlights twinkled at the bottom of the road and slowly climbed the slope. As it drew closer, Alison stepped back once again into the wet leaves of the bush. The car signalled left to indicate that it was going to pull over. Her heart started pounding in her chest again. She knew this had to be Bill.

The car slowed down and came to a halt beside his house. She heard the handbrake go on and the engine switch off. The windscreen reflected the dull grey sky so she couldn’t quite see the driver, but a moment later a woman emerged from the driver’s side.

She looked to be in her mid to late forties. She had long auburn hair tied up into a messy bun and was wearing work clothes: a dark blazer, white blouse and a pale blue-grey skirt.

She was very pretty.

She carried a shoulder bag that looked as though it might contain a small laptop, a tablet or notebook. There was something about her that suggested ‘social worker’. Perhaps it was the car. It looked like the kind of modest runaround a local council worker could afford.

The woman opened the garden gate and walked up the path to Bill’s front door.

What if she digs out door keys?

Alison felt her stomach flop over queasily. If the woman had keys, it had to mean that Bill wasn’t single. It meant she’d got everything wrong. It meant everything she’d convinced herself about him was completely –

But the woman knocked. Alison felt a dizzying wave of relief wash over her as the eye-patch dog in the window leaped down from the sofa and out of view. She heard a muffled barrage of barking over the steady hiss of the rain.

A moment later, Bill’s daughter and the woman stepped into the lounge. The woman shed her jacket and bag and began to pet the dogs. Bill’s daughter mouthed something like ‘Cuppa?’ The woman nodded, and the daughter disappeared from the lounge.

Alison felt her heart, her soul, seesawing, as though she was standing on a plank, balanced on a pinhead and dangling over a cliff edge. There seemed to be some degree of familiarity between the women. Bill’s daughter obviously knew her.

Perhaps she’s a therapist? Alison knew the police had a number of those for officers struggling with the job, with PTSD. Although it seemed an odd time of day for a counselling session to be scheduled.

Was it a colleague? A fellow CID officer? That felt more plausible and slightly more reassuring. Not only were affairs between officers a big no-no, they were also stressful and usually short-lived.

His daughter returned with a couple of mugs and the woman sat down on the sofa, her head bobbing as she talked animatedly.

She could be a solicitor or an estate agent perhaps? Maybe even a financial advisor here for an update meeting, inked in by Bill for after work.

Alison spotted another car turning onto Ashburnham Road. The headlights glinted through the drizzle and it came to a halt outside Bill’s house, nose-to-bumper behind the woman’s car.

Her heart thumped heavily. She heard the handbrake. The engine switched off, the headlights winked out, and in the overcast and premature twilight gloom she could made out the dim outline of a man in the driver’s seat.

She recognised his silhouette instantly.

It was Bill. He didn’t get straight out but remained seated.

A thought filled her with terror. Has he spotted me? Or was it something else? Was some tingling instinct holding him there in his seat? Could he sense the approaching ripple of a life-changing event? She wondered whether fate was softly blowing on the back of his neck, whispering to him that the missing fragment from his life was in the vicinity.

She fought an overwhelming compulsion to emerge from her concealed position and hurry across the road towards him. To tap on his window and smile… and to see that smile slowly reflected back as recognition dawned on his face. In that moment, as he wound the window down, there wouldn’t be any need for blurted explanations or apologies.

Just a simple truth.

‘We need each other, Bill.’

The door to the car finally opened and Bill got out, a jacket over his arm and a lunchbox in his hand. He slammed the door shut, hurried through the gate and up the path, fishing in his pocket for his door keys as he went.

A moment later, he was inside the house and out of the rain. She heard the muffled sound of the dogs barking once more and she watched as Bill entered the lounge.

He squeezed his daughter’s shoulder. Then he turned to smile at the woman who’d been waiting for him.

She got up from the sofa and all hope for Alison died in the space of one heartbeat…

They embraced.

58

Chapter 58

‘She stayed over?’ said Boyd. ‘Right next door to me?’

DC Rajan nodded. ‘I got that right, yeah? You live at Number Thirty?’

Minter nodded on Boyd’s behalf. ‘Big Victorian house divided into two.’

Raj nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s the one.’

Boyd shook his head. ‘Jesus Christ.’ He was aware that everyone in the Incident Room was looking at him. Coincidences didn’t fly here. They didn’t fit into CID thinking in any way, shape or form. Nothing happened by chance.

‘Boss…’ Minter began warily. ‘I’ve got to ask… can you think of any reason why Alison Jones might have done something like that?’

Shit. She came looking for you… and actually found you, mate. God only knew why she’d got it into her head to do that. He’d made it very clear to her the last time he’d replied to her increasingly hectoring texts that he wasn’t going to go public as her eyewitness, and he wasn’t going to sign his name to a false statement.

‘Boss?’ pressed Minter. ‘Is it possible she might have known you?’

‘Why do you ask that?’ Boyd said, instantly realising how defensive that had sounded.

‘You were both in the Met at about the same time, right?’ Minter said.

Boyd shook his head. ‘I didn’t know her and I don’t think we could have overlapped. What year did she resign?’

As Minter checked his notes, Boyd realised that he had well and truly crossed the line.

‘She was suspended in 2004 and resigned in 2005,’ replied Minter.

‘So, I joined in 2005,’ said Boyd.

Minter’s eyes remained on him, narrowing slightly.

‘It just seems… odd,’ said Minter, ‘that you knew her name in the list and then she rocks up right next to your house.’

Boyd wondered whether Minter was nudging him to come clean. Did that suggest Minter was suspicious about his ‘miraculous’ moment of recognising Alison Jones’ face in the misper list? Had he done some digging and uncovered some solid bombshell that he was about to drop? Surely not. Minter would have pulled him aside and asked him directly – friend to friend – not ambushed him here in the Incident Room with everyone, including Sutherland and Hatcher present.

‘No,’ Boyd said finally. ‘I really don’t recall crossing paths with her. And I honestly can’t imagine any issue she might have had with me.’ He shrugged. ‘Or even that she knew about me.’

He caught Hatcher’s beady eyes resting on him too, her two perfectly sculpted brows locked together suspiciously. But, after a pause, she nodded, almost imperceptibly.

‘Well… Hastings isn’t exactly a sprawling metropolis,’ she said, ‘and you’re only a few minutes away from the old town.’

Boyd nodded, relieved.

He wondered if Hatcher was getting guilty vibes from him too. If so, it seemed she wasn’t going to press him just now. She glanced at her watch.

‘All right, it’s five, ladies and gents.’ She pushed her chair back. ‘Let’s call it a day, DI Minter, and pick this up tomorrow. I’ll see you in my office in the morning and we’ll work on the wording for a press briefing.’

The others pushed their chairs back noisily as Minter nodded. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

Boyd parked the car outside his house and looked at Ozzie, who was in his usual place on the back of the sofa and waiting patiently for him.

He climbed out and paused. Ozzie cocked his head curiously.

‘Just a minute, old boy,’ he muttered.

Boyd walked past the willow tree, pushed open his neighbour’s gate and walked up the front path. He pressed the doorbell before he had a chance to talk himself out of it.

He’d been living here for three and a quarter years and in all that time he’d spoken to the woman twice. To be honest, he’d shared more words – over the garden fence – with that bloody parrot of hers.

He was about to turn away and head back down the path when the door opened. His neighbour had the bloody bird on her shoulder like she was Long John Silver.

‘Bill, isn’t it?’ she said.

‘Uh, yeah…’ Damn it, he’d forgotten her first name.

‘Angela,’ she replied, smiling. ‘In case you’d forgotten. I had one of your colleagues round earlier this morning.’

‘Yup, I’m actually here about that. Do you mind if I have a quick chat with you inside?’

Her smile widened. ‘Of course – come in!’

She led him into the dimly lit interior. She was clearly a hoarder, but not of regular things. An almost life-sized wooden sculpture of a Navajo chief holding a tomahawk greeted him in the hallway.

‘Please do excuse the mess,’ she said as she steered him into her front room. ‘I’m sorting myself out for a car boot sale this weekend, so everything’s out of boxes and higgledy-piggledy. Take a seat,’ she said, settling down into a high-backed armchair. Fergie, hopped off her shoulder and onto the back of the seat. ‘Now, this must be about that poor woman they found in the net huts, right?’

‘Yup.’ He nodded. ‘My colleague told me that about this time last year you offered her a room for the night?’

Angela nodded. ‘Do I have to tell you the same story that I told him?’

He smiled. ‘I’ve got the basics. You let her in. Had a chat and a cuppa with her for a while, then you offered her a bed for the night.’

She nodded again. ‘I showed her my guest bedroom and told her I’d make us both a full English in the morning.’ She shrugged. ‘But when I got up the next morning, she was already gone.’

‘Did she take anything from you?’ he asked.

Angela shook her head. ‘On the contrary… She left me a five-pound note and some coins on the pillow. And a thank-you note.’

‘Okay.’ Boyd decided against getting his notebook out. He didn’t want her to think that this was a formal police visit. ‘Can you tell me what you can remember about her behaviour?’

‘She was pretty out of it,’ Angela replied. ‘Not just drunk, you know, but rather cannabis. I could smell it all over her. She’d also been in a fight with someone that night. She had a scrape on her cheek and was deeply distressed. She was freezing cold and soaking wet too. It was a horrible evening.’

Boyd nodded. ‘Yes, I believe there was an altercation down on George Street that night. The patrol officer decided to take her home, but for some reason she ended up telling them that she lived on Ashburnham Road.’

Angela leant forward. ‘We talked,’ she said. ‘And she told me all about you…’

59

Alison watched the patrol car do a three-point turn and head back down Ashburnham Road to deal with the other woman. The bitch who’d tried to mug her. Alison had spent the last hour in the pub talking to her as though she was a long-lost old friend. The cider had loosened her tongue, and she’d pretty much told Jodie her life story. Jodie had listened and nodded sympathetically at all the right moments. But then, as headed to the toilet, she’d spotted Jodie rifling around in her bag. She’d hurried back to grab it and that had turned into a scuffle, with Jodie screaming to everyone that it was her bag and that Alison was trying to steal it from her.

The barman had dragged them and the bag outside and slammed the door on them. Jodie refused to give up, though. She knew that Alison had some gear on her and the scuffle had turned into messy hair-pulling, screaming catfight and they’d failed to notice the flicker of blue lights approaching.

Alison had somehow managed to convince the female police officer that she was the aggrieved party and had regained custody of her bag. Luckily, the copper offered to drive her home, which was the perfect opportunity to get back to Ashburnham Road. It wasn’t until she’d climbed out of the patrol car and the officer had driven off that she’d noticed her special tin had gone.

Fucking bitch.

Alison turned back to look at Bill’s house. All the lights were off. Bill, his daughter and his partner were now no doubt tucked up in bed and fast asleep. She stood in the freezing rain wishing she could roll herself a fat one and make the aching misery – no, scratch that – make the stinging betrayal drift away. To be cocooned in a cosy bubble of who-gives-a-fuck. That would be nice.

For God’s sake! You weren’t supposed to be WITH someone, Bill!

It seemed as though fate had played a cruel joke on her. Teased her along the coast from Southwick to Hastings, letting her believe that there would be a happy-ever-after waiting for her.

And for what?

‘Fuck you,’ she muttered.

She heard a latch chain slide, and for a moment she thought it had come from Bill’s house. She wondered if she might hear footsteps in the hissing rain and find his silhouette emerging into the sulphur-hued street light. Had he finally sensed she was near? Perhaps he had peered out of the window above and seen her. And now, as he approached, he would smile. He would recognise her and everything would be all right.

But the noise had come from the other side of the house. In the open doorwy was a woman in a dressing gown, holding a torch in one hand and an umbrella in the other.

‘You okay over there?’ the woman called softly.

Alison was tempted to dart beneath the willow tree again. But there was no point. She’d been spotted. She emerged from beneath the branches and took a few steps forward.

The torchlight settled on Alison, temporarily blinding her. Her breath rolled out in clouds caught in the torch’s beam.

‘Oh my God… are you all right, love?’ the woman asked, her voice full of concern. ‘Have you been attacked?’

Alison touched the side of her face. There was a graze on the side of her temple where she’d fallen on the cobblestones outside the pub.

‘And good grief! You’re soaked through!’ said the woman, approaching the gate. Alison felt the woman’s hand around her own. ‘You’re freezing! Let’s get you inside so you can warm up, and then I’ll call the police.’

Alison let the woman gently pull her inside.

‘I’ll get you a nice cup of tea and a blanket,’ the woman said as she closed it behind them.

Alison found herself looking at a woman wearing an orange kimono and fluffy pink slippers.

‘Were you… assaulted?’ she asked. ‘Did some bloody man do this to you?’

Alison shook her head.

‘Here…’ The woman pulled a thick coat from a peg and wrapped it around Alison’s shoulders. ‘Come into the lounge. I’ll stoke up the log burner and make the tea.’

She led Alison into her front room and sat her down in a winged-back leather chair. Then the woman squatted down in front of the wood burner, opened the doors and threw a couple of logs onto the glowing base of embers. She gave the embers a couple of prods with a poker, then closed the hatch.

‘Let me sort out the tea,’ she said, ‘then I’ll call the police.’

‘No!’ said Alison. She shivered. ‘Please? D-don’t.’

The woman narrowed her eyes.

‘They just dropped me off here. I w-wasn’t attacked,’ explained Alison, vaguely aware she was now shivering violently and slurring her words. ‘I j-just… I g-got into a fight…’

‘A fight?’

‘A p-pub… fight.’ Alison smiled. ‘You should s-see the other w-woman.’

‘Oh, I see.’ The woman raised a disapproving brow.

Five minutes later, the wood-burner fire was projecting flickering light onto their faces. Alison had a mug of tea in one hand and the last bite of a toasted, buttered crumpet in the other. And she had a name for this kind woman.

‘Thank you, Angela. I’m…’

‘You’re still pretty drunk by the sound of it,’ Angela said. ‘The local weatherman said it’s going to get down to freezing on the south coast tonight. You’d have frozen to death out there. Is there anybody you want me to call? Anybody who might be worrying about where you are?’

Alison shook her head.

‘Where do you live?’ Angela asked.

‘I’m not from round here. I’m staying in a B and B in Barrow Road or something. Can’t remember.’

‘Oh, I know it. I know the ownere,’ Angela said. She handed Alison a towel. ‘Let’s get you dry and warm, and I’ll see if there’s a cab who can run you back there.’

‘I lost my room key,’ replied Alison. That, too, had been in her tin. ‘I can’t let myself back in.’

Angela looked up at the clock hanging above the fireplace. It was gone 1 a.m. ‘Ah… and Wendy doesn’t live there, right?’

Alison nodded. ‘She s-said she’s back in at seven to m-make breakfast.’

‘Then you might as well sleep here tonight and we’ll sort you out tomorrow, yes?’ Angela said.

Alison nodded.

They sat in silence for a while, gazing at the flames. Then Angela asked ‘What are you on? I can smell it on you.’

‘Just a bit of dope,’ Alison said.

‘But it’s not just dope, is it?’ Angela leant forward and studied Alison closely. ‘Your eyes, your pupils. I can smell the added chemicals. It’s spice, isn’t it?’

Alison looked away.

‘Oh, I know all about that vile stuff…’ Angela continued. ‘My son started smoking it because it was far cheaper than the real thing.’ She sighed. ‘And it destroyed him.’

‘It… it helps. It n-numbs things….’ muttered Alison.

Angela turned to gaze at the flickering flames again. ‘That’s what he used to say. He said it made everything bad go away. He said it was like taking a holiday from life.’

Alison nodded. Yes, that was a good description.

Angela looked at her. ‘My boy said that to me the same morning he decided to step out in front of a truck.’

60

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Boyd. ‘So sorry.’

Angela shook her head. ‘I lost him nearly ten years ago now.’

She looked at her parrot. He was on the back of a chair and currently doing a little housekeeping on his ruffled feathers.

‘Fergie still blurts out phrases he picked up from him.’ She smiled sadly. ‘Sometimes it’s like Ian’s still living here, especially when Fergie resorts to using potty language.’ She sipped her tea. ‘So, getting back to Alison. We talked for an hour or so before I showed her up to my spare bedroom and –’ she leant forward again – ‘like I said, I know all about her story.’

Boyd flexed uncomfortably. ‘You’re talking about the shooting?’

Angela shrugged. ‘And her guardian angel.’

He had a suspicion that feigning ignorance wouldn’t wash. All the same, he cocked his head curiously. ‘Guardian angel?’

Angela raised a brow. ‘You, DCI Bill Boyd.’

He dipped his head.

‘She told me all about you saving her life as a youngster and again, later, as a cop.’

He realised there was no point keeping up the pretence, and so he told her.

Everything.

Angela regarded him with curiosity. ‘You said she wanted you to come forward as an eyewitness?’

He nodded. ‘She became very insistent. And I wasn’t in a good place at the time. And… I’d have been supplying a false witness statement. I didn’t see what happened. So, yeah, I ghosted her.’

He glanced out of the window. It was coming up to six and Charlotte would be home soon. ‘I thought indulging her any longer wasn’t good for her mental state or mine.’ He shrugged. ‘Honestly? I cut contact with her and hadn’t thought about her since.’

‘She didn’t mention any of that when I spoke to her last year,’ Angela said. ‘She didn’t seem interested in clearing her name at all. Although she did say she felt guilty for hounding you.’

‘So, what was she here for? Outside my house?’ Boyd asked. ‘What did she want?’

‘She seemed to have got it into her head that… the two of you were meant to be together,’ Angela replied.

‘What?’ He stared at her, eyes rounded. ‘Together!’

‘As in “written in the stars”, fate, destiny…’ Angela glanced at the lounge window as a DPD van rumbled past, heading up the hill. ‘She seemed to have created some fairy-tale idea in her head that everything that had happened to her in the past, and to you, was leading up to some happy ending… a coming together for the two of you.’

‘Christ.’ Boyd rubbed his hand across his face.

‘That is… until she saw you with your partner. Sharon?’

‘Charlotte,’ Boyd said.

‘She saw the two of you through your window and it all came crashing down around her.’ Angela nodded at her bay window and the small willow tree gently swaying outside. ‘She was right there, under that tree. Watching you.’

Stalking felt like the more accurate word to him. He turned to Angela. ‘Christ! Why didn’t you come round and tell me about any of this? She could have been… dangerous.’

Angela frowned. ‘Oh, behave – she wasn’t dangerous. I wouldn’t have let her stay in my house if I’d thought she was dangerous. Anyway, the next morning, she was gone. She left me some money, bless her, and a note.’

‘Do you still have the note?’ Boyd asked.

Angela shook her head. ‘It was just a short message. Thanking me for the bed, the tea and the chat. She said that she could see things more clearly and was going to sort things out.’

‘Sort things out?’ Boyd echoed.

‘I assumed she meant getting herself off the drugs,’ Angela said.

‘And you never saw her again? Not in the next few days?’

Angela shook her head. ‘No, I haven’t seen or heard from her since.’

61

Alison awoke to the sound of birds. The overly cheerful ones that started their day loudly and not at some civilised hour but with the first greying of dawn.

For a moment she lay perfectly still, confused and a little panicked by the unfamiliar room. She was in a double bed. Frantically, she turned her head. She was alone. Her mind was a complete blank. The last thing she remembered was heading downhill towards the old town to drink herself stupid.

Through the fog of condensation on the window she could see the top of a small willow tree, silhouetted against the gently lightening sky.

And then bits started to came back to her. A woman had rescued her from the cold night.

She looked around. This was the woman’s spare room. A large bedroom with a bay window and a view of the houses opposite and the sea beyond. It was cluttered with several tailor’s mannequins, a sewing machine, a table with a crafting mat and shelves laden with offcuts of material and craft supplies, so Alison guessed it was her hobby room.

She turned to glance at the bed’s wooden headboard and the wall it was pushed up against.

The wall dividing the two houses.

On the other side of this old wallpapered wall could be Bill’s bedroom. And if his bedroom was a mirror image and his double bed, like this bed, was up against the very same wall, he could be a foot or so away from her. If it weren’t for the inches of bricks and mortar separating them, his head might be close enough to touch.

His cheek close enough to stroke.

Her memory of yesterday and last night was patchwork of outright blanks interwoven with blurry vignettes.

She remembered seeing Bill come home from work.

She remembered that woman she thought might have been an estate agent or a social worker embracing him. Oh yes… she remembered that.

She remembered feeling a sense of vertigo, like an elevator dropping too quickly, the ground beneath her feet suddenly gone and feeling as though she was going to throw up when she saw them.

She remembered walking back down that sloping hill towards the old town, in the pouring, freezing rain. And she remembered the fight.

Her head was pounding. She must have downed seven or eight half-pint glasses of cider and she’d had a couple of spliffs too.

She vaguely recalled sitting with the woman, Angela, beside a flickering fireplace, drinking tea, eating a crumpet and sharing confidences…

Oh shit! How much did I tell her?

Her heart started racing. Last night she’d made a decision. A bold one. An irreversible one. Either she was all in or all out. Either there was something at work, some force, some greater plan… or there wasn’t.

God. She hoped she hadn’t been so flipping stoned last night that she’d told Angela about that. She couldn’t have, Alison reasoned. If she had, Angela would surely have called the police. And she would have woken up in custody or in a psych ward.

How could she explain to anyone else the reason why she sounded bonkers wasn’t because she’d gone insane… It was that the world around her had taken a wrong turn somewhere along the line. She felt as if she’d boarded a train for Paris but had somehow been rerouted to Scunthorpe.

The only plan that made any sense to her was to get off. The. Fucking. Train.

The solution made perfect sense. She would be with Bill. They would be together.

Just not in this world.

She turned to check the softly ticking clock on the bedside table. It was 5.23 a.m.

She sat up in the bed, feeling her head throb as she did so. She was definitely sober now and the spice fog had gone. She was in her right mind.

And she was damn well going through with her plan.

She caught sight of her jeans and T-shirt hanging over the back of a chair. She got up, walked over and felt them. They were still soaked through. Looking out of the window at the grey-blue sky and the thick condensation on the glass, she could tell it was still freezing cold outside. Then she glanced around the room. Angela clearly made her own clothes or at least customised them. Boxes were stuffed with eccentric clothes that she presumably had plans to disassemble and refashion.

Alison fumbled her way through them until she found a pair of dark corduroy trousers, a jumper and a navy hoodie. She pulled them on, all of them far too big for her skinny frame. But they were dry at least.

She dug into the pocket of her wet jeans and pulled out the last of her money. The change from last night’s binge – a fiver and some coins. She set them out on the pillow. She had no idea how much Angela had paid – if anything – for the clothes she was helping herself to, but she felt obliged to leave her something.

She spotted a pen and a pad of writing paper on the worktable and scribbled out a quick thank-you note, which she set it beside the money on the pillow.

Her name was going to be all over tomorrow’s evening news. Her life story would be rehashed once again, but this time the tossers like Simon Fulwell would crow that they’d been right about her from the very start… that they’d always known that Alison Jones wasn’t just a bad apple… She was rotten to the core.

62

Boyd emerged from Angela’s house after thanking her again for the tea and the chat.

‘Don’t go back to being a grumpy stranger,’ she said, and smiled.

He nodded. ‘Right.

She closed the front door and he walked down her short garden path to the gate. As he pulled it open, he glanced at the small willow tree that marked the midpoint between their two front doors.

Alison Jones had been exactly there a year ago. Looking straight into his lounge.

What was that film with Glenn Close? The bunny-boiler one? The thought of Alison lingering in the dark beneath those drooping leaves gave him those vibes. That level of stalking was something he should have thought about. She could have been dangerous. He shuddered.

‘What’re you up to there, Mr Boyd? Catching flies?’

Through the swaying leaves, he finally noticed Charlotte standing beside her car. She’d been watching him.

He stepped round the tree. Charlotte didn’t need to know that Alison Jones had been standing right there twelve months ago. Not with the terrifying nightmare she’d been through with her ex not so very long ago. Charlotte had been pretty stoic about that, along with everything else Boyd had put her through in the last year or so. There was no point adding to it with something may or may no have actually happened.

Thank God.

His eyes settled on the wheelie bins parked in a jumble against the low garden wall.

‘I was returning next door’s green bin,’ he said. ‘It was plonked over by our gate.’

She gave him a kiss. ‘Well, that’s very neighbourly of you.’ She opened the gate and led the way to their front door. She was holding a shopping bag in one hand. ‘Sorry I’m so late home this evening. We had a last-minute screw-up at the theatre. The entire front row of seats was double-booked for the show and I had to smooth a lot of very ruffled feathers.’

He grimaced. ‘Ouch.’

‘I stopped in at Tesco on the way home…’ She waggled her shopping bag and it clinked gently. She pulled a guilty face. ‘For some liquid therapy.’

He smiled. ‘Good idea. I could do with a glass or two. It’s been a long day.’

‘How so?’ she asked as he slotted his key in the front door.

‘We finally managed to ID the body in the hut,’ he told her.

‘Was it Alison Jones?’ she asked.

He nodded as the door swung inwards and Ozzie and Mia appeared, Ozzie’s muzzle already forensically probing the gap in the Tesco bag.

‘Yes, Ozzie,’ said Charlotte. ‘Cheeses for Mummy and Daddy… and sausages for you.’

63

For a police officer, he was surprisingly careless. The side gate to the back garden wasn’t bolted, and the dog flap in his back door was large enough for her to reach up and turn the key on the inside. In fact, Alison was so skinny these days she suspected she could have just about shimmied through the flap.

She entered Bill’s house without making the slightest noise. She looked around the kitchen. It was tiny. She’d expected something grander in a house this size. Each white appliance was barely a step or an arm’s length away from the others.

Alison stood perfectly still, listening to the old Victorian house’s bones creak and tick as the wind and rain buffeted it. It reminded her of her mother’s old farmhouse. Never completely silent. Never completely still.

She reached for the knife block on the counter and pulled out a long kitchen knife.

He has two dogs, she reminded herself. She suspected they were bedroom dogs – either curled up on the end of his bed or lying in dog beds on the floor beside him and his partner, otherwise they’d have materialised at the sound of the dog flap gently clacking shut.

You going to deal with them too? If she had to. Maybe. Yes.

She’d have to be quick. Up the stairs, into his room, across the floor and right into his neck with the blade before he had a chance to stir and fend her off. The dogs would be barking from the moment she stepped into the room. She’d have mere seconds.

Bill had to go first.

And then a quick and deep slash up her own wrist. She’d have to mean it. The worst scenario of all would be to successfully free him from this shitty world only for her to be marooned in it, facing a trial and a life sentence for his murder.

We have to go together.

She stepped through into a large dining room, the dark walls and dark oak table only dimly illuminated by the pallid grey light leaking in through the small window. Then she made her way stealthily to the stairs. To her right, she noticed an office-slash-man cave just off the front hallway.

Ben had had his own man cave, cluttered with the detritus of his messy 3D-printing hobby, with offcuts of plastic littering his desk. God knows how many silly, pointless little plastic figurines he’d produced in there.

Curiosity drove her to peer inside Bill’s sanctum sanctorum. Was he a tinkerer too? She pushed the door gently to see books and DVDs haphazardly populating shelves, a dry-wipe calendar on one wall, and a desk with a monitor and computer. A few small framed pictures stood beside the monitor and, once more curiosity overcame her.

She found herself looking at a smiling sandy-haired woman in her thirties. Beside her was a little boy with blond tufts of hair, staring boggle-eyed at a birthday cake with three candles. A fragment of time captured in the moment before those three tiny flames were snuffed out.

Alison smiled. Noah. He looked adorable.

She could imagine in another world that she and Bill might have made a Noah together.

She had an overwhelming belief that they would slide into darkness in this world and wake up in one where everything made sense. Where she’d awake in the bed, turn over and drowsily kiss him good morning.

The window rattled with fresh raindrops and stirred her from her thoughts.

It’s time, Alison.

She backed out of Bill’s office, returned to the stairs and gently tested the first step with her modest weight. There was no creak. But best all the same, she thought, to take each step right against the wall.

She thumbed the edge of her blade as she silently climbed the stairs. It wasn’t butcher-sharp, but it wasn’t dull either. It would have to go all the way in, though – all the way to the wooden handle, to be absolutely certain.

And they would be together. Eternally. In a better world.

Will he smile, Alison? When you kiss him in the mornings? Or will he recoil in horror?

She shook her head firmly.

He’ll smile.

They’d be a different Bill Boyd and a different Alison Jones. One no longer troubled by nightmares and fleeting images of her daughter’s hand burnt to a crisp, her face puffy and purple. And no fleeting images of Tyrone Nelson, on his knees, pleading for his life.

It didn’t matter now anyway. All that belonged in another time.

And it was time to make it so.

She was on the top step when the silence was shattered by the sound of a wailing baby.

Then a dog barked.

She heard the deep rumble of Bill’s voice, softly cursing, and floorboards groaning beneath his weight.

She found herself scurrying back down the stairs, no longer worrying about them creaking beneath her. She hurried as fast as she could to the kitchen, through the back door and out into the grey light of the dawning day.

64

Chapter 64

‘There is no escaping the fact that we let Alison Jones down,’ said Chief Superintendent Hatcher sombrely.

The press room was rammed to the gills this time round. Minter stood to the right of Hatcher as she gave the briefing, trying not to look like a spare wheel.

‘And by “we”, I mean not just the Met but the entire police force,’ Hatcher continued. ‘Alison’s time with us ended with a tragedy that wasn’t of her making. She was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and whatever view you take on the death of Tyrone Nelson, it can’t be denied that she displayed incredible courage in confronting an armed man, alone and without any backup.’

She paused and looked up from her notes. ‘Her career wasn’t brought to an end by a gunshot injury. It was brought to an end as a result of trial by media. Her life was blighted by those who continued to hound her. The final blow for Alison was the unfortunate death of her daughter and the accusations of abuse and neglect that followed her to the very end.’

Minter nodded beside her as the cameras clicked and flashed.

The news that the mummified body in the hut was none other than a national hero from twenty-five years ago had managed to percolate to the wider, national news ecosystem and hence the regular attendees – the Argus, Hastings Star, the Sussex News – had all been shunted to the back of the press room by the Mail, the Sun, Sky and even someone from an American news station.

‘Alison deserved better,’ Hatcher concluded, then stepped back from the bank of microphones. She nodded at Minter.

He stepped up, unconsciously stroked his perfectly groomed beard, then wrapped his hands firmly around the edge of the podium as though he was about to lift it above his head and do squats. ‘Thank you, ma’am. Right, ladies and gents… I’ll take those questions now.’

The journalist directly in front of him spoke first. ‘Gary Slater, Mail. We’ve heard the cause of death was hypothermia, that she froze to death. Is that right?’

Minter shook his head. ‘Not quite. The toxicology report indicates that she was rendered unconscious by the concentrated toxic paint fumes inside the hut. It had been painted inside and out earlier that day. The fumes would have overwhelmed her.’

He pointed at another journalist. ‘Yes, you. Go on.’

Boyd felt Okeke nudge his arm and turned to look at her. She gestured that she was heading outside for a cigarette and raised her brows. He nodded and they stepped out quietly from the back of the press room and into the car park, which was packed with news vans.

She pulled out a ciggy, lit it up and then blew out a rolling cloud. ‘He’s getting good at this now, isn’t he?’

‘Minty? Yup, he’s got it all nailed,’ Boyd replied.

They stood in silence, listening to the muted voices coming from the press room.

‘What a shitty way to end up,’ said Okeke after a while. ‘A mummified corpse in a hut.’

He nodded.

She glanced his way. ‘Bit weird that she ended up crashing at your neighbour’s place the night before she died.’

Boyd shrugged. ‘The lady next door’s a bit of a character, shall we say. I think she’s one of those people with more heart than sense.’

‘She in the habit of taking in crazy people and nutcases, is she?’

He huffed. ‘She’s a bit of a nutcase herself. And speaking of nutcases… How’re things going with Jay? Any more news on that front?’

‘Karl’s picking up his passport in person in east London tomorrow,’ she replied.

‘When’s he flying out?’ Boyd asked.

‘As soon as,’ she said.

‘Good.’ He nodded. ‘It’ll be good to get Jay back home in one piece.’

‘He’s a complete knob,’ Okeke sighed. ‘But he’s my nob.’ She took another long pull on the cigarette. ‘I didn’t realise how much I love the dumb fucker.’

Boyd shook his head. ‘Romantic as always, Sam.’

She shrugged. ‘I am. I just don’t do the whole lovey-dovey thing.’ She glanced at him. ‘Oh, I heard a rumour that you’ve been poached.’ Her brows bounced gently. ‘Offered an opportunity…’

‘Hmm?’

‘A promotion opportunity? Elsewhere?’ she said.

He wondered how the hell she knew about that. He sighed. Nothing seemed to escape Okeke’s bat ears. ‘It’s an invitation from DCI Yolanda Williams to have a chat,’ he replied. ‘Nothing more.’

‘Oh God, not her!’ Okeke rolled her eyes.

‘It’s just a chat, Sam.’

‘About what?’

‘I have no bloody idea, but I suspect that was deliberate on her part… to pique my curiosity.’

‘You going to chat with her, then?’ Okeke asked.

He shrugged. ‘Yeah. Maybe.’

Okeke frowned. ‘You’re not going to bugger off back to London, are you?’

‘If it’s an opportunity that requires a relocation, then forget it,’ he replied. ‘I’m perfectly happy living here. I know this place is barking mad but –’ he smiled – ‘Hastings is a keeper for me, I think.’

65

’Do you think it was a suicide attempt?’ asked the Sun journalist.

Chief Superintendent Hatcher stepped forward.

‘I’ll take this, DI Minter,’ she said. She paused for a moment before speaking again. ‘To be honest, I want to think this was a tragic accident. Because the alternative would be that we truly let down a vulnerable woman. The media that hounded her and the social media trolls who pestered her relentlessly have to remind themselves that, in this country at least, a person is innocent until proven –’

‘Turn it over, would you, love? The Chase is on the other side.’

The waitress sighed and reached for the remote control that was beside the coffee machine. Chief Superintendent Hatcher’s face was replaced by Bradley Walsh’s. The waitress looked at the trucker on the stool before her. He wasn’t even watching the bloody telly. He was playing some stupid game on his phone, swiping away with his thumb while he shovelled the last scraps of an all-day breakfast into his mouth like some lumberjack feeding a wood-chipper.

She reached for the coffee pot. Donny’s Diner was American-themed. A crappy attempt at one of those capsule-trailer diners that had existed once upon a time in the fifites, complete with flickering neon lights and a jukebox.

‘Need me to top you up… sir?’ she asked.

He looked from his phone to his cup. ‘Yeah, go on then, love.’ His gaze went to her face, then to the name tag pinned on her chest. ‘Ta, Violet.’

‘You’re welcome,’ she replied flatly as she emptied the dregs of the coffee pot into his cup. The refill was supposed to come with a smile, but she was too fucking tired for that and he looked like the kind of customer who’d take a smile as a come-on.

His wiry brows knitted slightly as he studied her for a moment. ‘Hey, Violet… have we met before?’

She stared at him. ‘Have you been here before?’

He shook his head.

‘Then no.’

But his eyes lingered on her. Unpleasantly appraising her. ‘Your face looks familiar,’ he persisted.

She sighed loudly. She was out of smiles and manners today. That was all he was getting out of her. A long-suffering sigh and a withering glare. Not her phone number and certainly not a trip to his grubby eighteen-wheeler, if that’s what he was hoping for.

Getting the ‘fuck off ’message loud and clear, his eyes settled back on his phone.

Violet sauntered down to the other end of the counter, to Donny’s only other customer this evening and offered him a refill too, before returning to the till to ready their bills. Hopefully the pair of them would bugger off soon and she could start wiping down the tables and washing up what was left in the sink. She wanted to hand over a clean diner to the owner, Olenka, who was Ukrainian and looked as though she ate truckers for supper.

Violet gazed at her reflection in the window as the evening darkened outside and trucks and cars passed by on the A1. Her face, once pretty, looked haggard now.

In another world, she reminded herself, her life could and should have been a very different one.

EPILOGUE

EPILOGUE

Lambeth, 1999

PC Alison Jones backed away from the man, his gun now in her shaking hands.

‘I SAID… GET DOWN!’

Tyrone Nelson’s eyes were fixed firmly on the barrel of the gun. ‘Okay… okay…’

‘ON YOUR KNEES!’ she barked.

‘Okay, okay!’ he replied, his hands raised. He got down onto both knees slowly. ‘P-please don’t point that fucking thing at –’

‘SHUT UP!’ she screamed.

She let go with her left hand and probed her shoulder for a moment, wincing at the pain. She felt like she’d been jabbed savagely with a long pole. The kind of impact that was going to leave her with a livid bruise tomorrow morning, but as she pulled her hand away and looked down at the blood dripping from her fingers, she realised that the savage punch to her shoulder had been a bullet.

‘Shit!’

‘I… I didn’t mean to,’ began Tyrone. ‘It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me!’

‘Shut up,’ she snapped. Alison waved the gun at him. ‘You get down, right down, and stay!’

He nodded quickly, lowering himself to the cobblestones.

‘Hands spread out!’ added Alison. ‘Wide out… where I can see them!’

Tyrone complied, spread out now like a starfish on the narrow street.

‘And you’re going to stay like that until I say!’ she shouted. ‘Got it?’

He nodded again.

The radio on her tac-vest crackled with comms. She was about to hit the push-to-talk button on the front when she heard an exchange between Control and an officer who’d just arrived at the scene of the shooting.

‘Two fatalities. Two kids. Girls. Jesus Christ.’

‘Fatalities? Confirmed?’ said Control.

‘Yeah, I think so… They’re both… They’re kids… little girls. The paramedic’s working on one of them, but… Jesus Christ… there’s no way’s she’s going to live. There’s no way.’

Tyrone twisted his head awkwardly to look at her. ‘I didn’t mean to… They got up off their seats at the wrong –’

‘SHUT UP!’ Alison screamed.

‘Oh God, she’s convulsing… She’s spitting blood… She’s…’

‘Tango One, step back, all right? Let them work.’

‘Oh God, oh God… She’s going… she’s going…’

Alison could hear the man sobbing. Why the hell he hadn’t lifted his finger off the PTT? He was broadcasting all this for everyone to hear.

‘Tango One, just to let you know, you’re still on,’ advised Control.

‘Oh God… she’s gone. She’s gone. They’re both gon–’

The radio bleeped, his finger finally lifted, and the channel was silent with the steady hiss of white noise.

‘Fuck, they just got in the way,’ whined Tyrone. ‘Not my fault.’ His face creased with a grin. Perhaps only a nervous one, but the crooked smile, the white teeth, the dimple in his cheek were too much.

‘Don’t you even look at me!’ she hissed.

He sighed, then went back to facing the cobblestones. ‘Okay, but just sayin’… Fuck’s sake, it wasn’t my faul–’

The gun kicked violently in Alison’s hand… and a moment later, as the smoke cleared, she saw the man lying perfectly still. The shot to the back of his head had spun his head sideways… The exit wound in the middle of his forehead looked tatty, a puckered star of skin, bone and brain.

His brown eyes, however – lifeless now – seemed resolutely fixed on her.

THE END

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS and NOTES

First of all my apologies for taking so much longer to get this book out. I could come up with a raft of excuses, but the bottom line is, this one simply took longer to write, given how it needed to interweave Boyd’s backstory, and Alison’s into the present and making sure the timelines and continuity worked with the previous TWELVE books! To make it work, I had to rely very heavily on my copyeditor, Wendy Shakespeare. As for the story… I’ve always been fascinated by ‘fall from grace’ storylines; people who once were heroes ending up being fragile and broken, becoming cautionary tales for us all. Since you’ve now read the book and we’re no longer in spoiler territory… the question of whether Alison Jones was a villain or a victim remained fluid until the very, very final draft. I finally had to make a call at the end and with the scene you (presumably) have just read… it wasn’t until the last few sentences that I had to force myself to commit. She executed Tyrone and that, in my humble opinion, does make her a villain… but it also begs the question, what would you do in her situation, given the com’s traffic that he’d just shot and killed two innocent young girls? I hope that I would have the professionalism and clarity of mind not to… but in the moment, having just been shot and wounded, with the adrenaline of the struggle coursing through my veins… the sudden news of such an outrage… what would my trigger finger decide?

DCI BOYD RETURNS IN

LET’S PLAY available to pre-order

HERE

ALSO BY ALEX SCARROW

DCI Boyd

SILENT TIDE

OLD BONES NEW BONES

BURNING TRUTH

THE LAST TRAIN

THE SAFE PLACE

GONE TO GROUND

ARGYLE HOUSE

THE LOCK UP

THE ARCHIVE

A MONSTER AMONG US

THE VANISHING

THE FOOL

Thrillers

LAST LIGHT

AFTERLIGHT

OCTOBER SKIES

THE CANDLEMAN

A THOUSAND SUNS

The TimeRiders series (in reading order)

TIMERIDERS

TIMERIDERS: DAY OF THE PREDATOR

TIMERIDERS: THE DOOMSDAY CODE

TIMERIDERS: THE ETERNAL WAR

TIMERIDERS: THE CITY OF SHADOWS

TIMERIDERS: THE PIRATE KINGS

TIMERIDERS: THE MAYAN PROPHECY

TIMERIDERS: THE INFINITY CAGE

The Plague Land series

PLAGUE LAND

PLAGUE NATION

PLAGUE WORLD

The Ellie Quin series

THE LEGEND OF ELLIE QUIN

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO ELLIE QUIN

ELLIE QUIN BENEATH A NEON SKY

ELLIE QUIN THROUGH THE GATEWAY

ELLIE QUIN: A GIRL REBORN

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Over the last sixteen years, award-winning author Alex Scarrow has published seventeen novels with Penguin Random House, Orion and Pan Macmillan. A number of these have been optioned for film/TV development, including his bestselling Last Light.

When he is not busy writing and painting, Alex spends most of his time trying to keep Ozzie away from the food bin. He lives in the wilds of East Anglia with his wife Deborah and five, permanently muddy, dogs.

Ozzie came to live with him in January 2017. He was adopted from Spaniel Aid UK and was believed to be seven at the time. Ozzie loves food, his mum, food, his ball, food, walks and more food…

He dreams of unrestricted access to the food bin.

For up-to-date information on the DCI BOYD series, visit: www.alexscarrow.com