KATE MEDINA
Scared to Death

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street,

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Copyright © Kate Medina 2017

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Cover photographs © Nikki Smith/Arcangel Images

Kate Medina asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

Source ISBN: 9780008132323

Ebook Edition © May 2017 ISBN: 9780008132262

Version: 2018-01-26

Dedication

For my mother, Pamela Taylor, with love

The Story of the Three Bears

ONCE upon a time there were Three Bears, who lived together in a house of their own in a wood. One of them was a Little, Small, Wee Bear, and one was a Middle-Sized Bear, and the other was a Great, Huge Bear.

Robert Southey, 1774–1843

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

The Story of the Three Bears

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Acknowledgments

Read on for an Exclusive Extract From the New Jessie Flynn Novel:

About the Author

Also by Kate Medina

About the Publisher

1

Eleven Years Ago

The eighteen-year-old boy in the smart uniform made his way along the path that skirted the woods bordering the school’s extensive playing fields. He walked quickly, one hand in his pocket, the other holding the handle of the cricket bat that rested over his shoulder, like the umbrella of some city gent. Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain. For the first time in a very long time he felt nimble and light on his feet, as if he could dance. And he felt even lighter in his heart, as though the weight that had saddled him for five long years was finally lifting. Light, but at the same time keyed-up and jittery with anticipation. Thoughts of what was to come drove the corners of his mouth to twitch upwards.

He used to smile all the time when he was younger, but he had almost forgotten how. All the fun in his life, the beauty that he had seen in the world, had been destroyed five years ago. Destroyed once, and then again and again, until he no longer saw joyfulness in anything. He had thought that, in time, his hatred and anger would recede. But instead it had festered and grown black and rabid inside him, the only thing that held any substance or meaning for him.

He had reached the hole in the fence. By the time they moved into the sixth form, boys from the school were routinely slipping through the boundary fence to jog into the local village to buy cigarettes and alcohol, and the rusty nails holding the bottom of the vertical wooden slats had been eased out years before, the slats held in place only at their tops, easy to slide apart. Nye was small for his age and slipped through the gap without leaving splinters or a trace of lichen on his grey woollen trousers or bottle green blazer, or threads of his clothing on the fence.

The hut he reached a few minutes later was small and dilapidated, a corrugated iron roof and weathered plank walls. It used to be a woodman’s shed, Nye had been told, and it still held stacks of dried logs in one corner. Sixth formers were the only ones who used it now, to meet up and smoke; the odd one who’d got lucky with one of the girls from the day school down the road used it for sex.

Nye had detoured here first thing this morning before class to clean it out, slipping on his leather winter gloves to pick up the couple of used condoms and toss them into the woods. Disgusting. He hadn’t worried about his footprints – there would be nothing left of the hut by the time this day was over.

Now, he sprayed a circular trail of lighter fuel around the inside edge of the hut, scattered more on the pile of dry logs and woodchips in the corner, ran a dripping line around the door frame and another around the one small wire-mesh-covered window. Tossing the bottle of lighter fuel on to the stack of logs, he moved quietly into a dark corner of the shed where he would be shielded from immediate view by the door when it opened, and waited. He was patient. He had learned patience the hard way and today his patience would pay off.

Footsteps outside suddenly, footsteps whose pattern, regularity and weight were seared into his brain. Squeezing himself into the corner, Nye held his breath as the rickety wooden door creaked open. The man who stepped into the hut closed the door behind him, pressing it tightly into its frame as Nye knew he would. He stood for a moment, letting his vision adjust to the dimness before he looked around. Nye saw the man’s eyes widen in surprise when he noticed him standing in the shadows, when he saw that it wasn’t the person he had been expecting to meet. His face twisted in anger – an anger Nye knew well.

Swinging the bat in a swift, neat arc as his sports masters had taught him, Nye connected the bat’s flat face, dented from contact with countless cricket balls on the school’s pitches, with the man’s temple. A sickening crunch, wood on bone, and the man dropped to his knees. Blood pulsed from split skin and reddened the side of his face. Nye was tempted to hit him again. Beat him until his head was pulp, but he restrained himself. The first strike had done its job and he wanted the man conscious, wanted him sentient for what was to come.

Dropping the cricket bat on to the floor next to the crumpled man, Nye pulled open the shed door. Stepping into the dusk of the woods outside, he closed it behind him. There was a rusty latch on the gnarled door frame, the padlock long since disappeared. Flipping the latch over the metal loop on the door, he stooped and collected the thick stick he’d tested for size and left there earlier, and jammed it through the loop.

Moving around to the window, too small for the man to fit through – he’d checked that too; he’d checked and double-checked everything – he struck a match and pushed his fingers through the wire. He caught sight of the man’s pale face looking up at him, legs like those of a newborn calf as he tried to struggle to his feet. His eyes were huge and very black in the darkness of the shed. Nye held the man’s gaze, his mouth twisting into a smile. He saw the man’s eyes flick from his face to the lit match in his fingers, recognized that moment where the nugget of hope segued into doubt and then into naked fear. He had experienced that moment himself so many times.

He let the lit match fall from his fingers.

Stepping away from the window, melting a few metres into the woods, Nye stood and watched the glow build inside the hut, listened to the man’s screams, his pleas for help as he himself had pleaded, also in vain, watched and listened until he was sure that the fire had caught a vicious hold. Then he turned and made his way back through the woods, walking quickly, staying off the paths.

It was 13 July, his last day in this godforsaken shithole.

He had waited five long years for this moment.

Thirteen. Unlucky for some, but not for me. Not any more.

2

Twelve Months Ago

He had thought, when the time came, that he would be brave. That he would be able to bear his death with dignity. But his desperation for oxygen was so overwhelming that he would have ripped his own head off for the opportunity to draw breath. He sucked against the tape, but he had done the job well and there were no gaps, no spaces for oxygen to seep through. Wrapping his hands around the metal pipe that was fixed to the tiled wall, digging his nails into the flaking paint, he held on, willing himself to endure the pain, knowing, whatever he felt, that he had no choice now anyway.

Closing his eyes, he tried to draw a picture to mind, a picture of his son, of his face, but the image was lost in the screaming of blood in his ears, the throbbing inside his skull as his brain, his lungs, his whole being ballooned and burst with its frenzied need for oxygen. He felt fingers clawing at his temples. But he had wrapped the gaffer tape tight, layer upon layer of it round and round his head, and his own fingernails, chewed and ragged, couldn’t get purchase.

His lungs were burning and tearing, rupturing with the agony of denied breath.

The room was fading, the feel of his scrabbling fingers numbing. His brain fogged, his limbs were leaden and the pain receded. Danny’s eyes drifted closed and he felt calm, calm and euphoric, just for a moment. Then, nothing.

3

Nobody noticed the pram tucked against the wall inside the entrance to Accident and Emergency at Royal Surrey County Hospital, until the baby inside woke and began to cry. It was another ten minutes before the sound of the crying child registered in the stultified brain of the A & E receptionist who had been working since 11 p.m. the previous night and was now wholly focused on watching the hands of her countertop clock creep towards 7 a.m. and the end of her shift. The ‘zombie shift’, nights were dubbed, both for their obliterating effect on the employee and in reference to the motley stream of patients who shuffled in through the sliding doors. The past eight hours had been the busiest she could remember. Dampness she expected in April, but constant downpours combined with unseasonal heat were a gift to unsavoury bugs. Back-to-back registrations all night, not enough time even to grab a second coffee, and now her nerves, not to mention her temper, were snapping. At fifty-five she was too old for this kind of job, should have taken her sister’s advice and become a PA to a nice lazy managing director in some small business years ago.

She had noticed the pram – she had – she would tell the police when they interviewed her later, but she had assumed that it had been parked there, empty, by one of the parents who had taken their baby into Paediatrics. It had been a reasonable assumption, she insisted to the odd-looking detective inspector, who had made her feel as if she was responsible for mass murder with that cynical rolling of his disconcertingly mismatched eyes. The wait in Paediatric A & E on a busy night was five hours, so it was entirely reasonable that an empty pram could be parked in the entrance for that long. God, at least she didn’t turn up for work looking as if she’d spent the night snorting cocaine, which was more than could be said for him.

Skirting around the desk, she approached the pram, the soles of her Dr Scholl’s sighing as they grasped and released the rain-damp lino. Her stomach knotted tightly as she neared it, recent staff lectures stressing the importance of vigilance in this age of extremism suddenly a deafening alarm bell at the forefront of her mind. But when she peeped inside the pram, she felt ridiculous for that moment of intense apprehension. She breathed out, her heart rate slowing as the tense balloon of air emptied from her lungs.

A baby boy, eighteen months or so he must be, dressed in a white envelope-neck T-shirt and sky-blue corduroy dungarees, was looking up at her, his blue eyes wide open and shiny with tears. Wet tracks cut through the dirt on his cheeks. His mouth gaped, lips a trembling oval, as if he was uncertain whether to smile or cry, four white tombstone teeth visible in the wet pink cavity.

Reaching into the pram, Janet gently scooped him into her arms. Nestling him against her bosom, she felt the chick’s fluff of his hair, smelt the slightly stale, milky smell of him, felt the bulge of his full nappy, straining heavy in her fingers as she slid her hand under his bottom to support his weight. The child gave a sigh and Janet felt his warm body relax into hers.

‘Now who on earth would leave a little chap like you alone for so long?’ she cooed softly. ‘Who on earth?’

How long since she’d held a baby? Years, she realized, with a sharp twinge of sadness. Her youngest nephew fifteen now and already on to his fourth girlfriend in as many months, her own son, nearing thirty, had fled the nest years ago.

She turned back to the reception desk, all efficiency now. ‘Robin, get on the tannoy would you and make an announcement. Some irresponsible fool has left their baby out here and he’s woken up. Probably needs feeding.’ She looked down at the baby. ‘Don’t you worry, sweetheart. We’ll find your mummy and get you fed.’ She tickled his cheek with the tip of her index finger. ‘We will. Yes, we will, gorgeous boy.’ Glancing up, she met Robin’s amused gaze. ‘What? What on earth are you smirking about?’

4

Jessie woke with a start and opened her eyes. The room was dark, the air dusty and stale, a room that hadn’t been aired in months. She felt dizzy and nauseous, as if her brain was slopping untethered inside her skull, her tongue a numb wad of cotton filling her mouth. Once again, the man’s voice that had woken her spoke from close by. For a brief moment, caught in that twilight zone between sleep and wakefulness, she had no idea where she was. Which country. Which time zone.

‘Some folk tales – or fairy tales as we like to call them nowadays – originated to help people pass on survival tips to the next generation. Many of the stories that we now tell our children at bedtime were based on gruesome real events and would have served as warnings to young children not to stray too far from their parents’ protection.’

The radio. Of course. She had left it on when she went to bed last night, used now to being lulled to sleep by noise. The groan of metal flexing on waves, footsteps pacing down corridors, machines humming in distant rooms.

Home. She was home, she realized as cognizance overtook her. Back in England, waking in her own bed for the first time in three months.

‘Over the years these stories have changed, evolved to suit the modern world. Even though humans are as violent nowadays as they were in 600 BC, we don’t like to terrify our children in the same way that our ancestors did, so we sugar-coat fairy tales. But their horrific origins and the messages behind them are deadly serious.’

She had flown into RAF Brize Norton airbase late last night, arrived home at 2 a.m. – 5 a.m. Syrian, Persian Gulf, time – and collapsed into bed, exhausted, jet-lagged, struggling to adjust not only her body clock but her brain from Royal Navy Destroyer to eighteenth-century farmworker’s cottage in the Surrey Hills, a juxtaposition so complete that she had felt as if she was tripping on acid. Washed out from months of shuttling between RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus and the HMS Daring, counselling fighter jet and helicopter pilots flying sorties over ISIS-held territory in Syria and Iraq, working with PsyOps to see how they could win hearts and influence minds in the region. Unused to the impenetrable darkness and graveyard silence of the countryside, she had, for the first time in her life, flipped the radio on, volume turned low, background noise, and fallen asleep to its soft warble.

On the radio, the man’s voice was rising. ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves is based on the life of a sixteenth-century Bavarian noblewoman, whose brother used small children to work in his copper mines. Severely deformed because of the physical hardships, they were referred to as dwarves. ‘We know that Little Red Riding Hood is about violation, a young girl allowing herself to be charmed by a stranger. The contemporary French idiom for a girl having lost her virginity is “Elle avoit vu le coup”, which translates literally as “She has seen the wolf”.’

Reaching an arm out, Jessie jammed her finger on the ‘off’ switch. Silence. Not even birdsong; too early yet for the dawn chorus. Curling on to her side, she closed her eyes and tugged the duvet up around her ears, trying to tilt back into sleep. But she was awake now, her mind a buzz of jetlag-fuelled, pent-up energy. May as well get up and face the day.

Throwing off the duvet, she padded into the bathroom to have a shower, catching her reflection in the huge mirror above the sink that she had erroneously thought it a good idea to install after reading a home décor magazine at the dentist that had waxed lyrical about mirrors opening up small spaces. The harsh electric ceiling lights, another poor idea – same magazine – washed the face looking back at her ghostly grey-white, blue eyes so pale they were nearly translucent, black hair limp and unkempt, a cartoon version of Snow White with a stinking hangover. Jesus, Jessie, only you could spend twelve weeks in the Middle East and still come back looking as if you’ve been bleached. Coffee was the answer, and lots of it.

Downstairs, her cottage’s sitting room was show-home spotless, exactly as she had left it: a cream sofa and two matching chairs separated by a reclaimed oak coffee table bare of clutter, fitted white-painted shelves empty of books and ornaments, the sole splash of colour, a vase of fresh daffodils that Ahmose must have left on the coffee table to welcome her home. Herself, by a long way, the messiest thing in the room.

Her gaze found the two framed photographs on the mantelpiece. Looking at Jamie, at his smiley face, all teeth and gums, lips ringed by a smear of chocolate ice cream, she felt the familiar emptiness in her chest, as if under her ribcage was nothing but air. Pushing away thoughts of him, of her past, she padded into the kitchen and made herself a coffee – strong, topped up with lots of full-fat milk, straight from the farm, that Ahmose must have put in her fridge yesterday, along with the bread and butter, lined side by side on the top shelf, an identical space between each item, Ahmose trained now to defer to her extreme sense of order.

She put the kettle back on its stand, straightened the handle flush with the wall, and then deliberately gave it a nudge, knocking it off-kilter. No hiss from the electric suit. No immediate urge to realign it. Not yet. Baby steps, she knew, but progress all the same. Progress she had worked hard, before leaving for her foreign tour, to achieve. Progress that she was determined to maintain, now, coming home.

Unlocking the back door, she stepped out into the garden, glancing up at Ahmose’s bedroom window as she did so. Lights off, curtains closed, still asleep as any sensible person who wasn’t a shift worker or in the Army should be at this pre-dawn hour. Moving slowly across the dark lawn, she inhaled deeply. The air was cool and clean, carrying a faint scent of water on cut grass, the lawn crisp and damp beneath her bare soles. At the bottom of the garden, she settled herself on to the wooden fence and gazed across the farmer’s field. The sunrise was still only a narrow strip of fire on the horizon, the sky above inky blue-black, the somnolent sheep in the field hummocks of barely visible grey, the spring lambs, cleaner, brighter, lying tight against their mothers’ stomachs for warmth.

Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep …

A peaceful pre-dawn, bearing the promise of a beautiful morning.

Home. She was home. Home safe. So why did she still have this odd sensation of emptiness in her chest? Jamie, yes – but something else too. What did she have to worry about? Nothing. She had nothing, or did she?

5

‘Midnight?’ Detective Inspector Bobby ‘Marilyn’ Simmons snapped. ‘You first noticed the pram at midnight?’ Tugging up his suit jacket sleeve, he tapped his watch with a nicotine-stained index finger. ‘As in midnight eight hours ago?’ His eyes blazed as he looked at the prim, mousy-haired woman in front of him who was clutching a mug of coffee emblazoned with the words Fill with coffee and nobody gets hurt and staring at him as if he was the devil. At least she had the good grace to blush.

‘The baby was asleep.’ She folded her arms defensively across her bust and tipped back on her heels. It was obvious that she was uncomfortable with his proximity, but he was in no mood to take a step back, out of her personal space, and make it easier for her. ‘I thought that the pram was empty.’

Marilyn – a nickname he had acquired on his first day with Surrey and Sussex Major Crimes, the bi-county joint command serious crimes investigation team, thanks to an uncanny resemblance to the ageing American rocker Marilyn Manson – sighed and rubbed a hand over his mismatched eyes. He had a persistent, throbbing headache, which he knew was well-deserved payback for last night’s 2 a.m.’er, knowledge that didn’t make dealing with it any easier. He could murder a cup of that coffee she was clutching. He was also fully aware that he was being an arsehole, could feel disapproval bleeding off Detective Sergeant Sarah Workman standing next to him, her lips pursed, he could tell even without looking. But he wasn’t feeling generous enough to give anyone a break this morning.

The Accident and Emergency waiting room was standing-room only: rows of blue vinyl-upholstered seats, every one of them occupied, a tidal wave of groans, coughs, hawks and the occasional deep-throated retch submerging their conversation. A vending machine was jammed against the wall the other side of the entrance door from the chairs, dispensing fizzy drinks, crisps and chocolate bars to the sick. The great unwashed. The last time he had set foot in a hospital, Southampton General, was four months ago, to collect Dr Jessie Flynn – who he’d worked with on a murder case late last year and fished out of Chichester Harbour, hypothermic and with a gunshot wound to the thigh – and drive her home. That had been a serene experience compared to this one. This A & E department made the rave he’d been at last night feel positively Zen.

‘As you can see, we’re an extremely busy Accident and Emergency department, Detective Inspector,’ the receptionist – Janet, her plastic name badge read – informed him. ‘And occasionally things get missed.’

Marilyn pulled a face. ‘Remind me not to come here when I’m sick. If you can’t spot a bloody baby, you’ve got no chance diagnosing disease.’

‘That day may come sooner than you think.’ Her voice rose in pitch, wobbled. ‘Cancer, I’d say.’

Marilyn raised an eyebrow. ‘Excuse me?’

‘The smell. Smoke. You reek of it.’ She waved a hand in front of her face. ‘You’d be doing yourself, and us, a good turn if you gave up. Now if that’s all, Detective Inspector, I’ll be getting back to work. We are one the best-performing A & E departments in the country with one of the lowest mortality rates and I’d like to do my bit to keep it that way.’ Turning on the sole of one squealing Dr Scholl, she slap-slapped her way down the corridor.

Marilyn glanced at Workman. ‘That went well, Sergeant.’

DS Workman sighed. ‘Shall I get forensics in here, sir?’

‘It’s a baby, Workman, not a corpse. We just need to find the next of kin, pronto.’

‘I’ve been calling the parents. The father left his wallet under the pram. No joy on his home or mobile numbers.’

The air was getting to Marilyn: a stifling smorgasbord of antiseptic, body odour, vomit and the rusty smell of dried blood, all cooked to perfection in the unseasonally warm spring sunlight he could feel cutting through the glass sliding doors behind him. The temperature must be hitting seventy, he thought, despite the best efforts of the air-conditioning unit groaning in the ceiling above him. Although he had chosen to specialize in major crimes, he didn’t have an iron stomach and twenty years of dealing with violent assaults, rapes and murders across Surrey and Sussex, had failed to strengthen it. But, he consoled himself, feeling a pang of guilt at his attitude towards the overworked receptionist, at least he didn’t have to deal with the walking dead who inhabited A & E. The dead he dealt with were certifiably dead, door-nail dead, laid out on metal gurneys, swabbed, wiped down, sexless and personality-less, more akin to shop dummies than recently living, breathing people with hopes and dreams, the single-digit temperatures in the autopsy suite keeping a lid on the most visceral of smells.

‘I’ll be back in a minute, Workman. Keep trying the dad and if we can’t get next of kin by midday, call Children’s Services. We’ll get the kid into a temporary foster home.’

Exiting the hospital building, he crossed the service road, skirting around an ambulance that was disgorging a gargantuan man on a stretcher, the ambulance crew scarlet with strain. Grateful for the fresh air, he leant back against the brick wall and rolled a cigarette. The sky was a relentless clear blue, wispy cotton wool streaks of cirrus lacing it, the sun a hot yellow ball which, even with his dark glasses on, made his one azure eye tear up. Shuffling sideways, he hunkered down in the patch of shade thrown by a bus shelter and lit his roll-up. Back across the service road, patients in hospital gowns crowded next to the A & E doorway, sucking on cigarettes, a few clutching the stem of wheeled metal drip stands, tubes running, via needles, into their bandaged arms. The cloud of smoke partially obscured the sign behind them that read, Strictly a Smoke-Free Zone. Jesus! Janet was right. He needed to give up smoking, drinking, drugs, the works and pronto. Put a stop to the relentless downward slide that was his health before he ended up swelling their ranks in a flapping, backless hospital gown.

DS Workman was crossing the service road towards him. In her beige flats, matching beige shift dress, the hem skimming her solid calves, brown hair cut into a low-maintenance chin-length bob, she could have come straight from the hospital admin department. She looked as diligent and efficient as she was, but her appearance also belied a quiet, cynical sense of humour that ensured their minds connected on a level beyond the mundane, and, anyway, where the hell would he be without her to back him up, dot the i’s, cross the t’s?

‘I managed to reach the little boy’s grandmother. She’ll be here in an hour or so.’

‘An hour? Can’t she get here more quickly than that?’

‘She lives in Farnborough and doesn’t have a car.’

‘Can’t she jump in a cab?’

‘I got the sense that taxis were out of her price range, sir.’ Flipping open her notebook, she ploughed on before he could make any more facetious remarks. ‘She said that the baby, Harry, he’s called, lives with his father, her son. She said that he, the father, Malcolm, has been off work for a year with depression.’

Marilyn nodded.

‘She sounded upset, very upset. I tried to reassure her, but she’s convinced that something terrible has happened to him.’

‘Where’s the baby’s mum?’

‘I gather she’s no longer in the picture.’

‘Surname?’

‘Lawson.’

‘Lawson?’ Flicking his roll-up into the gutter, Marilyn looked across and met Workman’s gaze, his forehead creasing in query. ‘Is it a coincidence that his name rings a bell?’

Workman shook her head. ‘Daniel Lawson, sir.’

He racked his brains. Nothing.

‘Danny,’ she prompted. ‘Private Danny Lawson.’

It still took him a moment. Private Danny Lawson. ‘Oh God, of course.’ Tugging off his sunglasses, Marilyn rubbed a hand across his eyes. Christ, Malcolm Lawson. That was all he needed. He’d had considerably more than he could stomach of the man six months ago.

‘I think we should have a counsellor here when Harry’s grandmother arrives, sir.’

‘With Malcolm Lawson in the picture, I need a bloody counsellor, Workman,’ Marilyn muttered.

With an upwards roll of her eyes that he wasn’t supposed to have noticed, Workman pressed on: ‘Doctor Butter is on annual leave and time is obviously too short to find a counsellor from a neighbouring force.’

Marilyn sighed. Why was he being so obnoxious? No explanation, except for the fact that everything about this hospital was putting him in a bad mood. The detritus of human life washed up on its shores. Something about his own mortality staring him square in the face.

And the baby?

When DS Workman had first telephoned him about a baby abandoned at Royal Surrey County Hospital, he’d acidly asked her if she had a couple of lost puppies he could reunite with their owners or a kitten stuck in a tree he could shin up and rescue. But now, something about this abandoned baby – Harry Lawson – and the history attached to that child’s surname, was giving him a creeping sense of unease.

‘Leave it with me, Sergeant. We do have a tenuous Army connection, so I’ll call Doctor Flynn. I’m sure she’s back from the Middle East this week.’

Malcolm Lawson.

He thought he’d well and truly buried that name six months ago. Buried that family. Buried the whole sorry saga. He forced a laugh, full of fake cheer.

‘Those Army types spend ninety per cent of their time sitting around with their thumbs up their arses, so I’m sure Jessie could spare an hour. Find us a nice quiet room where we can chat to Granny.’

6

The sun was a blinding ball in an unseasonally cloudless, royal-blue sky when Jessie gunned her daffodil-yellow Mini to life, pleasantly surprised that, after so long un-driven, it started first time. She’d popped in to see Ahmose, had been persuaded to stay for a cup of kahwa, strong Egyptian coffee – a terrible idea in retrospect, layered on top of the two cups she’d already downed at home, the time zone change and the jet lag. She felt as if a hive of hyperactive bees had set up residence in her head. Negotiating a slow three-point turn in the narrow lane, she pressed her foot gingerly on the accelerator, the speedo sliding slowly, jerkily – God, have I forgotten how to change gears? – to twenty, no higher. She’d had a near miss with the farmer and his herd of prize milking Friesians last summer while speeding down the lane towards home after a long day at Bradley Court, windows down, James Blunt full volume, and his threats of death and destruction to her prized Mini at the hands of his tractor had been an effective speed limiter ever since.

Fifteen minutes later, she slowed and turned off the public road into Bradley Court Army Rehabilitation Centre. Holding her pass out to the gate guards, she waited, engine idling, while the ornate metal gates were swung open. The last time she had driven along this drive, in the opposite direction, the stately brick-and-stone outline of Bradley Court receding in her rear-view mirror, it had been mid-December, mind-numbingly cold, slushy sleet invading the sweep of manicured lawns like wedding confetti, the trees bleak skeletons puncturing a slate-grey sky. Early April, and the lawn on either side of the quarter-mile drive was littered with red and blue crocuses, the copper beeches that lined the tarmac ribbon unfurling new leaves, hot- yellow daffodils clustered around their bases. Someone had set a table and chairs out on the lawn in front of an open patio door and a group of young men were sitting around it playing cards. Two others on crutches, each with a thigh-high amputation, were making their way along a gravel path towards the lake, both coatless, their shirt sleeves rolled up.

Parking, she made her way up to the first floor where the Defence Psychology Service was located, sticking her head into office doors as she passed, saying her hellos.

‘The nomad returns. Welcome back, Doctor Flynn.’

Gideon Duursema, head of the Defence Psychology Service and Jessie’s boss, half-rose from behind his desk and held out his hand. It felt strange, to Jessie, shaking it. She couldn’t recall ever shaking Gideon’s hand, with the exception of during her job interview and on her first morning at Bradley Court two and a half years ago, when he had formally welcomed her to the department. Gideon must have felt the same sense of oddness, because he dropped her hand suddenly, skirted around his desk and pulled her into a brief, slightly awkward hug.

‘We’ve missed you,’ he muttered, retreating to safety afforded by the physical barrier of his oak desk, lowering himself into his chair. ‘How was the tour?’ he asked, when she had settled herself into the chair opposite.

‘Now I know what living in prison feels like, except that prisoners get better food and their own television set.’

Gideon laughed. ‘Did they chain you up in the bowels of the boat 24/7?’

‘Ship.’ She half-smiled. ‘Ship is the technical naval term. Type 45 Destroyer, if I’m being really pedantic.’

‘Pedantic is good in this job. I like pedantic, but not when it’s directed at me. Type 45 Destroyer. Did they chain you up in the bowels of the destroyer 24/7?’

‘I must have been away from other lunatic psychologists for too long – you’ve lost me completely.’

Holding up a paint brochure, squares of bland off-whites, insipid greys and beiges lined down the page, he squinted at her through one eye.

‘Farrow and Ball colour trends, 2016. Tallow – a perfect match, I’d say. You mustn’t have seen the light of day. Certainly not the light of any Middle Eastern sun, anyway.’

Jessie rolled her eyes. ‘My skin colour is on trend, if nothing else.’ She waved a hand back over her shoulder towards the door. ‘Should we try this again, perhaps? I’ll go out, come back in and you can attempt to avoid the insults. We don’t all have the benefit of a year-round tan.’

Gideon smiled. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve missed you. It’s been dull around here without your chippy attitude to keep me on my toes.’

Originally from Zimbabwe, these days he was almost more English than the English with his tweed jackets, faux Tudor semi-detached on the outskirts of Farnham, Land Rover Discovery, solid middle-class wife and two boys. Jessie had met his sons once, had felt gauche and awkward beside them even though she was five years older than the eldest – both boys a stunning, olive-skinned mix of their black father and English rose mother, both following their father to Oxford.

‘Has Mrs D roped you into doing some DIY?’

‘Sadly, yes, as my pitiful government salary doesn’t run to the eye-watering sums charged by Home Counties building firms.’ Flipping over the brochure, he read in a desiccated monotone: ‘“Is your kitchen looking tired and dated? We can simply resurface your current cabinets in a colour and finish of your choice.”’ He tossed the brochure on the desktop. ‘Various shades of battleship, sorry, destroyer grey are all the rage these days, evidently, though why Fiona can’t continue residing with the browns we have lived with happily for the past twenty years, I have no idea. Never mind the damn kitchen, it’s me who’s tired and dated. Maybe Farrow and Ball can resurface me while they’re at it, two for the price of one.’ Reaching for his bifocals, sliding them on to the bridge of his nose, he fixed Jessie with a searching gaze. ‘Ready to get back to work?’

‘I assume from your tone that my answer needs to be an emphatic “yes”.’

Gideon patted a stack of files on the corner of his desk, ten centimetres high. ‘Preferably accompanied with a beatific smile and boundless energy.’ Sliding a thin cardboard file from the top of the stack, he held it out to her. ‘Here’s your number one. Ryan Jones: sixteen-year-old male trainee, Royal Logistic Corps, Blackdown Barracks. Referred by Blackdown’s commanding officer, Colonel Philip Wallace.’

Jessie flipped open the file. One typed sheet inside. ‘Why was he referred?’

Gideon shrugged. ‘An open-ended “we’re concerned with his mental state”.’

‘Isn’t the CO a bit high up to be referring trainees?’

Another shrug. ‘From what I know of Philip Wallace, he likes to have his finger in every pie on that base.’

Jessie nodded, taking a moment, eyes grazing down the first page to digest the key details of the referral. Gideon was right – there was little more information than he had just told her. The referral was a triumph of saying nothing in one page of tight black type.

Ryan Thomas Jones

Sixteen and five months

Joined the Army on 2 November last year, the day of his sixteenth birthday

Keen.

Keen or running away from something. In Jessie’s experience, people joined the Army for one of three reasons: patriotism, financial necessity, or to escape. There was a fourth, she privately suspected, though had never voiced: the opportunity to kill people legally. That last one was reserved for the nutters. Which one was Ryan Jones? Probably not the fourth, as Loggies weren’t frontline fighting troops.

Looking up, she met Gideon’s gaze. ‘When is he coming in?’

‘Two p.m.’

‘Oh, OK. So I get the morning to organize my office, drink coffee, chillax. That’s unexpectedly generous of you—’ She broke off, catching his expression. ‘No … I don’t get the morning to chillax. Instead, I get to …’ She let the sentence hang.

‘You get to go to Royal Surrey County Hospital.’

‘And why would I want to do that?’

‘I got a call from Detective Inspector Simmons ten minutes ago. He needs your help.’

‘Since when did we provide psychologists to Surrey and Sussex Major Crimes?’

‘Since DI Simmons asked me nicely. It seems austerity is pinching them as hard as it’s pinching us.’

‘Why does he need a psychologist’s help at the hospital?’

‘He’ll fill you in.’

‘Cryptic.’

‘Not deliberately so. There is an Army connection, he said.’

Jessie’s eyebrows rose in query, but Gideon didn’t provide her with any more information. Stretching his arms above his head, waving one hand vaguely towards the window as he did so, he added, ‘I was in a meeting when Simmons called, so our conversation was brief. You’d better get going. He’s there now, waiting for you at the entrance to A & E, and I have another meeting starting’ – he glanced at his watch – ‘five minutes ago.’ He began searching around under the piles of files, books and papers on his desk, continuing to talk as he did so. ‘Welcome back, Jessie. As I said, I’ve missed you.’ A fleeting, wry smile. ‘And so, as you can see, has my desk. It has felt your absence most keenly. You can’t see my mobile anywhere, can you?’

Ducking down, she retrieved Gideon’s mobile from the floor and handed it to him. ‘Here.’

‘Ah. Thank you.’

‘But that’s it. No more Mrs Doubtfire from me.’ Rising, she tucked Ryan Thomas Jones’s file under her arm. ‘Your desk is going to have to make its own way in the big wide world without my help. Sink or swim. Eat or be eaten.’

Gideon’s eyebrow rose, but he didn’t reply. As she left the room, Jessie glanced back. He was still watching her, the expression on his face conflicted: a part of him hoping that she was right; the other part knowing, from thirty years’ experience as a clinical psychologist, that such deep-seated psychological disorders as hers were far from simple to cure. Jessie hoped that she was right too. She had navigated this morning without so much as a tingle from the electric suit; had navigated her time abroad with only three mild episodes. She’d even managed to leave the house with the kettle handle crooked and an unwashed coffee cup in the sink. Progress. Real progress.

She hoped that settling back into her normal routine would do nothing to disturb the delicate balance of her recovery.

7

Lieutenant Gold was already at the crime scene when Captain Ben Callan, Royal Military Police Special Investigation Branch, parked his red Golf GTI in the car park at Blackdown Barracks. Climbing out of the driver’s seat, he stood – too quickly – swayed and grabbed the top of the door to steady himself. Fuck. He still felt sick and shaky, as if he was coming down off a drinking spree, which he wasn’t. A hangover would, though, provide a plausible excuse for his wrecked physical and mental state. Nothing unexpected in soldiers getting drunk off-duty; it was virtually compulsory.

He’d had some warning of the fit this time: the car in front of him in the fast lane on the A3 starting to jump around as if it was on springs, the central reservation fuzzy, as though his windscreen was suddenly frosted glass. Swerving straight across both lanes, he cut on to the hard shoulder, narrowly missing an elderly couple in an ancient Nissan Micra; the glimpse he’d had of the driver’s whitened face and wide eyes in his rear-view mirror still etched in his mind.

The ground fell away steeply from the hard shoulder into a deep ditch of tangled undergrowth and he slithered down it, making it only halfway before his knees buckled. Falling, rolling, he reached blindly for something to slow his descent, felt reed grass slice through his fingers. His body was writhing, slamming from side to side, legs cycling in the muddy soil and he was freezing cold, shaking uncontrollably, his brain feeling as if it would explode from the pressure inside his skull. Slowly, the fit receded. He lay on the damp ground, sweating and shaking, feeling the muddy ditch water seeping through his clothing, chilling his skin. Pushing himself on to his knees, he reached for the trunk of a sapling, hauled himself to his feet, wincing as the cuts on his fingers met the rough bark. On unsteady legs, he made his way slowly back up the embankment. A Surrey Police patrol car was parked behind his Golf, flashing blue lights washing the uniformed traffic officer standing in front of it neon blue.

‘You do know that it is illegal to stop on the hard shoulder for any reason other than an emergency, don’t you, sir?’

Sir. The policeman’s tone entirely at odds with his words. Just what I need right now. Reaching into his back pocket, Callan fished out his military police ID, held it up. The traffic cop studied it, his gaze narrowing.

‘What were you doing, sir?’

Which story was the more convincing? Having a piss? Answering a vital phone call? The truth, not an option. As an epileptic, he shouldn’t hold a driving licence, but if his condition was made public, losing his licence would be the least of his problems. He would lose his job, his livelihood, his future. His tenuous clutch on normality.

‘I was answering a call on my mobile. There’s been a suspicious death at an Army training base near Camberley. I’m on my way there now.’

The policeman’s gaze tracked from Callan’s face to his feet, taking in the sweaty, greyish-pale complexion, the hands jammed in his pockets to stop them from trembling, the mud caked on his white shirt and jeans.

‘If you weren’t an MP, I’d breathalyse you.’

‘I’m not over the limit, Constable.’

‘You don’t look great, sir.’

‘I don’t feel great, but it’s not alcohol. It’s lack of sleep, too much work … You know how it is.’ Callan lifted his shoulders, looking the constable straight in the eye, the lie sliding smoothly off his tongue.

Silence, which Callan had the confidence not to break. He maintained eye contact, an easy smile on his face, posture relaxed, hoping the constable didn’t notice that his legs were shaking.

‘Drive slowly, mate. My shift ends in two hours and I don’t fancy spending it scraping anybody off the central reservation. Even a bloody MP.’

Callan held out his hand; the constable didn’t take it.

‘You’ve had your one favour,’ he muttered. ‘Next time, I throw the book at you.’

Callan stood by his Golf and watched the patrol car pull back into the flow of traffic and accelerate away. Twisting sideways, he retched on the grass. Retched and retched until only his stomach lining remained.

8

Squeezing her Mini on to the grass verge, the only spare inch of space available in the hospital car park, ignoring the dirty looks thrown her way by people in huge four-by-fours who were still circling, trying to find a space, Jessie jogged down the stone stairs and across the service road to A & E. Holding her breath as she ducked through the cigarette smoke fogging the entrance, she found Marilyn waiting for her inside. He was propping up the wall by the reception desk, one sole tapping impatiently against the skirting, thumbs skipping across the keys of his mobile. At the sound of her footsteps, he glanced up, his lined face creasing into a smile.

‘Thank you for coming, Jessie.’ A glance towards the packed A & E waiting room. ‘To the asylum.’

‘I won’t say that it’s a pleasure, but Gideon didn’t leave me much choice. For some reason your request shot straight to the top of my day’s admittedly short to-do list.’

‘I must have forgotten to tell you that Gideon and I play golf together every Sunday.’

Her gaze tracked from the black bed-hair to the sallow, ravaged face that made Mick Jagger look a picture of clean living, to those disconcerting eyes hiding the sharp, enquiring mind she’d got to know. He had bowed to pressure from above and replaced his beloved black biker jacket with a black suit which hung from his scarecrow frame, only the suit’s drainpipe trousers hinting that he was anything more than a straight-off-the-production-line policeman.

‘Funnily enough, I don’t see you in checked plus-fours.’

He grinned. ‘Masons?’

‘Ditto.

‘Yacht club?’

Jessie rolled her eyes. ‘Shall we get started? I need to be back at Bradley Court by lunchtime. I have work to do. Proper work.’

As they walked side by side down the corridor that cut from A & E to the main hospital, their rubber soles whispering in unison as they gripped and released the lino, Marilyn brought her up to date.

‘We’re not sure how long the baby has been here, but we know that he was left some time before midnight.’

‘Midnight? As in midnight ten hours—’

He held up a hand, cutting her off. ‘Don’t get me started.’

‘He was left by his father?’

‘That’s our working theory. DS Workman and a couple of constables are going through last night’s CCTV footage of the A & E entrance to confirm.’

‘Why would a father abandon his baby?’

‘He abandoned him in a hospital, safe.’

Jessie frowned. ‘A busy A & E department, all sorts coming and going? It’s hardly secure. The fact that the poor kid wasn’t noticed for … what …’ She glanced at her watch, mentally calculating. ‘Seven hours minimum suggests to me that it’s not the first place a caring parent in their right mind would look to deposit their baby for safekeeping.’

‘Right. So the rest of our working theory is that he wasn’t entirely compos mentis at the time.’

Jessie glanced over. ‘Why do you think that?’

They swung left into another corridor, identical to the first. Laying a hand on Jessie’s arm, Marilyn pulled her to a stop outside a door labelled ‘Family Room’. Tilting towards her, he lowered his voice.

‘There’s some history that you need to understand before we meet Granny.’

Jessie caught his tone and raised an eyebrow. ‘And I presume the history is why you wanted me here.’

Marilyn sighed. ‘The history and the story that I suspect may have played itself out last night, and what I fear might be the story going forward.’ He cocked his head towards the family room door. ‘The story that we need to break, as gently as possible, to Granny.’

‘Which is?’

‘The little boy is Harry Lawson. He lives with his father, Malcolm. Malcolm Lawson is also the father of Daniel Lawson.’ He paused. ‘Private Danny Lawson. Ring a bell?’

She shook her head. ‘Should it?’

‘Danny Lawson committed suicide at an Army training base near Camberley a year or so ago. He’d only been in the Army five months. He was sixteen.’

‘I was in Afghanistan with PsyOps around that time. Nothing was on my radar except for that. What happened?’

‘He went AWOL one night while his dorm mates were sleeping. He was found in the showers early the next morning.’

‘And?’

‘And – he had committed suicide.’

‘So you said. How?’

‘The how isn’t important.’

Jessie stared hard at him. ‘If it’s part of the backstory, it is important.’

‘Method isn’t relevant—’

‘Marilyn,’ Jessie cut in.

Marilyn shoved his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders. ‘He suffocated himself.’

‘With a pillow?’

‘Tape.’

A shadow crossed Jessie’s face. ‘Tape?’

‘Gaffer tape,’ Marilyn said in a low voice. ‘He wrapped it around his head, covered his mouth and nose with the stuff.’

‘Bloody hell, poor kid,’ she murmured, her eyes sliding from his, finding a crack in the lino at her feet, tracking its rambling progress to the wall, the image that Marilyn’s words had etched into her mind – how desperate sixteen-year-old Danny must have been, to end his life that way – filling her mind with memories. Memories she struggled, at the best of times, to suppress. A little boy hanging by his school tie from a curtain rail, his gorgeous face bloated and purple. This boy, older, but not by so much, making a mask of his face with black gaffer tape. She felt Marilyn’s eyes burning a hole in the top of her skull.

‘He wouldn’t have had unsupervised access to a gun,’ he said.

‘No.’

‘The tape was what he had to hand.’

Biting her lip, Jessie nodded. Gaffer tape – what he had to hand. A school tie and a curtain rail – what Jamie had had to hand.

‘You OK?’ he asked gently.

Looking up, meeting those odd eyes, she forced a smile, sure that it must look twisted and horrible. ‘What, apart from the dodgy hospital smell and the fact that it’s five hundred degrees centigrade in here? Of course, I’m fine.’

She had formed a friendship of sorts with Marilyn since he had pulled her from the freezing sea in Chichester Harbour four months ago; a comfortable relationship that was characterized by his occasional calls for advice when he felt his own force’s psychologist’s recommendations were way off the mark, the odd cheery email to her whilst she was serving on HMS Daring, emails that had transported her straight back from featureless sea to rolling hills with their description of evenings spent drinking Old Speckled Hen in country pubs, sometimes with Captain Ben Callan. But her own history was something that she didn’t choose to share with anyone besides Ahmose and, once only, in a weak moment, with Callan. She wondered if he knew though, anyway. If Callan had told him. She suspected, from Marilyn’s unease, that he had.

‘So what was Surrey and Sussex Major Crimes’ involvement if Danny Lawson was Army?’ she asked, breaking the laden silence.

‘The Military Police conducted the initial investigation and came to the conclusion that Danny’s death was suicide. But Danny’s dad, Malcolm, refused to accept the verdict. He wrote to his MP, the Defence Secretary, the Armed Forces Minister, even the bloody Prime Minister, anyone and everyone he could think of, calling for the investigation to be reopened by the civvy police. Police without prejudice, I remember he called it. He claimed that the Redcaps were covering up murder. That the Army had so many problems dealing with the Middle East that they didn’t want to admit kids were being murdered on their home turf. I got a call from the Surrey County Coroner telling me that we were to do another investigation.’

‘And?’

Marilyn sighed and shrugged. ‘We reviewed all the evidence and found the same. Suicide.’

‘Cut and dried.’

‘Cut and dried. There was no evidence to suggest murder – and I promise you, I did look for it.’

‘But Malcolm didn’t accept your findings either,’ Jessie murmured.

‘No. No, he didn’t.’ His voice slipped to a monotone. ‘He kept on and on and on. Wrote back to the same cast of politicians, wrote to all the papers, tried to whip up a media storm, but there was nothing there, no story, so none of them bit.’

‘Why was he so determined?’

‘I don’t know. I just remember how mad he was with grief. Grief and anger. I was surprised that he was so damn angry. Grief, I expected, sadness, loss, guilt even, but not anger.’

Jessie was looking at the floor, her arms folded across her chest, defensive body language, she recognized, but too tense to unwrap. ‘Anger is often the go-to emotion that masks others. Sadness, grief, loss – they can all morph into anger, particularly if they’re mixed with frustration or perceived helplessness. It’s hard for family members to accept … suicide.’ She swallowed, eased the word out around the wad that had formed in her throat. ‘Because where there’s suicide, there is a deep, debilitating hopelessness that the victim can’t see a way around. The family often blame themselves because they didn’t notice, or didn’t realize the depth of despair. Guilt, blame, self-recrimination, self-blame – they can eat you up. It’s always easier to look somewhere else to lay that blame.’ She glanced up, met Marilyn’s gaze for a fraction of a second, couldn’t hold it. ‘Children shouldn’t die before their parents,’ she murmured, tracing the meandering crack in the grey lino with the toe of her ballet pump. ‘It flips the law of nature on its head. A parent is programmed to protect their child at all costs, to do anything to keep that child safe, however old the child is.’

A child. A son. Committing suicide.

Jessie had held on to her own grief, dealing with the pain the only way a fourteen-year-old knew: internalizing it, taking the blame for her brother’s suicide squarely on her own shoulders. She had the psychological scars to prove it. Danny Lawson’s father sounded to have done the opposite and looked for someone else to blame. Anyone else to blame. Either way, she knew exactly what he had been going through.

She felt the weight of Marilyn’s hand on her arm. ‘We should go in now, Jessie.’

She nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

9

Slipping on his Oakley’s, Callan walked slowly, collecting his thoughts with each step following the line of Blackdown’s chain-link, razor-wire-topped boundary fence, towards the thick wooded area where he could see Lieutenant Ed Gold and the scenes of crime boys.

Although he was still two hundred metres away, Callan could see the arrogant rigidity of Gold’s stance, recognize the disproportionate command in the staccato arcs of his gestures, hear each word of his barked orders clear as a bell. Gold was in his element, enjoying the control, even though the scenes of crime technicians were consummate professionals who needed no guidance. Callan would take pleasure in rescuing them, bursting Gold’s bubble.

Callan glanced at his watch. It was a quarter past ten. He was late to the scene, very late. He had received the call notifying him of a suspicious death at Blackdown training base sixty minutes ago, while he’d been sitting in his neurologist’s office, digesting bad news. He only hoped that Gold hadn’t fucked up the crime scene already, though the presence of Sergeant Glyn Morgan, his lead SOCO, a forest ghoul moving silently through the trees in his white overalls, gave him a modicum of confidence that some integrity may have been preserved.

Gold glanced over, caught sight of Callan and the next order died on his lips.

‘What have we got, Gold?’ Callan asked as he reached him.

‘A dead soldier,’ Gold muttered, his navy-flecked, royal-blue gaze meeting Callan’s insouciantly. A beat later, he added a reluctant ‘sir’ and followed it with a disinclined salute.

Callan returned the salute smartly, though he was more tempted to use his right hand to smack Gold around the head. He knew that it would take all his willpower not to wring the jumped-up little shit’s neck on this case, suspected that Colonel Holden-Hough, Officer Commanding Southern Region, Special Investigation Branch, knew the same, which is why he had been given Gold as his detachment second-in-command in the first place.

‘Who?’ Callan snapped.

‘A trainee, Stephen Foster.’ Gold flipped open his notebook. ‘Aged sixteen.’

‘What was he doing out here?’

‘Guard duty.’

‘Alone?’

Gold shook his head. ‘With a female. Martha Wonsag.’

‘So where the hell was she when he died?’

Gold shrugged. ‘I haven’t got that far yet, sir.’

‘Where is the rest of the guard detachment?’

‘They’re back on normal duties.’ He held up the notebook. ‘I have their names.’

‘What?’ Callan stared at him, incredulous. ‘This is most likely a murder inquiry and the victim’s guard detachment will be top of our list of suspects. Secure a suite of rooms and get the guard rounded up and isolated now. Do not leave them alone for a second, and do not let them talk to each other. I’ll start interviews when I’ve looked at the crime scene.’

His jaw tight with anger, Gold nodded. ‘Right, sir.’

Turning away, feeling the heat of Gold’s fury burning into his back, biting down on his own anger – anger at himself for having been unavailable when the call about a suspicious death came through, at Gold for his incompetence, knowing that a significant part of his anger was fuelled by dislike – Callan climbed into a set of overalls and ducked under the crime scene cordon. Morgan’s SOCOs fell silent as he approached, and he knew what they were thinking. He was famous, or more accurately infamous, in the Special Investigation Branch. Only thirty, eight years in, and he had already taken two bullets whilst on duty. The first a gift from the Taliban eighteen months ago in Afghanistan, still lodged in his brain; the fallout, permanent seizures, manageable at the moment with drugs, his neurologist had told him this morning, but likely to worsen with time. The second, a bullet in the abdomen from a fellow soldier four months ago, in woods not unlike these. He’d only been back on duty for two weeks. He knew that he was well respected in the Branch for being brave and professional, and found it unnerving. How opinions would change if his colleagues found out about his epilepsy and the demons that infested his mind at night. What he was feeling now, walking into this dense, shadowy copse of trees. Déjà vu.

‘Sir.’ Morgan straightened as Callan reached him. At five foot eight the top of his head barely grazed Callan’s shoulder.

‘I’m glad you’re here, Morgan.’

‘I’m glad you’re here, too, Captain.’ A gentle Welsh valleys accent, unmellowed by his decades-long absence from the Rhondda. He was the son of a coal miner, had faced only three life choices: unemployment, life down a pit, or the Army. He had chosen the Army and escape and was a career soldier, experienced and capable, with a degree of cynicism gained over twenty-five years in the Redcaps, that meant he was no longer surprised by any crime that the dark side of human nature could conjure up. ‘My patience was wearing thin with Little Lord Fauntleroy over there.’

With his stocky frame, steel-grey hair and clipped moustache, he reminded Callan of a solid grey pit pony.

‘May I take the liberty of saying that you look like shit, sir,’ Morgan continued. ‘Big night?’

‘Thanks for your honesty, Sergeant. I feel like shit too.’ Scratching a hand through his dirty blond stubble, he stifled a yawn. Branch detectives wore plain clothes most of the time and though he had changed out of his muddy shirt and jeans into a navy-blue suit he kept in the boot of his car for emergencies, he hadn’t been able to do anything about his pasty complexion or his bloodshot eyes.

‘Well, you’re going to need a strong stomach for this one.’

Callan looked where Morgan indicated, taking in the salient details quickly, freeze-framing each segment of the tableau in turn, acclimatizing himself mental snapshot by mental snapshot. In a few moments, he knew that he would have to pick over the scene, the corpse of the kid in forensic detail with Morgan and he wasn’t sure that his mind or his stomach were up to it.

‘He hasn’t been moved?’

Morgan raised an eyebrow.

‘Sorry. Stupid question.’ Callan squatted, taking care not to step too close to avoid contaminating the scene. He could feel his heart beginning to race, took a couple of deep breaths to slow it. The boy was slumped at the foot of a huge oak tree, tilted sideways, like a rag doll that had been propped in place, then slid off centre. His head was lolling on to his chest, dark brown eyes open, staring, and already showing the milky film of death, the tree’s leaves making a dappled jigsaw of his bloodless face. He had been handsome in life, and young – fuck, he was young. He looked like a fresh-faced schoolboy who’d been playing soldiers – you play dead now – except that this victim wasn’t the product of any game. The bloody puncture wound in his throat and the tacky claret bib coating the front of his combat jacket told Callan that this crime scene was all too real.

‘Stab wound to the throat?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Weapon?’

‘A screwdriver.’

‘Where is it?’

‘I’ve bagged it.’

‘Was it still in his throat?’

‘No, it was eight metres away. Here.’ He indicated one of the numbered markers. ‘The tip was dug into the ground, the handle sticking up at forty-five degrees.’

‘Thrown?’

Morgan nodded. ‘Without doubt.’

Shifting closer, Callan studied the stab wound in the boy’s throat.

‘It doesn’t appear to be a vicious blow,’ he heard Morgan say.

‘No.’

There didn’t appear to be any trauma around the wound, no damaged skin or bruising. It was as if the screwdriver had slid in gently, finding the pliable gap between two cartilaginous ridges in the trachea, nothing unduly violent, no loss of control or wild ferocity about this death. Even the expression on the kid’s face showed no fear, merely an odd, chilling sense of calm.

A camera’s flash and Callan straightened, shielding his eyes from the blinding white light. The last thing he needed was another epileptic fit.

‘You OK, sir?’

‘Sure. I just need a coffee and ten hours’ sleep. I’ll leave you to it, Morgan.’

He suddenly wanted out of this wood. There was something about the denseness of the trees, the constant shifting of shadows as the wind moved the branches, and the smell – damp bark and leaf mulch – that catapulted him back to Sandhurst, back to that night in the woods when Major Nicholas Scott, the father of Jessie Flynn’s deeply traumatized four-year-old patient, Sami, had shot him in the back, when he had nearly died for the second time in his life. Jesus, Ben – he took a breath, trying to ease the pressure in his chest – focus on the fucking case. Stephen Foster, a sixteen-year-old kid, five months in the Army and already dead. There’d be hell to pay for this one.

10

The room Jessie and Marilyn entered was small and airless. Scuffed baby-pink walls, a burgundy cotton sofa backed against one wall, two matching chairs facing it, a brightly coloured foam alphabet jigsaw mat laid in the middle of the vinyl floor, each letter fashioned from an animal contorting itself into the appropriate shape – an ape for ‘A’, a beetle for ‘B’, a cat for ‘C’. The air stiflingly hot, even though someone had made an effort to ease the pressure-cooker atmosphere by opening the window as far as its ‘safety-first’ mechanism would allow. A fly, seeking escape, circled by the window, cracking its fragile carapace against the glass with each turn.

A chubby, blond-haired baby boy in a white T-shirt and pale blue dungarees was sitting in the middle of the mat, smacking the handset of a Bob the Builder telephone against its base. An elderly lady – late seventies, Jessie guessed – tiny and reed thin, was perched on the edge of the sofa watching the baby. Her hands, clamped on her knees, were threaded with thick blue veins, her skin diaphanous and liver-spotted with age. She had dressed for a formal occasion in a grey woollen tweed skirt, grey tights and a smart white shirt, the shirt’s short sleeves her only visible concession to the day’s unforeseen heat. Her brown lace-ups were highly polished, but the stitching had unravelled from the inside sole of one, the sole cleaving away from its upper.

Starting at the sound of the door, she looked over, her face lighting briefly with a sentiment that Jessie recognized as hope, half rising to her feet before collapsing back, the light dimming, when she realized that it was no one she knew.

‘Mrs Lawson, I’m Detective Inspector Bobby Simmons and this is my colleague, Doctor Jessica Flynn.’

From beneath her silver hair, the old lady’s dull gaze moved from Marilyn to Jessie and back. She made no move to take Marilyn’s outstretched hand.

‘Have you found Malcolm?’

‘Not yet, Mrs Lawson. We need some details from you to help in our search.’

She nodded, murmured, ‘Of course. Whatever you need.’

While Jessie sat down in one of the chairs opposite the sofa, Marilyn moved to stand by the window, reaching behind him to give it a quick upwards heave to see if it would budge, which it didn’t. Clearing his throat, he glanced down at the notes written in the notebook that DS Workman had thrust into his hand a few moments before Jessie had arrived at the hospital.

‘Malcolm’s car? He drives a dark grey Toyota Corolla, registration number LP 52 YBB? Is that correct?’

Mrs Lawson’s gaze found the ceiling as she tried to summon a picture to mind. ‘The colour is right, yes, and the make. I’m pretty sure that the make is right.’ She paused. ‘The registration number … I’m sorry, but would you repeat it.’

‘LP 52 YBB.’

Her eyes rose again. ‘The 52, yes, but the rest … I’m sorry, but I really can’t remember.’

‘We’ve got this information from the DVLA, so it should be accurate.’

‘The car has a baby seat in the back seat, of course, for Harry. Red and black it is. A red and black baby seat.’

Marilyn made a note. ‘Does Malcolm own or have access to any other vehicles?’

She shook her head.

‘Do you have any idea where he could have gone. Any special places that he likes to go? Friends who he could have gone to visit?’

‘He had a few friends, but he lost touch with them after … after Daniel died. He spends all his time looking after Harry.’

‘Pubs? Clubs?’

‘No.’

‘A girlfriend, perhaps?’

‘No. Really, no.’ Her nose wrinkled. ‘He wouldn’t stay out all night and he wouldn’t leave Harry like that.’

Jessie leaned forward. ‘Where is Harry’s mother, Mrs Lawson?’

‘She’s … she’s in a home, Doc—’ Her voice faltered. ‘Doctor.’

‘Jessie. Please call me Jessie.’

‘She’s in a home.’

‘A home? A hospital?’ Jessie probed. ‘Is she in a psychiatric hospital?’

Breaking eye contact, the old lady gave an almost imperceptible nod, as if she was embarrassed by the information she’d shared.

‘She couldn’t cope when Danny died. She was always fragile and she broke down completely when Danny took his own life.’

‘Where is the home?’ Marilyn asked.

‘It’s … it’s up in Maidenhead somewhere. I remember Maidenhead …’ A pause. ‘I … I can’t remember the name. I’m sorry, I never visited.’

‘Don’t worry, Mrs Lawson,’ Jessie cut in. ‘The police can find out if they need to talk to her.’

‘You won’t get any sense from her.’ The words rushed out. ‘She hasn’t spoken a word of sense since she was admitted six months ago. Malcolm goes to see her, takes Harry along sometimes, but she says nothing to him. Nothing to Harry either.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Lawson. You’ve been very helpful.’ Marilyn cleared his throat again, the sound grating in the claustrophobic space. ‘We are, uh, we’re working on the assumption that Malcolm left Harry here deliberately, because he believed that the hospital was a safe place at that hour of the night, and then went on somewhere else, to a location that we have yet to determine.’

‘To commit suicide?’ Her voice rose and cracked.

Marilyn shuffled his feet awkwardly against the tacky lino, the sound like the squealing of a trapped mouse.

Jessie nodded. ‘It is our working theory at the moment, Mrs Lawson.’

The old lady raised a hand to her mouth, stifling a sob. Jessie’s heart went out to her. She could be sitting facing her own mother: decades older, but with the same raw grief etched on to her face.

‘Something must have happened to him. He wouldn’t have left Harry.’

‘He left Harry in a hospital, Mrs Lawson,’ Jessie said gently. ‘Somewhere safe.’

‘He wouldn’t have left him. Not here. Not anywhere.’ Jamming her eyes shut, she shook her head. ‘And he would never kill himself, not after Danny.’

‘Mrs Lawson, you told DS Workman that Malcolm has suffered from severe depression since Danny’s death,’ Marilyn said. He looked intensely uncomfortable faced with the mixture of defiance and raw grief pulsing from this proud old lady. Jessie wondered if he usually left Workman to deal with families of the bereaved. From his reaction, she concluded that he did, couldn’t blame him.

‘Malcolm believes in God, Detective Inspector. Suicide is a sin in God’s eyes.’

‘Mrs Lawson.’ Jessie waited until the woman’s tear-filled eyes had found hers. ‘Depression is complex and the symptoms vary wildly between people, but it is very often characterized by a debilitating sadness, hopelessness and a total loss of interest in things that the sufferer used to enjoy.’

‘Your own baby?’ Her voice cracked. ‘A loss of interest in your own baby?’

‘A sufferer can feel exhausted – utterly exhausted, mentally and physically, by everything. Little children are tiring enough for someone who is healthy. For someone with depression, having to take care of a young child, however much they love that child, would be incredibly hard, a Mount Everest to climb each and every day. Depression also affects decision-making because the rational brain can’t function properly …’ Jessie paused. ‘And a person suffering from depression can believe that the people they leave behind are better off without them.’

Another sob, quickly stifled. His face wrinkling with concern at the sound, the little boy on the mat looked from his Bob the Builder phone to his grandmother.

‘You’re wrong, Doctor.’

‘Mrs Lawson.’ Moving to sit next to her on the sofa, Jessie laid a hand on her arm. Her skin was papery, chilled, despite the heat in the room. Jessie took a breath, fighting to suppress her own memories. ‘Mrs Lawson.’

‘No. No. You’re wrong.’ Tears were running unchecked down her cheeks. Unclipping her handbag, she fumbled inside and pulled out a crumpled tissue. ‘You’re both wrong. He would never leave Harry, not after Danny. He’s already lost one child, he’d never risk losing another. You need to find him.’ Her voice broke. ‘What are you doing to find him? Why are you sitting here? You need to find Malcolm now.’

11

Head down, Jessie walked swiftly down the corridor, forcing herself not to break into a full-on sprint. The heat and that ubiquitous hospital smell of antiseptic struggling to mask an odorous cocktail of bodily fluids felt almost physical, a claustrophobic weight pressing in on her from all sides. And the suit. The electric suit – she’d barely felt it while she’d been abroad – was tightening around her throat, making it hard to breathe.

‘Jessie.’

She took a few more steps, pretending that she hadn’t heard Marilyn’s call. The corner was an arm’s length away. If she swung around it, she could run down the next corridor, cut through A & E and disappear outside before he caught up with her. Escape.

‘Jessie, I know that you can hear me,’ Marilyn called, louder. ‘I don’t do jogging, so wait.’

She stopped, turned slowly to face him.

‘Jesus Christ, I need a drink after that,’ he muttered, catching up with her.

‘It wasn’t the best.’

‘So what do you think?’

Jessie focused on a patch of dried damp on the wall opposite, the result of a historic leak long since repaired but not repainted, avoiding meeting his eyes. ‘I think that you need to find Malcolm Lawson quickly.’

‘Isn’t it likely that he’s already dead?’

‘You can’t make that assumption. He has all sorts of conflicting emotions careering around in his head. Depression, exhaustion, hopelessness sure, but Mrs Lawson is right when she says that he also has a lot of positive emotions, pushing against those negative drivers. He believes in God, and suicide is a sin in the eyes of any Christian church. His older son committed suicide and he was horrified by that. And he has Harry, and for the past year that baby has been the centre of his world—’ She broke off with a shake of her head. ‘Mrs Lawson was adamant that he wouldn’t commit suicide.’

‘And you believe her?’ Marilyn asked gently.

Jessie sighed. ‘No … yes … no. I think that there is a lot of wishing and hoping that’s fuelling her belief. But I also know that suicide won’t be an easy choice for him. You can’t assume that he’s already dead.’

‘So we should be out looking for him?’

‘You should. Now.’

Marilyn tipped back on his heels and blew air out of his nose. ‘It would be a hell of a lot easier if I knew where to start.’

‘There’s no word on his car? If he left Harry here at around midnight, it makes sense to assume that he drove.’

‘It does, but we’ve had no word so far and every squad car in the county has been told to keep an eye out for it.’ Marilyn held out an arm. ‘Shall we get out of here, talk outside? This place is giving me hives.’

They walked towards the exit. Sweat was trickling down Jessie’s spine, pasting her shirt to her back. Marilyn was carrying his suit jacket slung over his shoulder, his lined face gummy with perspiration.

‘Why would Malcolm have decided now?’ he asked.

Jessie shrugged. She had asked herself that question virtually every day of the fifteen years since her little brother’s suicide and she still hadn’t come up with an answer that satisfied her. It seemed to come down to opportunity. Opportunity because she had left him alone, gone to Wimbledon Common with her boyfriend, leaving Jamie to be dropped home to a dark, empty house by someone else’s mother, while she had lied to her own, told her that she would be there to look after him.

‘The straw that broke the camel’s back.’

Marilyn smiled, a half-hearted attempt to lighten the moment. ‘Is that a technical term?’

Jessie returned his smile with one equally lacklustre. ‘You have to get all the way to PhD level before you can use it.’

‘So what was the straw?’

‘It could be any of a number of things. A significant date, the time of year, the weather. Despite what most people think, suicide rates peak in the spring and early summer – April, May, June.’

‘I would have thought winter. Winter is depressing.’

‘Yes, but everybody is depressed in winter. In spring, most people’s mood lifts. Warmer weather, flowers and trees coming into bloom, baby animals being born, new life – it makes everyone happier. Those people who are clinically depressed suddenly realize that they’re more alone, more isolated than they had thought. I know this isn’t helpful, but it could be one of a thousand things. He could simply have had enough. Reached the end, the point that he couldn’t go on fighting any more.’

They made it to the exit, stepped outside. Weaving through the crowd of smokers they surfaced into clear air and turned to face each other.

‘I appreciate you coming here today, Jessie.’

‘Find him, Marilyn. Find him quickly.’

Jessie was halfway to the car park when an April downpour came from nowhere and turned the tarmac into a boiling slick of bubbles within seconds. Breaking into a run, she reached her Mini, yanked open the driver’s door and dived inside, already soaked. Starting the engine, she flipped the wipers to maximum, heard them groan against the weight of water, clearing visibility, losing it. Scrubbing the condensation from the inside of the windscreen with the sleeve of her shirt, she eased the Mini back off the grass verge and crawled at snail’s pace to the exit. As she pulled out of the hospital car park on to the main road, the rain still sheeting, she saw Joan Lawson with Harry in his pushchair, waiting at the bus stop. There was no shelter and the old lady had obviously come out without an umbrella because she was standing, looking fixedly down the road in the direction of the oncoming traffic, rain flattening her silver hair to her head and pasting her white shirt to her body.

Passing the bus stop, Jessie flicked on her indicator and bumped two tyres on to the kerb. She couldn’t leave them standing there, getting drenched.

But what else could she do? She didn’t have a child seat and there was no way the pram would fit in her Mini. She didn’t even have an umbrella, a coat, anything to offer. Cursing her uselessness, she waited for a space in the traffic and eased back into its flow, watched them recede in the oval of her rear-view mirror, blurring under the downpour until they were toy people, the old lady still staring down the road, the bus nowhere in sight.

12

‘Captain Callan?’

The man who had manoeuvred himself in front of Callan in the doorway, who was now holding out his hand and fixing Callan with a limpid green gaze, was as Irish as Guinness and leprechauns. He was around Callan’s own age, but there the similarity stopped. Fine ginger hair feathered his head, freckles peppered his pallid face and the skin on his bare, extended forearm looked as if it would burn to a crisp in mid-winter. His body was soft and paunchy, his features slightly feminine looking. But the expression on his face was steadfast. Callan’s gaze found the purple pentagon bordering the black crown on his epaulettes, the purple band around the cap that he was holding in his left hand, and his heart sank. He took hold of the proffered hand firmly.

‘Chaplain. What can I do for you?’

‘I’m Michael O’Shaughnessy, the padre here at Blackdown. Could I have a quiet word please, Captain.’ He glanced past Callan to where a group of shock-faced sixteen-year-olds, last night’s guard detachment, fidgeted on chairs in the larger of the two rooms that Gold had secured for interviews. ‘In private.’

The only Army officers who didn’t carry standard ranks, chaplains could hail from any Christian religion or Judaism, but were expected to provide pastoral care to any soldier who needed it, irrespective of the soldier’s faith – or lack of it. All very worthy, but O’Shaughnessy’s presence in this room with Callan’s witnesses, his suspects, made him deeply uneasy. The last thing he needed was God or his earthly representative getting in the way of his investigation.

They stepped outside and Callan turned to face O’Shaughnessy. Though shards of sunlight were knifing through the grey clouds, it had started to rain, a soft patter on the tarmac around them. The chaplain gazed blandly up at Callan.

‘You’re leading the investigation into this poor, unfortunate boy’s death, I presume?’ His tone was soft, the lilt southern Irish, nothing hurried about his diction, no urgency.

Callan nodded, feeling impatience rear its head already. He resisted the urge to glance at this watch.

‘I would ask you to suspend your interviews for a few hours, send the boys and girls back to their accommodation blocks for a bit of downtime. You can resume later today, when they’ve rested. Perhaps even tomorrow morning.’

Callan frowned. ‘These “boys and girls”, as you call them, are witness to and potentially suspects in a suspicious death.’

‘Is it definitely murder?’

‘I won’t know for sure until the autopsy, but it looks that way.’ His tone was curt, deliberately so. He still felt like shit, didn’t have the mental or physical energy to exchange niceties with the chaplain. He wanted this conversation over, wanted to get back to doing his job.

‘This is a training base, Captain, for the Royal Logistic Corps, as you know. These are kids, sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds, for the most part. They are all tired and scared. You will get far more sense from them if you give them a chance to sleep, to get some rest.’

‘This is an Army base, Chaplain. These kids joined voluntarily and were legally old enough to make that decision.’

A shadow crossed O’Shaughnessy’s face. ‘They’re hardly Parachute Regiment or SAS, though, are they?’

‘They’re still Army, none of them conscripts.’ Still witnesses. Still suspects.

The rain was getting heavier; Callan could feel cold water funnelling down the back of his neck. He flipped up his collar and hunched his shoulders in his navy suit. O’Shaughnessy appeared not to notice the burgeoning downpour. Coming from Ireland, he was no doubt used to it. ‘Nobody is going anywhere, until I, or one of my team has spoken with them. Now, if you’ll excuse me.’ Callan turned to go inside.

‘Captain.’

Callan paused, his hand on the door, but didn’t turn. ‘Chaplain.’

‘I will be around, Captain Callan. The welfare of the living in this case is as important – more so, I would venture – than the welfare of the dead.’

Don’t tell me. Your God will look after the dead.

‘And it is my job to ensure that these teenagers’ welfare is not compromised.’

Callan’s hard gaze met the chaplain’s insipid green one.

‘Of course, Chaplain, I would expect nothing less. Just as it’s my job to find out what happened.’ He paused. ‘Did you know him, Chaplain?’

‘The victim?’

‘Stephen Foster. He was called Stephen Foster.’

‘My conversations are entirely confidential, Captain, you know that.’ His soft voice didn’t rise. ‘I cannot divulge the names of those that I give counsel to. I need to be indisputably trustworthy, above reproach. No names, no comebacks, as they say.’

Callan’s jaw tightened. ‘This is potentially a murder investigation.’

‘Potentially.’

‘Whichever way you look at it, Foster is dead. Surely your professional and ecclesiastical responsibility are discharged on death.’

‘The dead leave behind families, they leave behind loved ones and they leave behind their reputations.’

‘And they need justice,’ Callan snapped. ‘He needs justice.’

‘If this is found to be murder, Captain Callan, unequivocally murder, feel free to come and speak with me again.’ His gaze slid from Callan’s and found the low cloud ceiling above them, his brow creasing into a frown as if he had finally noticed that he was getting wet.

Callan gave a grim nod. ‘The autopsy will be tomorrow morning. Don’t go anywhere, Chaplain, and don’t discuss this case with anyone. I will see you again soon, no doubt.’

‘No doubt.’

Yanking the door open, Callan pushed through, leaving the chaplain standing outside in the rain, his mouth puckered into a moue of distaste. At the rain? At him? Callan couldn’t tell and couldn’t care less either way.

13

From her office window, Jessie watched the opaque curtain of another spring storm barrel across the lake at the bottom of the wide sweep of Bradley Court’s lawn, turning the glassy water to froth. The leaves on the copper beech trees lining the pathway by the manor house twisted and bowed before they were engulfed, flattened under the weight of the downpour, and suddenly her view was misted, the glass opaque.

A knock on the door. The blond teenager standing in the corridor was barely taller than Jessie’s five foot six, narrow-shouldered and thin. His soft hazel eyes looked huge in a pale face, framed as they were by the dark rings of insomnia. He looked very young.

‘Private Jones, I’m Doctor Jessie Flynn.’ She held out her hand. ‘Please come in.’

Ryan Jones slid through the door, glancing sideways at her, a look of suspicion etched on his face. He didn’t move to take her proffered hand. Jessie recognized that reaction, had come across it before with young soldiers a few months in who spent every day being drilled: woken up at first light and run for miles in their platoons, publicly belittled for every minor misdemeanour, their rooms swept with eagle eyes for dust specks, clothes checked for razor-sharp creases, even the shine on their boots studied forensically for signs that they weren’t measuring up. And even if they were, imaginary holes picked in order to break down their confidence. Everything about Army basic training was designed to remove individuality and mould a team in its place. These recruits often found their initial visit to Bradley Court a destabilizing experience, no longer accustomed to being treated as an equal, a unique individual.

Closing the door behind him, Jessie indicated one of the two leather bucket chairs, separated only by a low coffee table that she used for her sessions. The chairs were deliberately placed underneath one of her office’s two sash windows so that patients could relieve the pressure, if only momentarily, by looking at the view of nature beyond the glass. Ryan sat down, crossing his legs and folding his arms across his chest, nothing open or accommodating about his posture.

‘Would you like a drink? Tea, coffee, water?’

Without making eye contact, he shook his head. Jessie grabbed his file and a pen from her desk and took the seat opposite. She had re-read the single typed sheet the file contained shortly before he arrived.

Ryan Thomas Jones

Sixteen and five months

Joined the Army on 2 November last year, the day of his sixteenth birthday

Phase 2 trainee, Royal Logistic Corps

Referred by Blackdown’s commanding officer, Colonel Philip Wallace, because of concerns about his mental health

Nothing more than that: a vague, unspecific brief. She looked up from the file. It felt strange to be back in her consulting room, facing another patient who, from his body language and the shuttered look on his face, would give a lot to be somewhere else.

‘Can I call you Ryan?’

A tiny lift of his shoulders, which Jessie translated as a teenager’s ‘Yes.’

‘Thank you for coming in to see me.’

Another weary shrug. ‘I wasn’t given a choice.’ A soft regional accent that Jessie couldn’t place. She ploughed on. ‘You’ve been in the Army five months?’

‘Yes.’

‘With the Royal Logistic Corps?’

‘Yes.’

‘How is it going?’

‘OK.’

‘Are you enjoying it?’

‘It’s not an exciting choice, is it, logistics? Not brave.’ There was sneer in his voice.

‘Don’t knock it. An Army runs on good logistics.’ Jessie racked her brains for the famous quote – something about wars being won or lost on the contents of soldiers’ stomachs – but try as she might she couldn’t summon it, or its author, to mind. She still felt vague and headachy, half her brain mid-flight somewhere over the Persian Gulf, the other half in that small, depressing hospital room, hoping with all her heart that Joan Lawson was right when she said her son would never commit suicide, all her professional knowledge, her gut feeling, telling her that the old lady was wrong, the parallels with her own past deeply unsettling.

‘An Army marches on its stomach, Napoleon Bonaparte.’

Ryan’s face remained impassive.

‘Logistics. The importance of logistics. Napoleon Bonaparte?’ Logistics, catering, near enough. ‘Military general, the first Emperor of France, Battle of Waterloo?’

Still no reaction.

‘Never mind. So why did you choose the Logistic Corps then?’

He shrugged, a careless movement that brought to Jessie’s mind a teenaged schoolboy sitting at the back of the class, thinking about smoking behind the bike shed and sticking his hand up girls’ skirts rather than whatever subject the teacher was wittering on about at the front of the classroom.

‘Do you want to be brave, Ryan?’ Jessie asked softly, tilting forward, trying, and failing, to catch his eye.

Kids of this age should be still at school. She didn’t believe that they had the emotional maturity, the mental robustness to handle rigid institutions like the Army, even in relatively soft options like logistics. The Army could be tough and isolating, the necessity of fitting in, of being accepted as one of the lads, stressful, particularly for people who were not natural team players. She suspected that Ryan was not a natural team player.

‘Ryan.’

He had started to fidget, fingers picking at a thread that had come loose from the stitching of his navy-blue beret. His nails had been bitten to the quick, the cuticles raw, Jessie noticed.

‘No.’ His voice so low that it was almost inaudible. ‘Not particularly.’

‘So why the Army? Why did you join?’

He sighed, like a teenager whose mother was hassling him. ‘Because people like me don’t have choices. The Army seemed like a good way of getting out.’

‘Getting out from where? Where did you grow up?’

‘Birmingham.’ The soft accent. Midlands – of course. She should have recognized it.

‘Do you have family?’

‘A mother.’

‘Father?’

‘He died when I was three.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It didn’t affect me. I never really knew him.’

Jessie knew that wasn’t true. Abandonment always affected children, however it happened. She knew that well enough from her own childhood.

‘Does your mother still live in Birmingham?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you close to her?’

The first sign of warmth and light that Jessie had seen in his soft hazel eyes, but the words thrown out insouciantly, entirely at odds with his expression. ‘What’s that got to do with you?’

She felt as if she was butting her head up against a wall. A smooth, featureless, wall, plain white, no finger-holds, nothing to get a grip on. Her office felt oppressive suddenly, a room shut up for too long over winter, which it had been. The shower had passed, sunlight breaking through the bank of grey clouds outside. Standing, Jessie unlocked the window and hauled up the lower sash. Cool, damp air eddied through the gap.

‘Can I go now?’ Ryan asked, narrowing his gaze against the sunlight.

‘Not yet.’

‘Why not?’ he hissed.

The sudden flare of aggression surprised Jessie, gone almost as soon as she’d registered it. He had seemed too distant, too closed down for aggression. She made a mental note.

‘Don’t I get a choice?’ he finished.

‘Unfortunately you gave up your right to choose when you joined the Army.’

His mouth tightened as if she had unwittingly put her finger on a nerve.

‘Ryan, Blackdown’s commanding officer, Colonel Philip Wallace, referred you to the Defence Psychology Service. As you can see, there’s not much information in your file.’ She held up the single page. ‘So why don’t you tell me why you think he sent you.’

Jaw muscles clenched under his skin.

‘I’ve never even talked to him.’ He stretched his arm straight above his head. ‘He’s God isn’t he? And I’m down here somewhere.’ The hand moved to graze the carpet. ‘Pond life.’

If he’d had no verbal contact with Wallace, had he talked to someone else about his feelings, or had his behaviour been noticed? ‘Did you talk to someone else at Blackdown about how you’re feeling?’

‘I’m not feeling anything.’

‘There must be a reason that you’re here, that you were referred.’

Ryan’s arms tightened around his torso, but he didn’t reply. Everything about his posture telegraphed intense feelings of discomfort at Jessie’s questions.

‘Who did you talk to, Ryan?’

‘No one.’ His gaze found the window. Jessie let him stare. After a moment, his gaze still fixed on the outside, he murmured, ‘He approached me.’

‘Who approached you?’

‘The chaplain.’

That wasn’t in the file. She made a mental note.

‘What did he say?’

‘He said that it’s his job.’

‘To keep an eye on new recruits?’

‘Yeah. Their spiritual health, mental health, all that crap.’

‘What did you talk to him about?’

Another shrug. ‘Stuff.’

‘Can you tell me?’

He shook his head. ‘They’re supposed to be confidential, aren’t they? My discussions with him? I should have known not to talk to him.’ Ryan slumped in the bucket chair, started kicking at the carpet with one of his combat boots, muttered under his breath. ‘Fuckin’ kiddie fiddler.’

Catholic. Kiddie fiddler. The chaplain must get that all the time – an occupational hazard. Jessie continued to look at Ryan, but he didn’t add anything else. She waited, the silence growing heavier.

‘Do you believe in God, Doctor Flynn?’ he asked suddenly.

Jessie took a beat before answering. She had been raised a Catholic, sent to a convent school, but she had never seen any evidence that the people around her lived by God’s word. Had seen no evidence at all of the existence of a just and gentle God. The only God she had experienced persecuted and destroyed.

And God will use this persecution to show his justice and to make you worthy of his kingdom, for which you are suffering.

Persecution without justice.

‘No, Ryan, I don’t believe in God.’

Ryan looked up and their gazes met for a fraction of a second before he looked away again. Minute progress, but progress all the same.

‘My mum spent time in a mental home, you know, when I was younger. Perhaps madness runs in the family.’

‘No one is saying that you’re mad.’

‘But it does run in families, doesn’t it?’ he murmured. ‘Madness?’

‘There is no such thing as madness,’ Jessie said quietly, her gaze finding the window. ‘There are disorders, some caused by physical factors, chemical imbalances in people’s brains, some caused by psychological factors, such as bad experiences in childhood.’ She fought to keep her voice even, feeling the tension rise, the electric suit tingle against her skin. Madness. ‘They can all be treated, but the patient needs to be willing.’

She thought that Ryan would have switched off, be picking at his beret or kicking at the carpet again, but when she looked back from the window, she saw that he was watching her intently.

‘Well, perhaps I am.’

‘Willing?’

‘Mad.’

‘Perhaps we all are.’ Jessie smiled, a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. ‘We’re all individuals, Ryan. Don’t feel that you need to be the same as the others to fit in.’

A chill shook Jessie as she closed the door behind Ryan, and she realized that the window was still open. The cloud canopy was back, draping itself over Bradley Court, the leaves on the copper beeches outside lifting and twisting in the wind, rain speckling through the open window. Hauling down the sash, she stood looking out, awed by the ability of the weather to change so suddenly from darkness to light and back to darkness again.

What had she been doing when she was Ryan’s age? She would have been back at school then, trying to get a grip on normality, work for her GCSEs, make up for the time that she had missed, prove to herself – to them – that she could, would, carve a normal life for herself. Closing her eyes, she tilted her head and rested it against the cool glass. The hiss and snap of the electric suit was intensifying with the memories.

She could feel the box of matches in her shaking hand, the rough strip on the side as her fingers felt to slide it open in the dark. It was important that she was quiet, vital that she didn’t wake them. She just needed to show them. Show her.

Her eyes snapped open. The electric suit was tight around her throat.

She had been fourteen, younger even than Ryan. Old enough to face the consequences though. Old enough to pay.

14

Callan found Blackdown’s commanding officer, Colonel Philip Wallace, in his office. He was in his fifties, a large man, square and solid, both facially and in his build, running to fat around the middle, as were many men of his age, used to spending too much time behind a desk.

‘Come in, Captain Callan. You’re the Senior Investigating Officer on this case?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So where have we got to?’ A clipped, public school accent, the tone controlled but commanding.

‘It’s early days, sir. The autopsy is booked for tomorrow morning, so we should have confirmed cause of death by end of day tomorrow.’ Callan tried to catch his eye, to form the crucial first impression of the man who would, no doubt, be breathing down his neck until the investigation was concluded. But sunlight was cutting obliquely through the window to Wallace’s right, lighting his face, masking his eyes behind the reflection in his frameless square spectacle lenses. ‘But I suspect it’s murder.’

‘Why?’

‘Because of the nature of the victim’s injuries. A throat wound. It couldn’t have been accidental and it’s a …’ he paused, searching for the right word ‘… brave way to commit suicide. And also the weapon that was used was found eight metres from his body, the tip stabbed into the ground, at an angle. Thrown, my CSI sergeant said. Long way to throw it when you’re bleeding from a throat wound.’

Sighing, Wallace dipped his head and rubbed his hands over his bald scalp, the sound of his palms grating through the sparse grey stubble, sandpaper on wood.

‘I’m sure I don’t need to remind you how sensitive this death will be. Sixteen-year-old, five months in.’

There was a brusqueness to Wallace’s tone that Callan was well used to: men who were accustomed, over years, to silence and assent. Not conditions that Callan reacted well to, despite his chosen profession. This case was Military Police jurisdiction, but Wallace was commanding officer at Blackdown, and although far above the victim in the Army hierarchy, he was still Foster’s direct superior, which gave him an unalienable right to be informed, involved, omnipresent.

‘We need to get this sorted quickly, Captain.’

‘That is my intention.’

‘Keep a lid on the negative publicity.’ Wallace cleared his throat. ‘Can you do that for me?’

‘That’s not my first priority, sir.’

The sun must have gone behind a cloud, because he met Wallace’s gaze behind his glasses now. His eyes were light grey and shone with an intense, uncompromising gleam.

‘Nevertheless, it is an important one.’ Wallace’s eyes narrowed. ‘Discretion is the better part of valour, as they say. I’ve heard that you know all about valour.’ His gaze found the scar on Callan’s temple. ‘But discretion …?’ He let the sentence hang.

‘I have no intention of speaking to the press,’ Callan replied. ‘And I will ensure that none of my team do either.’

‘That was all I wanted to hear.’

A knock on the door. Wallace frowned. ‘Yes?’

The door inched open and Lieutenant Gold stuck his head through the gap. His eyes flitted from Callan to Wallace and back to Callan.

‘The guard are isolated and ready to be interviewed, Captain,’ he said.

‘Come on in, Gold,’ Wallace barked.

‘I need to get back, sir.’ Gold addressed his comment to Callan.

‘You’ve left someone guarding the interviewees?’ Callan asked.

‘Sergeant Kiddie.’

‘Fine. So come in.’

Fingering the knot of his tie, the yellow-haired lieutenant stepped over the threshold. He came to attention facing Colonel Wallace, a salute that Wallace waved away.

‘No need for that.’ Wallace came out from behind his desk and laid a light hand on Gold’s shoulder. ‘So you’re working on this case too? I didn’t realize.’

Taking a step back, Gold disengaged his shoulder. ‘Yes, sir.’ His gaze swung away from Wallace’s and Callan noticed a muscle above his eye twitch.

‘Well, I’m pleased to hear that,’ Wallace said gruffly, his face creasing into a frown, the expression at odds with his words. He glanced over to Callan. ‘You may have heard that we share a relative.’

Callan gave a non-committal half-nod. He hadn’t heard and the information was irrelevant to him. He wouldn’t view or treat Gold any differently because of it.

Leaning back against his desk, legs crossed at the ankle, Wallace slid his hands into his pockets. ‘So how are you finding the Special Investigation Branch, Gold?’

Gold’s slender fingers moved to smooth the collar of his shirt, a collar that was already starched and ironed within an inch of its life.

‘Good, sir, I’m enjoying it. I’m enjoying the autonomy, the freedom.’ His voice was too loud for the small office, as if he was struggling to pitch his volume at the correct level.

Callan, leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, watching intently, realized with surprise that Gold was tense, stressed. There was a prickliness, an antagonism to the atmosphere in the room that hadn’t been present earlier, when it was him and Wallace.

‘Yes, I’m sure that the Branch is an interesting place to be,’ Wallace said. ‘Make the most of it, eh. Spend as much time as you can with Captain Callan here. Learn from him.’

A brief nod and Gold’s eyes swivelled to meet Callan’s. ‘If there’s nothing else, I’ll get back to the interviewees.’

Callan glanced at Wallace before replying, but Wallace wasn’t looking at him. He was gazing down at the carpet, his face creased again into that frown.

‘Yes, you go. I’ll join you in a minute.’

Turning, Gold left the room without another word.

Callan straightened. ‘If that’s all, Colonel, I’ll get back too.’

Tugging his glasses off, Wallace massaged the bridge of his nose with two blunt fingers and sighed irritably. ‘Make sure that you involve Gold in every aspect of the case. Keep an eye on him for me, will you? It’s important to pass on your expertise to junior officers and Gold is bright and talented.’

The request was no doubt motivated by family connection, perhaps a favour Wallace owed to that relative he had mentioned, and the entreaty needled Callan. He hailed from a long line of factory workers, was the first in his family not to have ended up on the shop floor purely because politicians hadn’t yet got around to closing the local grammar school and he’d been smart enough to win a place. His father had died fourteen years ago; his mother lived in a modern terraced house in a secure gated development in a nice part of Aldershot that he paid for. He had made his own way in the world from the age of sixteen, reviled others who hadn’t done the same, some of that feeling motivated, he recognized, by envy.

‘Yes, sir,’ he muttered, making his way to the door. Jesus. This investigation was going from bad to worse and it had hardly begun.

15

Marilyn stared at the snowstorm on the screen in front of him.

‘Is this mid-winter in Alaska?’

Workman sighed. ‘Old CCTV, sir.’

Tipping back on his heels, Marilyn blew air through his nose. ‘You can say that again.’ His gaze moved from the screen that covered the A & E reception desk, entrance hallway and sliding doors to the outside, roamed across the other screens in the bank of monitors, five screens wide, four high, twenty in all, each relaying a fragment of hospital turf, the top right-hand monitor blank, the camera feeding it presumably broken, searching for a good view of the service road outside Accident and Emergency. He couldn’t see one. ‘What about the camera outside, covering the service road?’

‘Vandalized last week,’ Workman said.

Ka-ching. One chance in twenty and he’d hit the jackpot. ‘Great. So this is it. This is all we have to go on.’

‘It’s not their priority, sir.’

‘No, don’t tell me. Failing to notice babies and telling middle-aged men who are beyond help to give up smoking is, though,’ he snapped, ignoring the sideways glance that the hospital security guard shot him.

Pulling his reading glasses from his pocket – a purchase he’d been forced to make last month when he’d found that his arms no longer extended far enough to hold his newspaper at a distance whereby he could read the text – Marilyn sat down and slid the chair, on its squeaky plastic wheels, closer to the screen.

‘Play that segment again, please,’ he said to the security guard.

‘The bit where the man comes in pushing the baby?’ the guard asked.

‘Yes.’

Fuzz on the screen while the segment was rewound. Then an empty A & E foyer, the sliding doors closed, dark outside their glass panes. Suddenly the doors slid open. A pram appeared on the screen and right behind, the man pushing it, visible only from mid-chest down.

‘He’s carrying an umbrella,’ Marilyn said.

‘Which makes sense, considering it was pouring,’ Workman murmured.

Marilyn nodded, focusing on the screen. ‘Dark jumper, dark trousers, dark coat, sensible shoes.’

‘Sensible shoes?’

‘Pause, please.’

The grainy image froze. Marilyn pressed his finger to the screen.

‘Clodhoppers.’

The shoes were thick-soled, the type of shoes that would be sold at Clarks as ‘built for walking’.

‘Malcolm Lawson was certainly the sensible-shoe type,’ Workman said.

‘He was that.’

‘It could be him,’ she said.

‘It could be me.’

‘You don’t wear sensible shoes, sir,’ Workman said, glancing down at his £300 Edward Hill pebble-grain leather brogues.

Fair point.

Marilyn turned to the guard. ‘Play it until the man leaves the hospital, disappears from view, but the sliding doors are still open. Pause with the doors open, please.’

The guard’s eyebrows rose in query.

‘The background. He could have driven to the door.’

‘Not allowed.’

‘Midnight? In the rain? Who’s out there objecting?’

They waited while the man dressed in dark clothing parked the pram, stooping to take one last long look at baby Harry before he straightened, turned and exited the building, walking right, diagonally across the service road, out of shot.

‘Now,’ Marilyn said.

The screen froze, sliding doors still open, revealing the service road beyond, the darkness illuminated by the circular misty disc of an overhead streetlamp. Marilyn pressed his finger to the far left-hand side of the screen.

‘This? What’s this?’

‘The front of an ambulance,’ the guard said. ‘The bumper, a bit of the grille and bonnet.’

‘You sure?’

‘Absolutely. I’ve worked here for twenty years. Seen enough of those in my time to recognize one from a square inch.’

‘OK,’ Marilyn said. ‘Fine.’ He could tell that the security guard was a pedant. A twenty-years-in-the-job pedant; good enough for him. ‘So that’s an ambulance.’

His gaze tracked right, across the bottom of the screen, up an inch, left, the CCTV equivalent of a fingertip search in mud. Double yellow lines, showing muted white on the black-and-white screen. Something bright white, inflated – a plastic bag? At the top of the screen, two wheels, separated by a pale, blotchy – most probably, dirty white – stripe of metal, a horizontal row of alternate dark and light-coloured blocks above.

‘The lower half of a police car, sir,’ Workman cut in.

Marilyn tilted forward, squinting through his glasses, picking out every detail. The vehicle was parked on the other side of the service road, half its wheels, a segment of chassis, the stripes and the blocks – navy blue and fluorescent yellow in real life – showing gunmetal grey and luminous white on the screen.

‘Yes, you’re right. It’s a police car.’

He glanced over at the security guard, who concurred.

One ambulance, one police car: nothing unusual in either of those being parked on a hospital service road. Nothing else visible. No leads. No breaks. No bloody luck.

Tugging off his glasses, sliding them back into his pocket before Workman had time to comment on his new-found old man accoutrements, he leaned back in the chair and stretched his arms above his head. Focusing so hard on the screen had left his eyes feeling as if someone had tugged them five centimetres from his face on their optic nerves and then pinged them back into their sockets.

‘So it could very possibly have been Malcolm Lawson who dropped the baby off,’ he said.

Workman and the security guard both nodded.

‘He was tender with Harry,’ Workman said. ‘He stopped to take a last look. A long look.’

Marilyn sighed. ‘He did. He did indeed.’

His mood hadn’t improved. He felt as if he’d spent the whole morning running in circles, chasing his tail. He had snuck out of the hospital a couple of times to join the unwashed throng outside for a sneaky cigarette, hoping, ridiculously, that Janet, that dumpy receptionist, wouldn’t catch him in the act. Lord knows why her opinion mattered to him, but for some reason he felt strongly that he needed to prove her wrong. Prove to her that he could take control of his health, even if he was delaying the attempt until tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes. Every traffic cop and patrol car in Surrey and Sussex had been told to keep an eye out as a priority, but as yet there had been no sighting of Malcolm Lawson’s car. DS Workman had already been telephoned three times by Granny Lawson for updates, even though she’d only left the hospital two hours ago, each call progressively more tearful. He hadn’t given the old biddy his mobile number, small mercies.

‘Get a copy of the original film to the tech boys, DS Workman, see if they can clean it up.’

‘That’ll take two or three days, sir.’

Pushing himself to his feet, he threw her a withering look. ‘Better get on with it then.’

16

She obviously hadn’t turned James Blunt up loud enough, because she heard her phone on the first ring, caught its jittering progress across the smooth black leather of her passenger seat out of the corner of her eye. Easing her foot on to the brake, pulling her Mini to the side of the lane until the dogwood hedge fingered her passenger window, Jessie reached over, checked the name flashing on the phone’s face.

Gideon Duursema.

She was tempted to toss it back on the seat, wind down the windows and turn up the volume, step on the accelerator, plead ignorance to her boss in the morning. But she couldn’t start off on the wrong foot with him so soon after her return. She was good at her job, intuitive and dedicated – most of the time – so he cut her slack, but even he had limits.

‘Gideon.’

‘Jessie.’

Silence, which she let hang.

‘How was DI Simmons?’

A diversionary tactic, from his tone.

‘Rough, as always.’

‘How was the baby?’

‘Small. Fat. Baby-like.’

His deep laugh echoed down the line. ‘So maternal.’

‘Well, at least you’re not going to have to worry about me getting knocked up and taking months off work.’

‘Small mercies, Doctor Flynn.’

Doctor Flynn. Ominous. Echoes of the occasions when her mother called for ‘Jessica’, as a child. Nothing good ever came out of those occasions.

‘You’re on your way home, I presume?’

‘Yes,’ she replied in a cautious voice.

‘Then, I’m sorry.’

‘You’re apologizing before you’ve even asked me to do anything. Now that really makes me nervous.’

‘You weren’t also feeling tired were you? Jet-lagged?’

Jessie glanced quickly at the washed-out oval segment of her face in the rear-view mirror. ‘Knackered. Why?’

‘I’ve had another request.’

‘Don’t tell me. From your dry cleaner. Your suit is ready for collection. Of course, yes, no problem, give me the address.’

Another laugh, this one a cynical bark, cut off before it was finished. ‘I was hoping that your stint on a boat might have made you more respectful of authority, but I seem to be sadly deluded.’

‘Type 45 Destroyer.’

She heard his exasperated sigh down the phone, remained stubbornly silent.

‘There’s been a suspicious death at Blackdown. Early this morning. A sixteen-year-old.’

‘Sounds like a PR disaster in the making.’

Headlights suddenly, even though it was still daylight, high up, lighting the interior of her Mini operating-theatre bright. She held her breath, hoping her Mini was doing the same, while a huge metallic black Range Rover Sport squeezed past on the narrow lane, the woman driving, a slim blonde, mobile clamped to her ear, the nose of a chubby-faced, blonde toddler pressed to the back window, her breath clouding the glass.

‘So the Branch need to clear this one up quickly before the press get hold of it and turn it into a public relations nightmare for the Army. Holden-Hough has requested our help.’

‘Why?’

‘The victim, all the key suspects and witnesses are trainees. Sixteen-year-olds. They’re young, vulnerable and frightened.’

‘More babies. Sounds like a nightmare brief.’

‘I’m sure that you can handle it, Doctor Poppins, after this morning’s practice and the Sami Scott case.’

Her mind cast back to this morning, skirting around the baby boy playing on the floor-mat as if he was an explosive device; four months earlier to four-year-old Sami Scott. The death of Sami’s mother, a bitter pill that she hadn’t yet managed to swallow. Still believing that she could, should, have done something to predict and alter that outcome.

‘It’s a bit less Mary Poppins and a bit more Doctor Doolittle with new recruits.’

‘Thank you, I appreciate it.’

‘I haven’t said yes, yet.’ She paused, heard nothing but Gideon’s measured breathing. ‘Who’s the Senior Investigating Officer?’ Her own breath caught in her throat as she waited for Gideon’s answer, waited to hear if it was Callan.

‘Holden-Hough didn’t say.’

And you didn’t ask. But, of course, why would you?

‘Is the SIO on board with the idea of a psychologist’s help?’

‘In the Special Investigation Branch what Holden-Hough says, goes.’

‘I’ll take that as a “no” then.’

‘You can handle it.’

Jessie didn’t answer, because her answer was irrelevant. She was going anyway, no choice. She glanced at her watch: 5 p.m. Relatively early, but she felt wiped out, knew that it wasn’t jet lag. Something about today – Joan Lawson, Malcolm, baby Harry playing happily, unaware that his world was shattering, Ryan Jones, suicide, madness – had sucked her dry. The tingle from the electric suit that she had felt first at the hospital, a tingle that had intensified during her session with Ryan, refused to subside, a background itch coating her whole body, barely there, but omnipresent all the same.

‘Can you go straight to Blackdown?’

‘Is there no one else?’

‘No one who has acres of time in their diary because they’ve come back from three months away.’

‘Working. Away, working.’

A heavy sigh. ‘You know what the government has done to our funding.’

She did – all too well. It was one of his hobby horses.

‘We’re all stretched to breaking, and you have experience of working with the Branch. What was that officer’s name? Cooper?’

‘Callan,’ Jessie murmured. ‘Captain Callan.’

‘Right, Callan. He seemed like a good guy. It might be him.’ The clink of metal stiletto heels on a wooden floor suddenly, echoing down the line, and a woman’s voice Jessie recognized as Jenny, the service’s secretary. ‘I need to go,’ Gideon said.

A click. Silence. Only the sound of her own heartbeat, slightly elevated, beating in the hollow car.

17

The afternoon sun cast a feeble rectangle of pale yellow over the bare wooden desk in the room that Callan had hastily commandeered for his interviews.

‘You were the Duty Staff Officer for last night’s guard?’ he asked, though his tone made it more of a statement than a question.

Corporal Jace Harris, wiry, dark-eyed and dark-haired, intense and on edge, facing him across the desk, gave a brief, fretful nod. Callan tilted back in his chair, crossing his legs, one ankle resting on the other knee, slid his hands into his pockets; a deliberately relaxed, matey posture. An obvious tactic, which always surprised him with how effective it was at breaking down defensive barriers.

‘So talk me through what happened last night.’ He fixed Harris with a steady gaze.

Harris shrugged. ‘Nothing much, sir.’

‘Nothing much?’

Harris lifted his shoulders again and his small brown eyes slid to the window.

‘One of your guard duty died, Corporal.’

‘Apart from that.’

Was this guy for real? He didn’t seem overly concerned that a sixteen-year-old under his command had been found dead. Or was it an act?

‘On your watch, Harris. Someone died on your watch.’

‘It was personal. A mate.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘It’s the word on the street.’

Gangsta rap in leafy Surrey.

‘Who from?’

‘Dunno.’ Harris swallowed as if his mouth was suddenly dry. ‘It’s not going to be a random murder though, is it? A terrorist or nothing. Not down here in middle-of-fucking-nowhere Camberley.’

‘Why not?’

Harris jerked his thumb towards the window. ‘Because nothing ever happens out there.’

‘Until last night.’

A reluctant nod of acquiescence. ‘Yeah, right. Until last night.’

‘Who found Stephen Foster?’ Callan asked.

‘Martha Wonsag.’

‘Who is she?’

‘One of the new recruits, joined the same time as Foster, five or six months ago. They were on guard duty together. She radioed it in.’

‘Where were you when you received the call?’

‘In the guard hut.’

‘By the main gate?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Inside?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

‘It was raining.’

‘Are you made of sugar?’

‘Wot?’

Callan looked at the sullen ferret face. Sugar, spice and all things nice. Hardly. ‘Do you dissolve in the wet, Corporal?’

Harris didn’t answer. He had retrieved a stainless steel Zippo lighter from his pocket and was rolling it in his fingers like a worry bead.

‘Why weren’t you outside checking on the guard detail, Harris?’

‘Because, like I already said—’

‘It was raining. And nothing ever happens out there,’ Callan cut in.

Sitting forward, he planted his elbows on the desktop and steepled his fingers. Was this guy for real? ‘Until last night.’

Flicking the lid of the Zippo lighter half open with his thumb a couple of times, the noise irritatingly tinny in the bare room, Harris sneered and curled his lip. ‘Until last fucking night.’

‘Were you alone?’

‘I’m not sure exactly what time Foster died, sir, so I can’t say.’

‘Were you alone at any time during the night?’

‘For a brief period, sir.’

‘How long?’

‘Five or ten minutes. Ten max.’

‘Where were the gate guards?’

Harris frowned. ‘They were around.’

‘Around where? Around the gate?’

Harris didn’t answer; his gaze had found the window again. Callan looked over. Two male pigeons had settled on the windowsill, were strutting back and forth, fluffing their feathers to beef up their size, preparing for a fight. He shared their sentiment.

‘Where were the gate guards, Corporal Harris?’

Silence. Callan waited.

Eventually, Harris sighed. ‘One of them’s girlfriend turned up.’

Callan didn’t even want to ask the question, knew what answer he’d get if he did. Instead, he let the silence hang, saw Harris’s hands begin to churn around the Zippo.

‘She’s off travelling for six months.’

‘And?’ He twisted the knife.

‘You know what – and – sir.’

‘What about the other guard?’

‘I sent him back to my accommodation block to get my fags. I’d run out.’

Callan rubbed his hands across his face, massaging his fingers right into his eye sockets. He felt knackered, would rather be anywhere than sitting in this featureless, white-walled box, facing this moron.

‘So Martha Wonsag radioed that she’d found Stephen Foster dead,’ he said.

‘Yeah.’

‘What time was that?’

‘Three ten a.m., sir.’

A stake in the sand. One stake, in quicksand. Infinitesimal progress.

‘So where the hell was she when Foster died?’

‘She said that she was on a toilet break.’

‘A toilet break? How long does a toilet break last?’

‘Mine? Ten seconds. But I can piss up against a tree, can’t I.’ Harris clicked his tongue sarcastically. ‘Hers? You’ll need to ask her that question, sir.’

‘Did you ask her?’

‘No?’

‘Why not?’

‘Why do you think? I wasn’t going to question a woman on her toilet habits, was I? Anyway, all hell broke loose when we found Foster. Utter fucking panic. My guard detachment were all new recruits, all sixteen, and they thought that the Islamic fuckin’ State had invaded Blackdown. It was like trying to control a herd of chickens.’

‘Flock.’

‘Wot?’ The corporal reached to scratch the back of his head – an action that brought to Callan’s mind a cartoon character wrestling with a particularly knotty problem – and his sleeve rode up to reveal the tattoo of a girl on his forearm. She was artfully arranged on all fours, her bottom, clad only in a tiny red G-string, facing the viewer. She was looking back over her left shoulder; a waterfall of blonde hair cascaded over her right. The look on her face was pure suggestion, or as suggestive as could be achieved with the medium of tattoo ink on a canvas of hairy skin.

‘Nice tat,’ Callan muttered.

‘Like it?’ Harris hadn’t clocked the irony in his voice.

Callan’s gaze narrowed. ‘What do you think about women, Corporal?’

A wolfish smile. ‘I love women, Captain.’

‘In the Army, Corporal?’

‘I don’t notice.’

‘You don’t notice women?’

‘I don’t notice women in green, sir.’

The sound of a rough diesel engine and a four-tonner drove past the window, scaring the warring pigeons into flight.

‘What was Foster like?’ Callan asked.

Harris shrugged. ‘A bit of a wimp, I’d say.’

‘Why?’

Another careless lift of his shoulders. ‘He seemed to be, is all.’

‘Did he shirk his duties?’

‘No.’

‘Did he complain?’

‘No.’

‘Did he take time off sick?’

‘No.’

Callan was getting sick of the attitude. ‘So what?’ he snapped.

Dropping the Zippo with a clatter on to the table, Harris sighed. ‘Look, I’ve heard about you, sir.’ Callan noticed Harris’s gaze flick to the scar on his temple. ‘I’ve heard about you and I respect you. But who the hell would you want watching your back, somewhere like Afghanistan? When you’ve got some crazy jihadi comin’ at you? When you’re in the middle of a firefight? Do you really want some woman or some young wimp backing you up?’ His dark gaze searched Callan’s face from under his black, spiky fringe. ‘Who would you want next to you, sir?’

‘Someone who is brave and professional,’ Callan said.

‘Brave and professional. Right, yeah, me too. But they’re not typical wimps’ or female traits are they?’

‘Aren’t they?’

The corporal looked uncomfortable; he’d expected Callan’s matey support and hadn’t got it. Callan glanced at his watch – 5.30 p.m. – a darker haze muddying the sky outside the window.

‘What’s Marley stand for?’

‘Huh?’

Callan indicated Harris’s other arm, where the words ‘Marley’ were visible tattooed in black on the inside of his wrist.

‘It’s my nickname.’

‘Why Marley?’

‘It’s just a nickname, sir.’ His tone cagey.

‘After the dog?’

Harris frowned. ‘Wot dog?’

‘There was a film, wasn’t there? Marley and Me. About a dog called Marley.’

‘No,’ Harris snapped. ‘It’s not after any fuckin’ dog.’

‘What then?’ Callan pressed.

‘I’ve had it for years.’ He blinked and his eyes slid from Callan’s. ‘Can’t even remember who gave it to me. Probably my parents.’

Callan sighed. He’d had enough. He wanted out. ‘Thanks for your help, Harris. We’re done.’ He paused. ‘For now.’

Harris’s narrow lips cracked into a grin. ‘Great.’

Callan pushed himself to his feet. ‘You know that you’ve made yourself a suspect, don’t you?’

The grin vanished. ‘Wot? I was alone for five fucking minutes. Ten max.’

‘Your accommodation block is on the other side of the base. It’s going to take more than ten minutes for someone to get there, find your cigarettes and get back.’

Harris’s eyes blazed. ‘The other guard,’ he spluttered.

Callan held up a hand, silencing him. ‘If my girlfriend was off travelling for six months, I’d want to spend more than ten minutes with her.’ Callan smiled. ‘Unless I had a hair-trigger. Does he have a hair-trigger, Harris, or should I ask him that question?’

The muscles along Harris’s jaw bulged.

Callan walked to the door. ‘Don’t discuss this case with anyone, and don’t go anywhere. I’m pretty sure that I’ll need to speak to you again.’

As he pushed through the door, he glanced back, saw Harris still sitting, his head now in his hands.

18

She noticed the red Golf GTI as soon as she pulled under the raised barrier into Blackdown. Callan. So the SIO on the Stephen Foster case was Ben Callan. Pulling to the far side of the car park, tucking her Mini behind a Land Rover Defender, Jessie cut the engine. The claustrophobic electricity from the suit still tingled across her skin and now, added to it, a wave of light-headedness at the thought of seeing Callan again, the combination making her feel keyed-up and slightly nauseous. Tilting her head back, closing her eyes for a moment, she took a few deep breaths, fixing her mind on the innocuous image of the morning sun rising over the fields at the back of her cottage, trying to slow the beating of her heart. She had thought about Callan many times since she’d last seen him, had been tempted, almost as many times, to email him. But she had no experience with men beyond meaningless physical encounters and every missive she had composed had sounded trite and uninteresting. She had no idea what to say, what tone to strike, even. In the end, it had been easier not to email at all.

She recognized Callan immediately, though he was standing with his back to her. Broad-shouldered and athletic, a head taller than the grey-haired man he was talking with, he was slouching, hands shoved in his trouser pockets, perhaps to reduce the height disparity, to listen more easily. His posture, the slouch, should have said ‘relaxed’, but Jessie knew that there was nothing laid-back about the rigid set of his shoulders, the jitter of perpetual motion in his long legs. He must have sensed her approach – someone approach – because he turned suddenly and their eyes locked.

‘Jessie—’ Shock registered briefly on his face before his expression settled into one of cool unreadability. ‘Doctor Flynn. You’re back.’

‘Yes, last night. Actually, early this morning, more accurately.’

The last time she had seen him, he had been unconscious in a hospital bed, bandaged and wired to every device in the room, touch and go whether he would live or die. He had lived, the second gunshot wound that he’d survived in as many years, but she knew that the wound to his abdomen had been devastating, that he’d lost nearly half the blood in his body before he’d reached the operating theatre. Though he was back at work, she couldn’t believe that he was physically 100 per cent recovered. And mentally? He was wearing a smart navy-blue suit, uniform knife-creases bisecting each trouser leg, a crisp white shirt, open at the neck, black shoes shined mirror bright, nothing there to upset her sense of order. But beneath the window dressing, he looked wrecked, his eyes washed out and skittish, skin pale and damp with perspiration.

‘How was the Persian Gulf?’

‘Good.’ She hunched her shoulders. ‘Interesting.’

‘Glad you enjoyed it.’

‘Thanks.’

He gave her a tight smile. ‘So why are you here at Blackdown?’

She had kept a picture of him in her mind whilst she had been away, had taken it out and examined it closely when she was alone in her bunk at night. Looking at him now, she realized that the picture had faded, blended with the faces of the men around her until it seemed ordinary. But there was nothing ordinary about him, nothing regular. He was arrestingly handsome and she felt what little confidence she possessed draining from her, trapped as she was under the unremitting gaze of those haunted amber eyes. Heat rose to her face.

‘I’m, uh, here to help.’

‘Help who?’

‘You. With the investigation, the suspicious death.’

‘I didn’t request a psychologist’s help.’

‘Holden-Hough did.’

‘What?’ He looked incredulous.

‘He called Gideon Duursema and I’m afraid that you’re landed with me because my diary was the emptiest.’

His jaw tightened. ‘Give me a minute.’ Pulling his mobile from his pocket, he flicked through his contacts. After a moment, ‘Colonel, it’s Captain Callan.’ His voice faded as he walked away. A pause. ‘I don’t need—’ she heard. Another pause, his legs jittering impatiently as he listened. ‘Right. Yes, sir.’ Jamming his phone back into his pocket, he turned to face her. His expression was one of barely suppressed anger. ‘It seems I don’t have a choice.’

‘I’m sorry.’

He pulled a face. ‘Not your fault.’

He turned back to the grey-haired man in the forensic overalls he had been speaking with, who had tactfully distanced himself when Jessie approached.

‘Morgan, I’m going to search Foster’s accommodation block now. I’ll take Doctor Flynn with me.’ The inference: keep her out of trouble, out of your hair. ‘Post a guard here when you’re done. I’ll call the dogs in tomorrow, see if there’s anything we’ve missed.’

Morgan nodded. ‘Right, sir.’

Striding past Jessie, Callan cast back over his shoulder. ‘Are you coming, Doctor?’

He walked fast, making no allowances for the fact that she had started off five metres behind and was wearing heels. She had to jog to catch up and then trot in his wake to keep up with his long stride, like some subservient wife. She was tempted to grind to a standstill and tell him to stick his attitude, but she had been briefed to work on the case with him and the atmosphere between them was already frigid.

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