The Promise
KATERINA DIAMOND

Copyright

Published by Avon an imprint of

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street,

London, SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2018

Copyright © Katerina Diamond 2018

Cover photograph © Don Farrall/Getty Images

Cover design © Claire Ward 2019

Katerina Diamond asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of 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.

Source ISBN: 9780008209216

Ebook Edition © September 2018 ISBN: 9780008209261

Version: 2019-05-31

Praise for Katerina Diamond:

‘Diamond is the master of gripping literature.’

The Evening Standard

‘A terrific story, originally told. All hail the new queen of crime!’

Heat

‘A web of a plot that twists and turns and keeps the reader on the edge of their seat. This formidable debut is a page-turner, but don’t read it before bed if you’re easily spooked!’

The Sun

‘A page-turner with a keep-you-guessing plot.’

Sunday Times Crime Club

‘Diamond neatly handles a string of interlocking strands.’

Daily Mail

‘This gem of a crime novel is packed with twists until the last page.’

Closer

‘A deliciously dark read, Katerina Diamond keeps her readers guessing throughout as she leads us on a very secretive, VERY twisted journey … everything I was expecting from a well-written, pacy thriller.’

Lisa Hall, author of Between You And Me

‘A dark, twisting tale that won’t fail to captivate.’

Mint Velvet

‘Wow, I thought The Teacher was fantastic but The Secret is on another level. Was gripped all the way through and kept me guessing as the story unfolded.’

NetGalley Reviewer

‘Another grim and gory spider’s web from Katerina Diamond – closely following on from The Teacher and not letting up on the twists and turns.’

Goodreads Reviewer

‘An impeccable novel with nail biting chapters … Katerina Diamond deserves the title of Queen of Crime, because I’ll be damned if anyone writes novels like she does. 5* doesn’t do this book justice.’

The Brunette Bookshelf

‘Has the feeling of a nightmare come to life …’

Lovereading

‘The suspense is literally out of this world.’

Compelling Reads

‘A dark and twisted tale that had me gasping in fear.’

Handwritten Girl

Dedication

To Mum.

We’ve been through a lot together and most of it was your fault.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Katerina Diamond

Dedication

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

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Keep Reading …

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

Tonight was the night. Erica looked in her full-length mirror and checked her dress for the umpteenth time. It was more than she would usually spend but it hugged her in all the right places and she wanted to make a good impression. She scrutinised the bedroom to make sure that it was tidy; she had spent the whole morning cleaning the house, just in case. She hoped this was the one.

Erica had met Warren online; they had been talking for some months now. A couple of weeks ago, he’d started speaking to her on the phone and they had taken their relationship to the next level. She knew he was real because she wasn’t stupid; she had been burned by catfish before, people pretending to be someone else, people who were trying to con you out of something. Not Warren though. Erica had pushed to speak on the phone, she had pushed to video call, she had been the one who had gotten intimate first. They had exchanged phone numbers and when she knew he was at work she would send him a cheeky picture of her bra, or maybe the lace band of her underpants that rested on her hip. Warren had told her before that he wanted to go slow, that he wasn’t ready for a relationship yet after a particularly painful break-up with an ex-girlfriend who had cheated on him. But she wanted him to know she was serious. It hadn’t taken long for Erica to see through Warren’s funny and sociable bravado; he was hurting, he was in pain and she would help him heal.

Their conversations were deep, deeper than she had had with anyone else. He always knew the right things to say. It was as though they had known each other forever. Erica had never thought that she was loveable before, but there was an undeniable connection between her and Warren. The biggest issue was that he lived a couple of hundred miles away, nearer to London than to Exeter but tonight that wasn’t going to be a problem.

She left the house clutching her phone in her hand, dreading a notification from Warren to say he was cancelling, that he wouldn’t be at the restaurant when she got there. This was the weekend they were going to meet face-to-face, on Halloween. She could hardly believe it was actually going to happen. Warren had booked a local hotel and was going to stay in Exeter for the weekend, somewhere near to her but not with her; he’d said he didn’t want to put her under that kind of pressure. He was thoughtful like that; even so, she was hoping he would stay over. This was it – she would finally find out if he was her dream man.

Erica walked through the town towards the cathedral, looking at all the people in their costumes, feeling underdressed in her simple outfit. She hadn’t dressed up for Halloween in a long time. The streets were relatively quiet, the few children that did engage in traipsing from house to house for sweets had already gone home for the evening. A gaggle of laughing zombies in tiny skirts stumbled past her, on their way to some pub no doubt. Erica smiled to herself every time she thought about the possibilities of the night ahead. She walked into the Mediterranean restaurant on the cathedral square and hung her coat on the rail in the lobby. She fiddled with the red rose pinned to her blouse. Even though they had seen each other before on camera, they thought it would be fun to wear symbolic red roses for their first date. That’s when she spotted him.

Erica’s heart fluttered as she saw him in the corner, sipping his wine and looking at his phone. She thought how strange it was that they were only just meeting and yet they had already seen each other naked.

As though sensing her arrival, he looked up, and the biggest grin spread across his face. Relieved to see that he wasn’t disappointed, Erica walked over. He stood up and held his hand out to shake hers. She placed her hand in his, all the while looking at his knuckles, his fingers, his skin tone. She was trying to commit this moment to memory because she knew it was important. This was the beginning of the rest of her life.

‘Warren?’ she said, knowing the answer. The smile on her face was beginning to ache. This already felt too good to be true.

He leaned across and kissed her on the cheek. He smelled of expensive aftershave, something understated and slightly feminine, with a little spice to it.

‘It’s good to finally meet you, Erica,’ he said shyly.

‘How is your hotel?’ she asked but regretted it instantly, hoping he wouldn’t think she was alluding to anything.

‘Pretty basic, the bed is quite lumpy and hard. I probably should have forked out for something a little less franchise-y.’

‘Lesson learned for next time, eh?’ She smiled again. He was even better looking in the flesh. His blond surfer hair hung to his shoulders; he looked like something from Sons of Anarchy or a nineties Seattle rock band. His skin was weather-beaten but still somehow perfect. Everything about him was perfect. Why was he looking online for a girlfriend? Why was he interested in her? She could barely understand it but what the hell, this was happening and she was going to enjoy it.

As they both sat down, the waiter came over and took their order. The conversation flowed with such ease that Erica had to warn herself to calm down. Nothing worked out for her, certainly not men, certainly no one as handsome as Warren. She could hear her sister’s voice in her head, telling her to be careful, not to fall too fast – something she had told her a million times. Now that Erica was sitting here face-to-face with Warren, her sister’s words were the furthest thing from her mind.

After finishing their meal, which consisted of the most expensive white wine on the menu, oysters, a seafood risotto and lemon torte, he insisted on paying the bill and they walked out together. He slipped his hand into hers and their fingers interlocked as they walked along the streets. She didn’t want the night to end so they walked through the town together. Instinctively she was taking him to her house. Erica wasn’t ready to let him go yet, not after all this time of waiting to meet him. As they left the town and started walking towards the more residential area, he squeezed her hand. Had he figured out where she was taking him?

Warren kissed Erica on the cheek outside her house on the little side street in Exeter.

‘Thank you for coming, it was great to meet you,’ Erica said.

‘Was it everything you hoped for?’

‘And then some. What time will I see you tomorrow?’ She was testing him, to see if he might ask to come inside – she wanted him to ask.

‘I’ll text you when I’m awake’ he said, backing away slowly, a smile on his face.

She watched him turn and head in the direction of his hotel.

‘Wait!’ she called out.

He turned around. The smile even bigger than before; he knew what she wanted, and she hoped he wanted it too. He walked back towards her quickly and she took his hand, pulling him towards the house as she frantically fumbled around in her handbag for her keys.

They tugged at each other’s clothes as they went up the stairs. By the time they reached the top, they were both in their underwear. She pushed the bedroom door open and they laughed as they fell on the bed, their mouths separated for just long enough before locking back together again. Before she knew it, he was on top of her; she wrapped her legs around his waist as he pushed against her. He pulled away, his chest heaving and the smile still wrapped around his face.

‘Do you have a condom?’

‘Uh … sure,’ she said, scrambling for her bedside cabinet. She hoped she had a condom; it had been so long. God, what if they were out of date? Surely the date was just advisory anyway. If she didn’t check then it didn’t matter.

She found an unopened box and threw it at him. He opened it and pulled out the condom, quickly pulling his pants down and putting it on. She lifted her backside and shimmied her underpants off too. This was really happening. He lay on top of her again and his face hovered above hers. They both held their breath as he pushed his way inside her. His blond hair tickled her face with every thrust. She lifted her hand and tucked his hair behind his ear, it felt strange, synthetic. She would ask him about it after and they would laugh, she would tell him that she didn’t care about his hair, she loved him for him. Now that she had properly met him she didn’t feel silly for calling what they had love. They’d already been talking online for so long, and knew so much about each other. She did love him.

‘Is this OK?’ he asked.

She felt his hand on her throat and nodded; they had talked about this online. She knew the safe word – something else they had discussed. He was gentle anyway, no pressure at all.

‘You can be rougher if you want.’ She felt his hand close around her throat as he pushed harder into her. She wanted a little danger, something a bit less conventional. They were perfect for each other, this was exactly what she had wanted, exactly what she had told him she wanted.

She started to feel dizzy, combined with the arousal she really was flying now; climax was imminent but she needed to breathe. She didn’t have the courage to see it through. Maybe next time. She imagined the weeks they would spend tangled together between the sheets like this. There was no need to hurry.

‘Yellow,’ she said.

‘Just a little more. Trust me,’ he whispered in her ear.

‘Yellow!’ she said again. That was the safe word, wasn’t it? Wasn’t this the end of it? Wasn’t he supposed to stop now? Instead his fingers dug into her neck even harder than before. She was finding it harder to breathe; she started to pound her fists against him but he just carried on. His grip tightened and she felt the tears streaming down the sides of her face. His thrusting was more aggressive now and she wasn’t enjoying this anymore. She could hear a faint muttering coming from him; she was too disoriented to make out the words, but when she focused enough to see his eyes there was no warmth there, just malice.

‘Stupid fucking bitch.’ She heard his last words and the sound of him laughing as she slipped into unconsciousness.

Chapter 2

DS Imogen Grey and DS Adrian Miles pulled up outside the pale green house on Colleton Hill just outside Exeter city centre. Standing in front of them was a row of picturesque terraced cottages facing a thicket of overgrown bushes and brambles, some evergreen and some not so much. From the ground floor Imogen imagined you could pretend you were right in the countryside in the summer. The street was almost hidden from the big red-brick blocks on the other side of the greenery.

‘Ready to go?’ she asked Adrian, who was wearing his ever-present glazed look. The look of someone who was trying to adjust to life without someone else. Someone trying to pretend they weren’t grieving. He obviously hadn’t been sleeping; he was probably drinking too much again. She couldn’t ask him if he was all right because that wasn’t how this partnership worked. He would talk to her if he needed to, she was confident of that.

‘Yep, let’s go.’ He turned the engine off. They got out of the car and looked at the front door, which was being guarded by a uniformed police officer, PC Griffin. He nodded at them both.

‘What’s the story here then?’ Imogen asked the officer.

‘Young woman, Erica Lawson, didn’t turn up for work yesterday or today. When the boss finally got in touch with her ICE contact, her sister, she came to the house and let herself in. Found Erica upstairs on the bed, called the police immediately.’

‘Did she touch anything in the house?’ Imogen asked.

‘A couple of things, said she let the cat in before she went upstairs and when she saw the body she threw up in the toilet … so she flushed it.’

‘For fuck’s sake.’ Imogen rolled her eyes.

‘Then she washed her hands and face in the bathroom sink. They’ve taken her to the hospital to get checked out. She’s pretty shaken.’ PC Griffin screwed up his face as he spoke.

‘Jesus.’ Imogen sighed before pulling her gloves out of her pocket and entering the house, Adrian behind her.

Inside, the cottage itself was quaint and traditional in its decoration. There was a smell though, a sweet, unpleasant smell that caught in the back of Imogen’s throat. The floral sofa was adorned with a crochet throw and in the centre of the floor was a jute oval rug under an Ercol coffee table. It was all retro shabby chic, duck egg blues and cowslip yellows. The walls were filled with photo frames, with lots of pictures of two women on various holidays together. Presumably the victim and her sister. Imogen was hit with guilt for being angry with the woman who had contaminated the crime scene. Sometimes you had to try to remember that it was more than just a job, that there were people involved, family, loved ones. Maybe she needed a holiday. Case by case, she could feel her empathy eroding.

She gave herself a shake; it must just be tiredness. When this case was over she might see about having a few days off.

They made their way up the narrow staircase in silence, aside from the creaks and groans of the floorboards. Imogen took a deep breath before entering the bedroom. Time to meet the victim.

The body of Erica Lawson lay on top of the covers, fully dressed. At a first glance, you might think she was asleep; her arms were folded across her waist, almost like the classic image of Sleeping Beauty. But when they got closer, it became evident that the woman’s eyes were open and her body had started to decay.

Imogen had seen a few petechial haemorrhages in her time, enough to know that this was a case of strangulation: the red dots around Erica’s eyes caused by the explosion of the tiny blood vessels that link the smallest parts of your arteries to the smallest parts of your veins. Ignoring the body, the room seemed to be incredibly clean and tidy, immaculate. If there was anything out of place, it wasn’t at first obvious. It was cold though, very cold. The window was open. Imogen made a mental note to double check the sister hadn’t opened it. Maybe whoever did this wanted to confuse the time of death.

They would have to bring the girl’s sister back from the hospital when she was feeling up to it to check if anything had been disturbed. That would happen after the scene had been processed by the crime scene technicians who were all bustling around the room, quietly placing evidence markers and taking photographs.

‘What do you think?’ Adrian said, breaking her train of thought.

‘Well it’s staged, that much is for certain.’

‘Agreed, obviously.’

‘Very controlled.’

‘Look at the buttons on her blouse,’ Adrian said.

‘What about them?’ Imogen peered over at the body. Something was off. What had Adrian noticed?

‘They’re slightly skewed, see? It’s like the fabric is twisted wrong. I don’t think she dressed herself.’

‘Are you thinking she was sexually assaulted?’

‘I don’t know about that, but I can see that she was dressed by someone else, probably after she died. Everything is just sitting wrong.’

He was right, it did look awkward in places. Looking at Erica’s skirt, Imogen could see that it was a back zip that had been done up on the side. She had probably been naked when she died.

‘What about the pose?’ Imogen asked.

‘No idea. Maybe he was trying to respect her?’

‘You’re going with “he”?’

‘She’s not the slimmest of women; you’d need a fair bit of strength to dress her once she was dead. I think “he” is a safe bet at the moment. Unless we learn anything else from forensics.’

Imogen looked at Erica. She would put her weight at roughly seventy kilograms, around an average size twelve. She was slim-waisted and attractive, obviously very active and naturally quite muscular in the legs. It would be difficult for a woman to be able to handle that kind of weight without assistance. Until forensics showed otherwise, they would work on the assumption that it was a male. Neither of them wanted to say aloud that in most cases, the assumption was usually that it was a male they were after.

‘Does it match any other cases we’ve had?’ Imogen asked.

‘Not to my knowledge, I’ll have a look when we get back to the station.’

‘You mean you’ll get Gary to check.’

‘What about her phone?’ Adrian asked one of the crime scene technicians, but she shook her head.

‘No phone?’ Imogen asked.

‘We haven’t found one,’ the technician said.

‘Call us if you do,’ Adrian said.

‘There are no signs of a break-in either. We think whoever did this was known to this woman,’ the technician offered.

Imogen put her hands on her hips and looked around the room some more. It was a small space and they were on the verge of being in the way, so she signalled to Adrian who stepped out of the room first. She followed him, nodding to the technicians, and they headed down the corridor, peering into the bathroom. Another technician was in there taking swabs and samples. They would have to come back when it had been properly processed; there simply wasn’t enough room for everyone. This initial assessment would have to do for now.

DCI Mira Kapoor was standing in the lounge when they got downstairs. She had a suitably sombre expression on her face. She always behaved the way she was supposed to behave, said what she was supposed to say when in public. At the same time, she was quite rebellious, at least on the sly, in her office where it mattered. She listened when she needed to listen and she never took any action that wasn’t carefully considered. Imogen was quite taken with her, although she still reserved some judgement; she had been burned by her superiors before.

‘Poor girl. I want you two to speak to the neighbours and work colleagues, see if you can get a picture of who she was. Later on, you can speak to the sister, she was pretty inconsolable by all accounts and the hospital have admitted her. She’s sleeping now apparently.’

‘OK, Ma’am,’ Imogen said.

As they went to leave, the DCI spoke again.

‘Grey, can I have a private word?’

Imogen nodded to Adrian who carried on outside.

The DCI gestured to Imogen to come closer and jerked her head at Adrian’s fast retreating back.

‘How is he doing?’

‘OK, quiet. He’s OK though.’

‘Do you know if he’s been to see the bereavement counsellor?’

‘He hasn’t mentioned it, but I’m going to guess not.’

‘See if you can get him to, please. Last thing I need is him cracking up.’

Imogen nodded. ‘I’ll do my best.’

‘Have you given any more thought to the DI exam, Grey?’

‘I don’t know if it’s the right time.’

She should want it, shouldn’t she? Didn’t everyone want to advance their career? The thing was that she was happy with how things were at the moment, or maybe she was scared of change; it was hard to know which. Moving up the ladder had always been the plan, but she just didn’t feel ready. What was holding her back? Was it Adrian? He would be happy for her and she would be happy for him if the roles were reversed, but at the same time, the dynamic was working for her. Having a stable and dependable friend was important to her right now; she liked being on the same level. Besides, after what Adrian had been through recently, losing his girlfriend, she didn’t want to leave him right now. She had to hope this wouldn’t be her only opportunity.

‘Well, there’s an opening and, as I’ve said before, I think you should go for it.’

‘I’ll think about it. Thank you.’ The DCI nodded, and Imogen left her in the house, stepping outside to see Adrian gazing out into nothing again. She got into the car and he followed, that same haunted look on his face. She wanted to hold his hand and tell him that it would be OK, but that wasn’t how they did things. Instead she would continue to be herself, and hoped that would be enough to keep him afloat.

Chapter 3

Connor leant his head against the passenger window as his father drove to their new home. He looked down at the gutter as they moved through the streets, most of the roads covered with russet-coloured leaves. Even the trees here were different to the ones back home. He didn’t want to look up at the houses; at least kerbs and leaves couldn’t be that different on this side of the world, could they? There was a sense of unease in him; he figured it came from being on the other side of the car, on the other side of the road, on the other side of the planet.

The smooth sounds of Nina Simone’s smoky voice filled the space around them. At least his father, Jacob, wasn’t trying to hold a conversation with him anymore. Connor felt the car grind to a stop and the air fell silent as his father turned the engine off. He took a deep breath and looked up at their new home grudgingly. They were parked in front of a three-storey red-brick house, with a balcony running across the front and a garage to the side. It occurred to Connor that there wasn’t a chance in hell their car would fit in that tiny space even though it was smaller than their car back home.

Without speaking to his father, he got out of the car and walked around to the boot to grab the suitcases. He may as well get on with it. No turning back now. The door to the left of their house opened and a girl came trudging out, head hung low, carrying a black sack; she put it in the wheelie bin and disappeared back inside without looking up or saying a word. Connor’s father was still getting to his feet. He pulled himself up and surveyed the area, leaning on his cane with a nostalgic smile on his face.

‘Keys?’ Connor said.

Jacob rummaged in his pockets and pulled out a hefty lump of keys, tossing them to Connor – not to where Connor actually was, but further, enough to make him stretch, to make him work for it. Grabbing them, Connor walked up the steps and let himself into the house. It smelled old and empty.

Jacob wasn’t far behind him, the sound of his left sole followed Connor as it gently scraped across the floor with every other step.

‘Get us a beer from the fridge and let’s christen this place.’

‘Is there even any electricity?’ Connor clicked the light switch and the hallway lit up.

‘Uncle Joel came and sorted things out for us, said he put some brews in there.’

Connor noticed his father’s voice changing already; he had always had an accent that was different to him and the people back in California, but now all traces of any American at all had virtually disappeared. As if Connor didn’t feel different enough.

He went into the kitchen, a small and dingy room with a metre square window facing onto a garden that looked overgrown and untouched.

‘What’s outside?’ he asked as his father appeared behind him again.

‘Who knows what the olds did to it. Looks like they let it go though. Dad used to spend hours in that garden, in that shed right at the end; he spent more time in there than in the house.’

Jacob put his hand on Connor’s shoulder, it was a touch full of force; controlling, making sure his son stayed close. Maybe he was trying to stop him from going outside.

‘I wish I could have met them,’ Connor said, knowing that would unsettle his father. Any suggestion that growing up with just a single dad wasn’t enough for him, that somehow he was missing something from his life, was like poking a raw nerve.

Jacob let go immediately. ‘Well, I left for a reason. You didn’t miss much.’

Connor waited for his father to be distracted before grabbing a can of beer. He unlocked the back door and stepped outside onto a decked platform. He then made his way down some wooden steps into a wild and unruly mess that came up past his waist. Everything was washed with a cold blue light as the sun faded behind the rooftops. Hacking his way through the stinging nettles, pampas grass and bushes with his arms until he got to the end of the garden, he looked back at his father who stood by the back door. Connor was grateful for the distance between them as he clocked his father’s disapproving stare.

He pulled on the door of the shed. The wood was swollen and cracked, but he kicked it a couple of times and jarred it loose. Inside, it was dark and dingy not unlike the house, full of stacked boxes and crates. Connor ventured further, the sparse light cloudy and full of dust.

The boxes nearest the ground had been saturated at one point or another and the bottoms were blown, a mulch of paperwork peeking through the holes. He poked around inside one or two. There were some photo albums and a couple of his father’s school reports. He found a small red exercise book, shiny with a black wreath emblem on the front. Inside, some of the pages were stuck together and the words blurred, but he could just about make out that it was a story of some sort. Connor thumbed through it, wondering what his father might have written about in school, what stories he could have possibly told. He couldn’t make out the writing very well in this light and so he tossed it back in the box. The air was thick and the more stuff he disturbed, the more dust he could feel in his mouth. Leaving the shed, he pulled the door behind him. He might come back and look around here another time.

Next to the shed, there was a large tree with strips of wood nailed horizontally to the trunk that went up into the branches.

‘What’s this?’ he called out to his father who had already pulled up a chair outside with a box of beers to the side of him. They had been travelling for a few hours and so it was nice to be outside, even though it was cold. He couldn’t begrudge him that.

‘Is that still there? It’s a tree house. Or it should be. Your grandfather built it. About the only good thing he ever did.’ He knocked back the beer. ‘It’s probably fucked. I wouldn’t go up there if I were you.’

Ignoring his father’s advice, Connor climbed the makeshift ladder, careful not to spill his beer. He couldn’t see his father on the decking anymore. He kept climbing until his hand reached what felt like a platform. He pulled himself up onto it and, sure enough, he was inside a tree house. It smelled musty and there was a hole in one of the corners, but something about it felt good. Connor moved slowly across the floor, unsure how safe it was. There was a window, but it was filthy. Connor pulled off his jacket and tried to rub away some of the thick dirt that obscured his view. He picked up his beer and splashed the window with the liquid, then rubbed hard with his jacket; it was already smelly from the travelling so he didn’t mind getting it a bit grubby as well.

He managed to clear a fair bit of the muck off the inside of the window. Opening it, he slid his arm through to the outside and wiped that as well. It was smeared and kind of disgusting, but at least now he could see outside. The tree house looked directly into the neighbour’s back garden and onto the rear of their house. Connor smiled as he saw a couple, presumably his new neighbours, kissing against the countertops in the kitchen.

He looked around the tree house and felt a little glimmer of hope. There was no way his father would make it up here – he had a place where he could be by himself, without his father’s watchful eye, without the hand on his shoulder, without feeling like he was to blame for everything that was wrong in the world.

Connor shuffled back against the wall and sat down with his beer in his hand, thinking about the different things he was going to have to get used to here in England. His father had always maintained he would never come back, but when his parents had died and left him the house, it seemed like a logical move after the incident back at home. If Connor was honest, he needed a change too. He couldn’t carry on being the person he was in California; people had started to notice that he wasn’t the same as them, and he couldn’t stand that.

He pulled out the Zippo his father had given him as a gift for his sixteenth birthday and struck the wheel with his thumb, watching the flame flickering in the light breeze that ran through the empty tree house. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it before peering through the window again. The woman next door was up on the countertop now, her legs wrapped around her partner’s waist, his trousers around his ankles. Upstairs, he could see into what looked like a girl’s bedroom; she was sitting at her dressing table, with a lamp on. It was the girl he had seen earlier when they arrived. As Connor watched, she undid the plait in her hair and started to brush it out.

The loud pops of fireworks in the distance unsettled Connor, and he saw the sky to the east flashing pink. People had already started to set them off in the run-up to Bonfire Night. Looking back at the girl, he could see a blank expression on her face which was reflected in her dressing-table mirror. He wondered if she could hear what was happening downstairs, or outside. The girl stood up and walked over to her window, her face changing colour as the fireworks erupted overhead. Connor shrank back, making sure she didn’t know he was in there. For now, he just wanted to watch them – to see what a normal family did. Something he had never known.

The girl had long mousy hair and round glasses, around his age. She stared out of the window into her own garden, which was comprised of a tidy lawn and a decked patio with black plastic furniture and a big orange parasol. Fixating on a point in the distance, she just stared for a while. Her face was empty, not interested, not sad – nothing. After a few seconds, she pulled a book from a shelf in her room and then got into her bed. Connor continued to watch her; she read for less than five minutes and then flipped a switch that turned her reading light into a soft pink glowing orb. It was only then that he realised the dusk had turned to night-time, he had never known it to get this dark so early back home, it was barely six in the evening.

He turned his attention back to the couple downstairs, who were still grabbing and pawing at each other desperately until he slumped against her and she pushed him away. The urgency gone, they redressed and disappeared back into the parts of the house that he couldn’t see. He watched the sky for a while until the popping slowed to a stop and the sky returned to its lifeless dusky black.

Reluctantly, Connor climbed back out of the tree house and down the tree. It was harder than going up, but still it just reassured him that his father would never be able to make the journey with his leg. He walked back through the garden to his father, who was sitting in the almost-darkness, from the looks of it on his fourth beer already. It wasn’t as cold as he expected it to be, from the stories he had heard it did nothing but rain over here. So far his denim jacket had been enough to keep him warm.

‘Anything good up there?’

‘Like what?’

‘Me and your uncle used to read comics and pornos up there, wondered if there was anything still knocking around.’

‘Nope. It’s empty.’

Connor pulled at the back door handle to go inside and check the rest of the house out; he hadn’t even seen his bedroom yet.

‘Listen, Con, this is a chance for both of us to do something right,’ his father said.

Connor froze.

‘I know, Dad.’

‘Try not to fuck things up at school.’

‘I’ll try.’

‘You better try pretty fucking hard; we can’t just move to a new country every time you do.’

‘I will, Dad, I promise.’

‘You’d better get an early night. You need to get proper rest before you start school on Monday.’

Connor took a deep breath. At least here in Exeter he would get to be who he wanted; he would make himself, he would decide what people saw. What they knew and didn’t know. He would make sure no one found out about him.

Chapter 4

Adrian was sitting in the interview room opposite Sarah Lawson, Erica’s sister and ICE contact. Imogen walked in and sat down opposite Sarah, who looked like a slightly older version of Erica, although her hair was tidier from the photos they had seen. Adrian noted the puffiness around her eyes; she probably hadn’t slept since her sister had been found – as she had been the one to find her.

Imogen noted the date and time, plus persons present for the recording, and then nodded at Adrian to start.

‘How are you holding up?’ Adrian asked, recognising that look on her face. Grief. Since he had lost someone important, the word bereft had taken on a new meaning. Sarah was obviously bereft, missing something, a touch of confusion mixed with sadness. Like walking into a room and trying to figure out what you went in there for, then realising that you would never find it, because it was gone forever.

‘I … I can’t believe it.’

‘We’re sorry for your loss.’ Adrian said the hollow words. He could feel Imogen’s focus on him as he spoke; he faltered for a moment as Lucy popped into his mind.

‘Your sister appeared to be dressed to go out. Could she have been on a date? Did she mention anything like that?’ Imogen said, stepping in to speak, to give him a moment.

‘No, she didn’t say anything about it.’

‘Were you not close then?’ Adrian said.

‘We were. We were really close. I don’t know why she didn’t tell me.’

‘So, you have no idea who your sister was meeting? She didn’t mention anyone to you?’ Imogen said.

‘I swear I have no idea. If I did I would tell you!’ Sarah’s voice cracked as she spoke. The tears started to gather at the edges of her eyes. She was on the brink of losing it altogether.

‘Is there anyone else she was likely to confide in? Did she have a best friend?’

‘I was her best friend! I don’t know why she didn’t tell me if she was meeting a man,’ Sarah said again.

Adrian sighed. ‘There could be lots of reasons why she wouldn’t tell you, Sarah, maybe she didn’t want you to know because she wasn’t sure it was going to go anywhere. I know this is difficult, but the more you can tell us the better. At this point we are just trying to build a picture of Erica. She’s the victim here and there’s a reason she was targeted. The more we know about her, the more likely it will be that we can find out why that was.’

‘Was she sexually assaulted?’ Sarah said, her body tense, as though she almost didn’t want to know the answer. ‘Did he rape her? I asked but no one would tell me.’

‘There were signs of sexual activity, but at this point there is no evidence of sexual assault, we will know more when we get the post mortem.’

‘You think they met before? She wasn’t the kind of person who would sleep with someone on the first date.’

Imogen handed her the box of tissues that were on the table; the girl took one and clutched it to her, ready for the tears to come out.

‘Is there a possibility it was someone from her work at the recruitment agency?’ Imogen asked gently.

Sarah shook her head. ‘No, she kind of hated everyone there, she was looking for another job anyway. I don’t think so.’

‘Did she have any hobbies? Go to any clubs? Any cafés she went to regularly?’ Imogen said.

‘No, she used to get lunch in the theatre; they did these sandwiches she liked and she never had to wait because no one else ever thought to go there for lunch. It was always empty.’

‘What about your parents? Is she likely to have told them anything?’ Adrian said.

‘Our dad lives in Spain with my stepmother; we aren’t very close. Mum died five years ago.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Adrian said, inclining his head.

‘Is there anything else you can tell us that might help find out who she was with?’ Imogen asked.

‘Was she lonely? Was she looking for someone? Did she ever go on any dating sites?’ Adrian added.

‘She was never without her phone, I used to get so cross with her for checking it all the time, always talking to someone or other; she had a bit of a problem staying in the real world. She wasn’t very confident, but she was beautiful; I kept telling her she was beautiful.’ The tears started to fall.

‘We’re going to do everything we can to find out what happened to your sister,’ Imogen said.

‘It won’t bring her back, though will it? I don’t really care if you find the person or not. I just want my sister back. I’ve got no one now.’

Adrian looked at Imogen. It was an unusual comment; it didn’t necessarily mean anything, but in these situations people usually demanded revenge. He made a mental note to find out if there were any known issues between the sisters. Her grief was genuine; he was sure of that. He could see it, and he could feel it.

‘Can you tell us what phone your sister had, Sarah? We couldn’t find it in her home.’

‘I don’t know, it was a pink thing, she bought a load of jewels off eBay and covered it herself because she couldn’t find a case she liked.’

‘Any idea where it would be?’

‘Well he must have taken it, whoever did this to her.’

‘We thought so too, but we wanted to check with you.’

‘Did she spend a lot of time at the computer?’ Imogen asked.

‘She was always on her mobile – like I said, she was practically glued to it. She had a laptop though. Did you not find that either?’

There was a short silence; they hadn’t found it.

‘OK, well thank you for coming in and speaking to us, Sarah. We’ll get in touch with you if we need to talk about anything else. Is that OK?’ Adrian stood up and held his hand out for her to shake it.

‘What’s the point?’ She stood up, looked at his hand without taking it and turned to leave the room.

Adrian put his hand on her shoulder, she turned back to him.

‘I lost someone I cared about recently too.’ Adrian felt Imogen’s eyes burning into him as he spoke to Sarah Lawson, but he needed to say the words, he needed to get this out. ‘I know how you feel, I know you want her back more than anything, and if we could do that we would. We can’t. All we can do is make sure the person who did this to her doesn’t get away with it. She was important and what happened to her shouldn’t have happened. Help us to honour her memory by putting the man who did this behind bars.’

She nodded and sobbed. Even though he knew he shouldn’t, Adrian pulled her in and put his arms around her in a hug. She had said she didn’t have anyone, and he could feel it in the way she clung to him; he felt her chest heaving as the grief engulfed her. The last person who had hugged her was probably her sister, and now she was gone. He had to pull away before he allowed himself to be sucked into his own feeling of loss.

She looked up at him; he could feel that she had understood what he was saying. He hoped that if nothing else, it had made her feel a little better, even though he knew the truth was that nothing would make her feel the same ever again. She would learn to live with the piece of her that was missing; that was all time did. There was no healing, but there was learning to cope with the absence.

Sarah left the room and Adrian followed at a distance. He felt Imogen’s hand on his shoulder.

‘Miley, are you OK?’ She was breaking their rule of asking about each other’s feelings, but for once he didn’t mind.

‘I will be.’ Wouldn’t he?

Chapter 5

I’m writing this because I have to tell someone and because I don’t think I’m going to be alive for much longer. I can feel inside that my time is coming to an end. In a way, I think it will be a relief when it finally happens, but I’m scared about all the things that may happen before. So, I want to tell you a story, my story. For you to fully appreciate the situation, I’ll have to start on the day I met him, the day I met them both.

I had just started working at the service station; I would cycle out there at five in the morning and start my shift behind the counter. They would come in every morning and order the same thing and then go and sit at the same table. The taller one with the big smile would order a full English breakfast and a mug of tea, but the quiet one always just had a bacon sandwich, every day for months. It went on like this until one of them finally spoke to me – about something other than just their food order. It was the taller one, as I suspected it always would be.

Did you ever meet someone and just know that this meeting was the first of many? That from the moment your lives came together there was a story to be told, that you had some kind of cosmic business together, something that needed to play out. I knew from almost the first time I saw them both that my life had changed; I felt something shift inside me. I know that sounds like complete nonsense, but I do believe that I was meant to meet them. I even feel happy saying that. Given all that has happened, it seems strange for me to look upon that time as a good thing, but I swear to you, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

He asked me why I put colours in my hair, told me that the purple streak had been his favourite so far. He asked me my name, and then he just kept talking until the quiet one nudged him and he stopped talking long enough for me to walk back into the kitchen, my boss’s watchful eyes urging me to get back to work. For the rest of that day I had a smile on my face; I remembered his interest in me and I felt special. I had always been a bit on the awkward side, a bit of an outsider. I was never the girl that people paid attention to. I stayed in the background and let everyone else get on with their business. If I was ever noticed, it was always for the wrong reasons. I didn’t really mind my life being that way, at least I didn’t until I met them, but for that one moment I felt special, and suddenly I felt angry about all the people who hadn’t made me feel special in the past.

From then on, I looked forward to going to work. Every day felt like a new adventure. I didn’t know what he was going to ask me next, and that was exciting. I had had crushes before but only on celebrities, never on anyone I knew, and never on anyone who fed my crush, who nurtured and cultivated it until it was a burning fireball of desire. And for all this, I still didn’t know his name. He wore a denim jacket, the kind with white wool inside the collar. There was an embroidered patch on his breast pocket with a rocket on it. The first time I called him Rocket, that beautiful grin spread across his face and I guess the name just stuck. His friend silently at his side for each encounter, looking down whenever I glanced his way.

It only took a few months before I was in love with Rocket.

It was a long time before there was even the remotest possibility that anything might happen between us. I guessed that he was just very friendly; his quiet companion seemed to shrug off his behaviour as though it were completely standard, as though everywhere they went he had to listen to his spiel over and over again. His referred to his friend as JD. Rocket would make statements and then turn to his accomplice for confirmation, and JD would just nod and smile shyly. During those first few months, I’m not sure I even heard JD speak twenty words. Rocket did all the talking.

I remember our first kiss as though it were yesterday. It was romantic, even though from the outside it might not seem that way. To me, though, to me it felt as though my heart was going to explode.

The breakfast rush was over and I was taking the rubbish out to the communal bin area. It was hidden away from the public, but as I pushed the sacks into the giant blue wheelie bin, I heard his voice calling out to me from the staff car park. He must have jumped the barrier and come around there. To find me.

My hair flopped in front of one eye and I couldn’t sweep it away because my hands were covered in some mystery substance from the lid of the bin. I held my hands out by my sides, aware that they were trembling somewhat, and I just stared at him with my one exposed eye. I felt so stupid, but still special at the same time. He walked towards me and took the pink streak that hung across my face, tucking it behind my ear. Just like that, after all this time, he kissed me and I will never forget the look on his face when he pulled away from me. He looked dizzy; it was the first time I had seen his confidence shaken. I made him feel something, I knew I did.

People started to notice the chemistry between us and it wasn’t long before I could see the people I worked with getting excited at watching the romance unfold. There was something so completely inevitable about us. Me and Rocket. Together for ever.

Chapter 6

Imogen was alone, bar a money spider crawling across her forearm. She watched as it climbed down and onto the sofa arm. She was facing the TV but it was off; the only thing to watch was her own reflection in the black mirror.

Two months ago, her boyfriend Dean had said he’d needed some time apart. The schism between them had seemed irreparable but he’d promised he just needed distance and that then they could talk properly. She hadn’t seen him for weeks, but this morning she’d received a text from him saying he wanted to see her again, today, if she was available. He must have known she had the day off. He always seemed to know. Nervous, she’d had a shower and then tried to dress in a way that seemed effortless, natural, not as if she had pained over it for two whole hours. She was angry, angry that he had gone and left her there alone in the first place. In the grand scheme of things though, she supposed she owed him.

During his last stint in prison, she hadn’t visited him. After that, when they were together, she had forced him to talk about his traumatic past during the course of an investigation. She had said things she could never take back, things that had been recorded. She knew that his leaving was about being alone, rather than without her; she knew he loved her still and that made her even angrier. It was a bit presumptuous of him to assume she would still want him after he had been gone so long – she could have moved on, or the chemistry between them might be out of whack now. You couldn’t go back, only forwards. All she hoped was that he didn’t hang onto the hurtful things she had said. The doorbell rang and she caught her breath.

‘Come in!’

She had left the door on the latch; even though he had a key, she knew he wouldn’t use it. She stayed on the sofa, waiting.

When she looked up, he was standing in the doorway. He smiled at her, a wide grin, like the time she had first met him, not the broken man she had said goodbye to all those weeks ago. That smile hit her like a hammer. The chemistry was still there.

‘Hey stranger.’ He smoothed his hair back nervously.

She stood up and walked over to him. Trying to read him was always impossible. He was such a contradiction, so completely open, but full of secrets. She could see up close how nervous he was; he was waiting for her to make the first move and she couldn’t bear to think of him in pain. She leaned up and kissed him on the lips; immediately, he pulled her into him, kissing her as though she were a tonic he needed to stay alive.

‘I missed you.’ She pulled away. ‘How are you?’

‘Better now. I just needed some space. I’m sorry. I know it wasn’t fair of me to disappear like that.’

She waved dismissively, she didn’t want to cry and make him feel bad. She wouldn’t have been crying because she was upset that he’d had left her, it was more the sheer relief of him being back. But she had a problem and she knew it. Essentially nothing had changed; he was still an ex-con and she was still a police officer. This was still completely unworkable. She couldn’t afford to not address that anymore. It really was him or the job.

‘We need to talk, Dean,’ she said.

‘Already? Don’t we even get today?’

‘We’ve had too many days. I just can’t ignore this anymore.’

He moved past her and sat on the sofa. She couldn’t quite believe she was about to do this. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the key to her place and put it on the table.

‘You don’t have to say it. I know.’

‘You can’t not be you, you tried. The truth is I love you for who you are. I don’t think you can change and if you did, I’m not sure I would feel the same,’ Imogen said, hoping he would tell her that she was being silly, that it would all be fine. Even if she knew it wasn’t true, maybe they could pretend.

‘Conditional love?’

‘That’s not it. Do you want me to change?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Well there you go then. One of us has to.’

‘It’s not because of what you know about me now?’

‘What do you mean?’ she said. She had found out a lot of questionable things about him during her last big case, just before he’d left. She’d discovered horrific things about his childhood, growing up in care home after care home, being abused by the owners. He had even admitted to killing someone for her. None of that changed how she felt about him.

Dean took a deep breath before speaking. ‘The sexual abuse.’

‘No! God … no, of course not.’

‘Not everyone wants to deal with someone who’s been broken in that way.’ He looked down.

‘You’re not broken! Don’t say that! Please don’t think that.’ The tears sprang out with as much surprise to her as to him. She hated the thought of him thinking of himself that way.

He patted the sofa next to him and she sat in the hollow. Putting out his arm, he pulled her towards him and they just sat there for a moment. Wondering what happened next. She felt heavy with sadness; knowing that this couldn’t continue was a feeling she was used to, but actually ending it was a different matter – she didn’t think she would have the guts. Part of her had wished he had never come back, so this moment could never happen.

‘What happens now?’ he asked, stroking her hair.

‘We go on with our lives, I suppose.’

‘Just like that?’

‘I kept thinking maybe you were right. Maybe if we had some time apart, then it might work out or at the very least all of this would be easier.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Dean said, his voice strained.

‘For being you?’

‘For not being able to change.’

‘I don’t want you to change. I need you to keep being you, just the way you are. There is something very perfect about you. I’m jealous, if I’m honest. Jealous that you can just be … so sure of who you are.’

Dean caught his breath for a moment before speaking, trying to stay in control of his voice. ‘Don’t be jealous of me.’

She looked up and saw a vulnerability she had never seen in Dean before. He looked so lost, maybe this is how he always looked when no one was watching. She kissed him again before sliding her hand across his chest, igniting the fire in both of them instantly. Almost immediately he pushed her back onto the sofa and climbed up so he was looking down on her. They pulled at each other’s clothes and forgot about thinking for a little while. Maybe they could have today after all.

Chapter 7

‘So, what do we know so far?’ Adrian asked for the third time in as many minutes. His focus was a little off these days.

‘We found no technology whatsoever in her place, but her colleagues told us she had Facebook and Twitter and all the other gubbins online so the chances are whoever was in her place took it for some reason,’ Imogen said.

‘Can we get access to her social media accounts?’ Adrian said.

‘We’re trying. Her sister doesn’t know any of her passwords. We can only see what’s available to see by the public or friends. Her sister let us look from her account.’

‘What about the post-mortem?

‘It’s happening right now, I believe. I could go and check it out.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Adrian said.

Imogen flashed him a look. He knew what she was thinking. She thought he couldn’t handle it. She thought the sight of a dead body would send him careering into an abyss of depression. He could still do his job, even despite what had happened to Lucy.

Lucy.

A journalist who had worked on their last case, a journalist who Adrian had very much fallen for. He hadn’t even been with her for very long, he reasoned, so the idea that his whole world had fallen apart now she was gone was ludicrous. Things had changed for him, there was no denying that. The biggest change was the fact that his ex, Andrea, and his fifteen-year-old son Tom had moved in with him following the death of her partner, Dominic – who had been exposed as corrupt at the end of Adrian’s last case. Adrian had given Andrea the bed and been sleeping on the sofa for the last two months. It was good to have them around. The first few nights after Lucy died were crippling, having other people move in most likely saved him from himself. He worked late most nights and got into work early most mornings. If nothing else, he was scoring some major brownie points with the DCI, if not his own sanity.

Adrian watched as Imogen thumbed through the post-mortem report. She handed the pages to him but he shook his head.

‘Just give me the bullet points.’

‘Looks like she might have been on a date, she had traces of white wine and oysters in her stomach.’

‘Right,’ he said.

‘It’s not clear whether she was sexually assaulted – she definitely had intercourse before she died, and there is some minor tearing, but it seems as though it could have just as easily been vigorous consensual sex. Her genitals were washed with bleach, presumably after death which could mean any number of things. Maybe it was an accident and he was trying to remove any traces of himself, or maybe this is part of a larger ceremony that isn’t accidental at all. I’ve not really dealt with anything like this before.’

‘Right, anything else?’ He didn’t want to verbalise his disgust just yet.

‘She has also got some half-moon marks on her neck from her nails, consistent with her trying to fight back, pulling at whoever’s hands were there. She basically scratched herself.’

‘Oh God, poor thing.’ Adrian shuddered involuntarily. ‘Do you think it was kinky sex gone wrong? Erotic asphyxiation? Breath control or whatever you call it?’

Imogen frowned. ‘I suppose that’s a possibility, but there’s a certain level of calm around the scene. Don’t you think? The way the body was redressed – that’s confirmed now by the way; she was definitely dressed after death. Something a bit ritualistic about the whole thing.’

‘You think it was planned?’

‘It just seems too neat not to be.’

‘Yeah. Maybe.’ Adrian took the sheets of paper from Imogen and glanced through them. ‘Says here that they couldn’t find any DNA on or in the body. The bleaching wouldn’t get rid of fluids, but it would get rid of trace evidence, right?’

‘So, what do we think then? Random or targeted? The underwear she had on suggests that she was on a date, coupled with what she ate.’

‘Let’s find out which restaurants serve oysters then, there can’t be that many places around here. Maybe someone saw her on the night.’

DCI Kapoor came over to Imogen’s desk; Adrian could feel her eyes on him all the time, waiting for him to snap or something. It was getting tiresome.

‘Did you find out anything from Erica’s work colleagues?’

‘She was single, she had a cat, a few crap relationships but all pretty short-term, most of them guys at work.’

‘Where does she work?’ DCI Kapoor said.

‘Recruitment agency in town,’ Imogen said.

‘A lot of traffic then, people in and out. What about clients she’s dealt with?’

‘We have a list.’

‘We’re briefing on this in two hours. Grey, I’d like to see you in my office,’ DCI Kapoor said.

Grey got up and followed the DCI. Adrian wondered if she was being asked to spy on him and then considered that maybe he was being a little egomaniacal about the whole thing and just maybe it was about something else entirely. He would ask Grey later, she wouldn’t keep anything important from him.

Looking through the post-mortem for Erica Lawson made Adrian feel like a traitor. He still had a copy of Lucy’s post-mortem in the bottom of his desk drawer. For the last few weeks whenever he reached into the bottom drawer, he looked only with his fingers, not wanting to see the name on the report. He felt closer to her with it there in his drawer and he hated the idea of it being filed with all the other victims. It was on his mind every day, but he didn’t see how knowing all the details would help him in any way and so he just kept it nearby. He already knew enough.

He shook off the image of Lucy’s lifeless body and put Erica’s post-mortem down, picking up the crime scene report instead. There were no other fingerprints in the bedroom, not even a partial, and no fingerprints other than Erica or those of her sister in the rest of the house. That implied premeditation, he thought, the wherewithal to know from the start not to leave prints. The door handles were not wiped clean because the other prints were there, which suggested that the killer knew from the moment he stepped into the house what he was going to do.

Imogen returned and sat down next to Adrian, interrupting his thoughts.

‘What was all that about?’ he asked her.

‘The DCI has asked me to act up as DI.’

Adrian raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh! Do I have to call you boss now?’ He smiled at her; she deserved this. From the moment they had started working together he had been impressed with her dogged determination and work ethic. She would be a great DI.

‘You don’t mind? You’ve been here longer than me.’

‘If there’s one thing I don’t need right now, it’s more responsibility.’

‘She wants me to go in for the exam. There’s a permanent DI spot opening up.’

‘You should go for it, Grey, you’d be good.’

‘I don’t know if it’s what I want right now.’

‘Well, as long as it’s not because of me. You do what you have to do. I think you’d be great.’ Adrian said. He vaguely remembered a time when he was ambitious, when he’d wanted to climb the ladder and call the shots. None of that seemed to matter anymore though. Maybe it was the grief or maybe it was the fact that he didn’t think he was ready yet. He knew that over the last few cases he had made some questionable decisions. He stood by them though, he probably wouldn’t do anything differently if he were put in the same position again. He had come to realise he struggled to put the law before his own morality. He needed to fix that before he could move forward in the police.

Chapter 8

Connor had a crude map in his hand that his father had drawn for him for his first day of school. He followed the directions set out on the back of a betting slip that hadn’t paid out. The sun was low in the sky, it almost felt as though it were at eye level, burning into his brain as he squinted to check for oncoming traffic before crossing the road.

It didn’t help that Connor had been drinking the night before, probably not the best idea he had ever had before the first day of school. A new school, a chance to make a new impression, a chance to wipe the slate clean and become someone else entirely. Could a person reinvent themselves at sixteen? He had no intentions of being the same Connor he was last year, or even last month. Moving to England would be his new beginning; as much as he hadn’t wanted to be here, he had to try. He would stop listening to that voice in his head that made him believe that he would fail so why bother, that everything he touched turned to crap. His father’s voice. This time he was determined to be different.

School uniform was a new feeling – a cheap polyester blazer and the alien sensation of a tie around his neck. The emblem on the school badge was some kind of bird, like a heron or something, silver and gold. His tie was black with a red stripe through it; he noticed other people with different stripes on theirs, house colours he expected. It was a relief not to have to wear his own clothes – new clothing was way down on the list of Jacob’s priorities and Connor wasn’t exactly overly consumed by labels himself. Nice not to have to think about how much they didn’t have for a change.

He was inside the building now, and he felt claustrophobic already. The size of the school was significantly smaller than the school he had left in America. He tried to make a note of all the exits and remember the layout of the building. He had already been seen by admissions and had some forms to fill out, which he did dutifully. Nowhere to hide. He noticed a few kids looking up from under their fringes, but mostly everyone just got on with it. As they disappeared into their classrooms, he observed that there didn’t seem to be the same cliques and divides as there were in his high school back home. Maybe it could be different this time.

He walked through the empty halls until he found the room he was looking for and headed in. The kids were all getting settled into place, pulling their mathematics books out and whispering. There was one seat left at the front left-hand side of the class, so he pulled the plastic chair out and slumped into it. Connor could tell he’d caught some people’s attention in the way fresh blood always did.

‘I hope you have all finished your half-term assignments because there will be no extensions granted.’ Mr Cross walked into the classroom and perched himself on the edge of his desk. He looked over the class, his eyes settling on Connor.

‘I’m new here, just started today,’ Connor said, aware of how alien his Californian accent sounded, noticing the stir it caused.

‘Ah, yes. Welcome, Mr Lee.’ Mr Cross stood up and wrote Connor’s name on the white board. ‘Class, we have a newcomer – this is Connor Lee, who will be with us for the rest of the year. Let’s all give him a warm welcome.’

The class started to clap. Connor heard whistling from the back and wished he could leave. He turned to look at his classmates and gave a small wave. There was a girl sat diagonally across from him, and already he could see she had that look in her eyes, a familiar look of lust directed straight towards him. Her hair was a silky white blonde pulled up into a bump at the front with a long sheet of dead straight hair beneath. She smiled and looked down, pretending to be coy, but Connor knew her, or at least he knew girls like her. Escaping his past wasn’t going to be that easy if he kept falling in with the same types of people wherever he went.

He turned his attention back to the front and tried to concentrate on the class. Everything about it was different to back home; the tables were arranged in a horseshoe with a block of tables in the centre, unlike the individual desks facing the front that he’d had back in the US. Connor watched as the kids continually ignored the teacher, huddling together in whispers while he spoke. Mr Cross didn’t seem to care much either way, he just got on with the lesson. There was a general air of going through the motions, a let’s-get-through-this-together type of camaraderie. Mr Cross ran through his well-rehearsed lesson plan and then instructed the class to work from their textbooks until the bell rang. Occasionally, Connor heard the row of girls behind him giggling and got the feeling he was the source of their amusement.

After the class had finished and people began to file out of the classroom for break, Connor looked to see where all the smokers were going. He really wanted to go for a cigarette and he knew that there must be somewhere – there was always somewhere.

‘Hey, Connor.’ The blonde girl came bounding towards him, her skirt folded up at the waist to make it shorter, the short fat stump of her tie resting on her breasts. She was reminiscent of the cheerleaders in his form back home.

‘Hi.’ He kept it short.

‘I was in your maths class just now, I sat across from you.’

‘Oh right, hi. Sorry, my memory isn’t so great,’ he lied.

‘I’m Pippa.’ She held out her hand for him to shake; he took it reluctantly, but she seemed even more reluctant to let it go. ‘So where do you come from? I haven’t seen you around here before … plus, you know … the accent thing.’

‘You know everyone in town?’

‘Everyone worth knowing,’ she said, blinking slowly with a tiny smile at the corner of her lips.

‘Maybe I’m not worth knowing then,’ he said.

Connor pulled out the top of the packet of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. Desperate for a smoke, he looked at Pippa with one eyebrow raised in a question. She smiled and grabbed his arm, pulling him outside and down the corridor towards a large grey building at the side of the school field, beside a row of hedges. It looked older than any building in his home town in California.

‘Behind here.’ She pushed the hedge to the side and slipped in. He followed her to find a couple of other kids hiding behind there smoking too; it was completely obscured from the view of the school windows. Pippa held on to his arm, keeping him to herself.

He took a cigarette out and lit it before handing it to Pippa. She took a drag, then handed it back to him, her eyes just peeping out from under her eyelashes. She was making sure he knew she was interested; it couldn’t have been much more obvious.

‘What is this place?’ he asked.

‘It used to be a church or something, like a little chapel, back when this was a religious school. But it stopped being one, like, a hundred years ago and so now it’s used for all the sports equipment, the big stuff, for like, sports day.’

‘It’s cool.’ He ran his hand along the brickwork. Some of the pointing crumbled and fell away beneath his fingertips.

‘Are you doing anything Friday night?’ she asked him, taking the cigarette from his hand again and dragging on it before handing it back.

‘Yeah, I’m going skydiving,’ he said with a cheeky smile, unsure why he was flirting. He didn’t need to.

She cocked her head to the side, knowing full well that he was talking crap.

‘A bunch of us are going to hang out, you can come if you want?’

‘Um … sure. I can skydive anytime.’

Pippa skipped triumphantly backwards and out through the hedge, calling over her shoulder, ‘Cool, meet us by the back gate after school on Friday.’

She disappeared and he finished his cigarette, thinking. Maybe things would be better here. Maybe he could make friends after all.

Chapter 9

Connor managed to escape the first day of school unscathed. He was already popular, even before trying out for the rugby team. He liked doing after-school sports – it was a legitimate reason to not be at home, a reason his father wouldn’t argue with, a reason Jacob wouldn’t see as time-wasting.

Connor had had a meeting with the sports teacher at the end of the school day. He had sought him out, told Connor he was excited to have him in the school, how some fresh blood might shake up the team, along with some inevitable jokes about how American football wasn’t really that impressive because they are all padded up. Nothing he hadn’t heard a million times before from his father. He laughed along as though he found it as funny as the coach, but he had seen the kind of injuries that could be sustained during what he called football and it wasn’t a laughing matter. Padding or not, the sport was serious and the injuries were real. Still, he’d agreed to try out for the school rugby team.

As he walked home from school, he spotted just ahead of him the girl he had seen in her bedroom next door when he had been up in the tree house. She had her head down and eyes to the ground as she moved with small, fast steps. She was on the other side of the road to him, opposite their houses. When she drew parallel with her house, she crossed the road without even turning to check the traffic. Connor frowned. It was almost as if it were him that she was avoiding. He couldn’t think why. She disappeared inside her house, and he picked up the pace and ran home.

Once inside, Connor dropped his bag on the floor and rushed out to the garden, quickly climbing the tree until he reached his den at the top. He saw the girl close her bedroom door and slide her backpack onto a chair. She took off her coat and hung it on the door before grabbing a large hooded jumper out of her cupboard and putting it on. She kicked off her shoes and grabbed a book from a shelf next to her bed, then lay down and began to read. Connor pulled his cigarettes out now that there was no way she would notice him.

After some time the light outside started to fade and he saw her reach for her bedside lamp. At the same time, he saw the kitchen light in his own house come on. His father was home. Unwilling to deal with him just yet, Connor decided to light up again and wait until the last possible moment before heading back inside.

‘Con!’ Jacob called from the back steps. ‘Con, are you out here?’

Connor put the cigarette out and shuffled across the floor to the exit. He climbed down, annoyed that he couldn’t just be left alone for once. So much for keeping out of his father’s way.

‘So how did it go?’ Jacob asked as he walked back into the kitchen.

‘It was OK, how was work?’

‘Same shit, different place.’

Jacob took a swig of beer, draining the bottle. He picked up two fresh bottles off the table and handed one to Connor. Connor noticed his father’s mood and decided now was as good a time as any to bring up going out the next evening. He had promised he would be different to how he had been back home. He’d vowed to try and mix with good kids and get in with the right people, not people who would try and coerce him into doing stupid things. But maybe those were his people, they seemed to find each other. Pippa reminded him so much of the girl he had back home. They didn’t look alike, but they were the same type. Not even the cultural differences could hide that desperation to be popular, to be envied and coveted. Connor was familiar with those feelings, although they were gone from him now. All he wanted was to be allowed to be himself.

‘Is it OK if I go out Friday? Some of the people in my class invited me bowling,’ he said.

‘As long as you’re back by ten … Let me guess, you need the car? Just be careful over here, don’t forget you shouldn’t be driving for another year.’ Jacob rolled his eyes and Connor left the beer on the side, going upstairs before he got embroiled in another conversation with his father. They didn’t always end as well as this one.

Chapter 10

Having finished with the list of people who had used the recruitment agency and specifically dealt with Erica Lawson, Imogen was frustrated. Every single person had an alibi for the night of the murder and so it was back to the drawing board. Of course, it wasn’t going to be that easy. They had already checked menus of the restaurants closest to her house and moved further afield in a spiral pattern. In order to check for witnesses, they would have to visit the restaurants that flagged as serving the right type of food themselves. They had two restaurants to visit in the city next, they needed to speak to the staff and check any footage that might be available through CCTV. Imogen’s stomach growled at the thought of food. It was nearing lunchtime and she hadn’t eaten since yesterday. She looked over at Adrian who was staring at some paperwork, although she could tell that his eyes were not connected to the page but instead lost in thought. She wondered when he’d last eaten.

‘What say we go down the Guildhall and pick up one of those jacket spuds? I’m starving and I’m not sure I can face the canteen food today,’ Imogen said.

‘OK. I’m down with that.’

‘It’s right by the restaurants we need to go to and we can show them the pics of Erica, see if they saw her with anyone,’ Imogen said. She felt as though she were overexplaining, but if Adrian suspected she was worried about him, he would shut down. Cautiously, she reached out to pat him on the shoulder.

‘OK, you’re acting weird. What’s going on?’ Adrian folded his arms and leaned back in the chair, his eyebrow raised suspiciously.

‘I’m hungry, that’s what’s going on.’ She knew he wouldn’t take kindly to any show of sympathy at this point, but he didn’t look well. He didn’t seem to stop for lunch any more, or go home in time for any kind of substantial meal. He looked to be in a permanent state of exhaustion as far as she could tell.

‘Bullshit. What’s up with you?’

‘Nothing!’ she protested, in a voice slightly higher than normal.

‘You don’t need to worry about me, Grey, I’m fine. Just a little tired.’

‘Well that’s lovely, but I really am starving. Come on.’ She walked out, knowing he would be following behind her. She had to remind herself not to be too nice to Adrian. Not to arouse suspicion. He had been there for her before, now it was her turn to be there for him. They were a package deal, her and Adrian. She always felt in safe hands around him somehow – they were more than colleagues; they were friends.

Outside, she opened the car door and got in – less than ten seconds later Adrian was sitting in the passenger seat, resigned to doing as he was told. They drove to the Guildhall and parked in the multistorey before walking to the centre and ordering lunch at the jacket potato vendor. They sat on the low-lying wall and ate in silence for a few minutes. This was all a strange feeling for Imogen, aside from her mother she had never looked after someone before, not like this. She was genuinely concerned that Adrian was hurting and she wanted to make his pain go away. Knowing that she had no control over that, she tried to control the things she could, like making sure he ate. It beat thinking about her own problems.

‘OK, you were right, I feel better,’ Adrian said eventually.

‘Me too. Let’s go and see this Carmichaels place and The Bay Tree restaurant then. Let’s also hope she didn’t travel out of town for her date or we will have a shitload more restaurants to get through.’

‘That’s the spirit!’

They walked through the arch onto the high street, then down to the cathedral square which was still partially cordoned off due to the horrific fire that had ripped through the Royal Clarence Hotel, the oldest hotel in England, in fact the first building to use the term ‘hotel’ in England. The hotel had collapsed in on itself after burning for over twenty-four hours in October 2016. Now it was just a façade, the interior completely obliterated. No floors, walls or ceilings, just a charred empty box on the inside. In the corner of the square, tucked out of the way was a small restaurant with a blue exterior called The Bay Tree, and on the opposite side of the square was Carmichaels, a burgundy-fronted restaurant. As much as it would make sense for them to split up, it was better to go to both places together, see if anyone was behaving strangely when they were shown the photo. It meant that one of them could keep an eye on things while the other one did the talking.

They walked into The Bay Tree as the staff were clearing the tables after a lunchtime rush. They offered a reasonable set lunch menu and Imogen made a mental note to remember it if she ever went on a date again. Now that Dean was gone she didn’t see much chance of that. There was a Mediterranean smell about the place, lemon juice and olive oil, fresh coriander and salad vegetables. A flustered blonde waitress with pink cheeks and a glistening forehead approached them.

‘Table for two?’

‘Ah, no thanks.’ Imogen flashed her warrant card.

The waitress’s eyes widened in surprise, followed by an irritated huff, obviously annoyed at their timing.

‘We need to ask you a couple of questions. Were you working here on Thursday night last week?’ Adrian said.

‘No, I wasn’t, sorry, but Tanya was. I’ll get her for you.’ She seemed relieved that they wouldn’t need to speak to her. She forced a smile and disappeared back into the kitchen, scuffing her ballet pumps along the ground as she went.

A few moments later another woman appeared. She looked around thirty years old and had cropped black hair, so pristine that it looked painted on.

‘Jenny said you wanted to ask something about last Thursday? Tanya Maslin.’ She nodded and folded her arms.

‘I don’t suppose you remember this woman coming in for dinner last week?’ Imogen held up her phone; she had a taken a photo of a photo in Erica Lawson’s house. ‘She would have eaten …’

‘Oysters. Yeah, she was here.’

‘You remember her?’

‘Oh yeah, she was quite tipsy when she left; they drank a lot of wine.’

‘I don’t suppose you remember who she was with?’

‘A man, blond, shoulder-length hair, about six feet two I reckon. He was early forties, I think.’

‘That’s a good memory you’ve got there.’

Tanya Maslin shrugged.

‘Do you remember anything else about him?’ Adrian asked.

‘He was cute. Cuter than her.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean he was a solid nine and she was a six.’

‘Wow, OK.’ Imogen rolled her eyes.

‘OK, a seven. But he was definitely out of her league. Probably why I noticed them. I can’t get a date but a girl like that can? Ridiculous.’

Imogen shook off the urge to shout at this woman who seemed to think she was in a position to judge other people, or at least other women. Imogen had known plenty of women like her in her time. Women who saw other women as competition, constantly looking for advantages over them, for flaws to exploit. Imogen couldn’t imagine anything more lonely or insecure.

‘Do you think you would be able to describe him to a sketch artist?’ she asked.

‘Maybe. He kept his head down a lot, his hair was pretty unruly as well. I got the feeling he was trying not to be seen; he asked to be seated in that corner over there. Normally when men behave like that it’s because they’re out with their bit of fluff but, in this situation, I don’t think so. I can’t imagine anyone cheating with a girl like her. I mean, you usually trade up, don’t you? Why do you want to find him?’

Imogen bit her tongue before responding. ‘We need to speak to him with regards to an ongoing investigation.’

A look of realisation dawned on Tanya’s face. ‘Wait, she was that girl in the news, wasn’t she? I knew I recognised her from somewhere else too!’

‘Do you have their card receipt or anything?’ Imogen asked.

‘No, he paid in cash. I remember because it’s quite unusual and he gave me a huge tip. You don’t think it was him, do you?’ she said in an incredulous tone.

Imogen didn’t get the impression the woman was particularly bothered about having served a murderer. It was more likely that she couldn’t quite believe that someone who was attractive would do something like that. She had been quite open about the fact that she thought Erica Lawson was not pretty enough for this good-looking stranger that she had barely met.

‘We just need to eliminate him from our inquiries.’

‘So, what do I do now?’ Tanya asked.

Imogen pulled out her notebook and pen.

‘I’ll need your contact details, home address and phone number, any mobile numbers you might have. Then we’ll contact you and arrange a time for you to meet the sketch artist.’

‘I’m Tanya Maslin, as I said. I live at 15, Gladstone Road. I’ll write my numbers down for you.’

She grabbed a napkin and took a pen from her pocket, scribbling down three telephone numbers and her email address. She handed the napkin to Adrian, who wasn’t paying any attention to her at all.

‘Thank you, that’s all,’ Imogen said before Tanya Maslin disappeared back into the kitchen. Imogen couldn’t help but notice how distracted Adrian was; she wished there was something she could say or do that would help him get through this. Maybe he should have taken more time off work, not that that would help. Work was probably the best place for him.

They left the restaurant and took a photo of the exterior.

‘Don’t suppose there’s any point getting forensics down here?’ Adrian said.

‘We’ll tell the DCI and see what she wants to do,’ Imogen said.

‘You know what this means, don’t you?’

‘Don’t say it.’ Imogen felt her body tense.

‘CCTV. Now we know where, we’re going to have to see what cameras around here might have on record from last Thursday.’

‘Oh God, I can’t face it tonight. I’ll start in the morning.’

‘I’ll get started,’ Adrian said. ‘I’ve got nothing better to do.’

Imogen kept glancing at him as they walked back to the car; his head was down and he was watching his feet as he walked, lost in his own thoughts again. No one volunteered to watch hours of mind numbing CCTV of an evening, he must be struggling. She knew that he needed to grieve in his own way, but she just didn’t think he was dealing with it at all. Just pushing it down and pretending that it was all OK without the girl he had barely had time to fall in love with. She didn’t know what to do.

Chapter 11

Connor felt Pippa’s hand on his thigh. He edged across the bonnet of his father’s car and knocked back the beer he had in his hand. The fact that he was breaking the law made him even more attractive to Pippa; he could see how impressed she was when he turned up in it. He looked over at the group of kids they had come out with – they were different from the kids back home. There was less competition. Granted, though, it was a smaller town and so you didn’t get the superstars of high school like he had back at his previous school. The truth was, Connor had been one of the superstars, but he didn’t want that again, he didn’t want the constant pressure and expectation. He didn’t need to feel like he was letting anyone other than himself down if he fucked up and went off the rails.

Connor had had girls like Pippa all over him back then, too. Girls that saw him as a trophy boyfriend, a symbol of their status within the school. Always with a boyfriend, always attached to someone, her self-worth measured by the popularity of the boy she can attract. Right now, Connor knew he was the hot topic. Even if he hadn’t looked the way he did, he was unknown and therefore interesting. The kids here were a lot less uptight, a lot less concerned with image and popularity and the cliques didn’t seem to be that well defined, unlike the huge school he’d got kicked out of, where not even his football skills could save him.

Connor looked at his watch, aware of the time, aware that his father had told him not to be late.

‘Got somewhere better to be?’ Pippa asked.

‘I need to get home soon.’ He swilled the last of his beer, then tossed the bottle into a bush.

‘You have a curfew?’ she giggled.

‘Nah, nothing like that, my dad needs his car back.’

She sidled up to him again, moving her hand up his thigh, edging ever closer to his zip. He looked down and watched closely as though he was watching her touch someone else’s leg. Maybe this technique worked on the boys here.

‘How can I convince you to stay?’

Connor jumped off the car and pulled his keys out of his pocket.

‘I really should be going.’

Pippa looked deflated by this. He knew what she wanted; she wanted him to break the rules for her, to prove that he would get into trouble just to have a little of what she was offering. It was hard to resist, not because of who she was but because of what he wanted. It had been so long since he had felt close to anyone.

‘Can you give me a ride home then? I live on Gloucester Road,’ she said, undeterred by his efforts to shake her off.

He sucked in a deep breath and exhaled slowly, giving in to the inevitable again. Be normal and do what you’re supposed to do, then people won’t ask too many questions. He had to fit in; he was already at a disadvantage because he stood out like a sore thumb. There was no reason to draw even more attention to himself by turning down one of the hottest girls in the school. It didn’t make sense and people would wonder why. He couldn’t have people looking too closely at him – and so he opened the door for Pippa.

Outside Pippa’s house, the sound of the car clock rolling over made Connor pull back from her and look at the dashboard. All the zeroes. Midnight – his father would not be happy. Connor’s seat was pushed right back and Pippa was straddling him, both of them with shirts unbuttoned. Pippa kissed Connor’s neck, making a lot of noise about it. She sat up a little; he looked through the space between them and saw her tanned breasts inside her cornflower blue bra, striking against her white-blonde hair.

‘You aren’t like the boys around here.’

‘Is that a compliment?’

‘Oh, hell yes.’

Connor glanced at the clock again as he pushed Pippa off him; she was light but fit under her clothes. He did his flies up. Connor remembered his girlfriend back home, how they would have sex in his car, how she would use sex to make sure he stayed in line. This had been a huge mistake. Connor felt torn between wanting what he used to have and running from it, knowing full well what the outcome had been. He couldn’t replace the girl he had lost, the life he had lost, and he didn’t really want to. He didn’t want history repeating itself.

‘You should go inside,’ he said, ‘I need to get home.’

After dropping Pippa off, Connor pulled into his own drive. The house was completely dark as he walked towards the front door. He pushed the key in as quietly as possible. With any luck, his father had drunk himself into a stupor again and passed out in front of the television.

The door clicked open and he stepped inside. Dead silence. He waited until he could see the bottom step before he attempted to go upstairs. As his eyes adjusted to the light, a weight lodged in his stomach. He noticed the shape of a man, a silhouette to be precise, leaning against the wall at the end of the hallway.

‘Jesus Christ!’

The light came on. Connor saw that the figure was Jacob … drunk.

‘Nope, just me,’ his father said quietly.

‘You scared the shit out of me!’ Connor exclaimed.

‘What the fuck time do you call this?’ Jacob said through gritted teeth, edging closer to Connor, who instinctively tensed and leaned away.

‘I had car trouble.’

‘Car trouble? What? Do I look like a fucking idiot to you or something? You think you can just lie to me whenever you feel like it, you little prick?’ Jacob’s voice got steadily louder as his temper took hold.

‘OK, sorry I’m late. I won’t do it again.’ The sound of his own voice pleading made Connor feel sick. How pathetic. He should just tell him where to go.

‘You’re damn right you won’t! If you screw things up this time you are on your own, I’m not moving to a new house again.’

‘I’m not going to screw anything up; I’m just a bit late.’

Jacob moved in towards Connor and looked him dead in the eye.

‘No girl is worth ruining your life for, asshole. Keep your dick in your pants and your mind on school.’

Connor sighed. Jacob didn’t understand, how could he?

‘OK, I get it … jeez.’

‘Are you trying to be clever?’

‘No, Dad, I’m just tired. I’m going to bed.’

Connor took a deep breath and put his foot on the first step. He could tell that his father was looking for an argument. Connor’s instinct was always to fuck up and contribute to these inevitable confrontations. He had promised himself when they moved to Exeter that he wouldn’t keep doing it, but the tighter Jacob’s grip, the more Connor wanted to pull away. He moved up the stairs, unwilling to stay and repeat every argument they had ever had.

‘Don’t you walk away from me!’

Connor fell onto his hands as Jacob pushed him with full force; the second step jarred against his shin, the bare wood clashing against bone, his leg instantly throbbing. He quickly shielded his head, knowing the places his father liked to punch, and curled into the smallest ball possible, protecting his ribs, throat, face and stomach. Right on cue, Connor felt the full weight of Jacob’s trainer as it hit him in the thigh. Connor’s eyes closed tight and he hoped that Jacob would keep kicking the same spot as it didn’t hurt so much there and it was easy to hide. His father was unhealthy with a bad leg, so the kicking part didn’t usually last very long.

Connor heard a metal clinking sound; the sound of Jacob’s belt unbuckling and being pulled quickly from his waist. He knew what came next. The hard edges on the side of the belt cut into his skin as it connected with his shoulder. Jacob had wrapped the belt around his fist, either to protect his hands, or to cause maximum damage – the buckle always left the biggest mark.

‘Dad, please … Please, I’m sorry!’ He hated to beg, he wasn’t even convinced he meant it.

‘I’ll make you fucking sorry!’

He hit him a few more times, each time slightly harder than the last, until Jacob ran out of steam. Finally, Connor heard the familiar sound of Jacob’s foot dragging as he walked away. He got worse beatings when his dad was sober; at least when he was drunk he ran out of energy faster.

Connor waited until he knew his father was gone before uncurling from his self-imposed cocoon. It didn’t really hurt yet, but that was because of the shock. At least he hadn’t had a seizure this time. Getting beaten up by his dad was bad enough without the added humiliation of losing control of his faculties altogether.

Pulling himself up, Connor peered into the lounge and saw his father sitting in front of the TV with a beer in hand. As though this interaction had never occurred, as if it were all just a dream. Connor trudged up the stairs and flopped onto his bed, wanting to fall asleep before the pain really started.

As he lay there, he heard mutterings through the wall, coming from the house next door. It was a low sound, an almost drone-like murmur. He realised that any kind of volume would most definitely have been heard through the walls. He exhaled deeply, embarrassed that his neighbours might know what kind of a man his father was, what kind of a coward he was. He couldn’t think about it right now.

He closed his eyes and thought instead about the home he had left behind. The home that wasn’t really a home anymore, not to him anyway. He thought about his old friends and how he wished he was back there with them. Occasionally, on nights like this, he would try and remember to feel fortunate. He had been told time and time again how lucky he was. He thought about a girl in his old class called Marianne; they had been in school together for seven years. He remembered the last time he saw her vividly – she had been hanging a banner for the end of year summer prom. Standing on a ladder in the cafeteria, obscuring the clock with it. The thing he remembered most about Marianne was that she had always worn yellow shoes in all the time he had known her. He tried to push her out of his mind as he recalled the image of one yellow shoe in the school gym … He didn’t want to think about Marianne anymore. Sleep. He wanted to sleep and forget, wake up in a new day and deal with that rather than with this.

Chapter 12

It was a long time before he kissed me again, but I wanted it every single day. Whenever I went out to the bins I half expected him to be there but he wasn’t. I could tell he was taunting me with it, trying to make me want him even more. It was working; I wanted him more than anything. He was playing a long game and winning.

On my nineteenth birthday I was offered the day off work but I said no – I wanted to go in, I wanted to see him. On that day he came in late, and he was alone. He was holding a bunch of flowers and he told me that Caroline, the girl who worked with me behind the counter, had told him that it was my birthday. That was when he asked me out. A week later we had our first date.

He took me to an Indian restaurant, the nicest one in town, and after we finished our meal he walked me home. The route took us through an alleyway and before I knew it I was pinned against the wall, his body pressed against mine. I couldn’t have gotten away even if I had wanted to, which I didn’t. We kissed for what seemed like forever and I was flying. I straightened myself out before I got home, before he politely handed me back to my father, who couldn’t have been oblivious to what had just passed between us. If he knew though, he didn’t show it. It might have been easier for everyone if he had just put his foot down and forbade me from leaving the house again.

I didn’t sleep that night; I was so full of excitement, I wasn’t sure I would ever sleep again. I could tell in the following days how disappointed my father was in me, but he let me live my own life. He didn’t want to be the overbearing parent, he didn’t want me to run away again.

Rocket and I became lovers, stealing moments at work and spending every other minute that we could together. He would drive me to work in the mornings – JD would sit in the back seat and say nothing – he never said anything. On Saturday afternoons, we would go to the reservoir and dip our toes in the water until one day I saw a stoat or something in the undergrowth and freaked out. After that we would drive out to the little villages that surrounded the city, each time getting slightly further and further away until eventually we would drive for over an hour before we would stop, looking for that perfect spot for us to hide.

Eventually we found a small town with a river running through it. There was a bend there where the pool of water was bigger, like our own private Garden of Eden. Rocket would lie at the side of the river and watch me swimming in the water, sheltered from the sun by a willow tree that hung over the riverbank. We were hidden from the rest of the world. We never ran into anyone else and this became our special place. I would be frozen when I got out of the water, my skin cold and wet, but he would still throw me down on the grass and make love to me, not caring about his own clothes or the fact that I was numb to his touch.

Those days by the river I felt invincible, as though no one could ever shatter the woman I was becoming. I was stronger for him, or at least I thought I was. I had been so preoccupied with being free that I hadn’t noticed my isolation from everyone else. The only world I knew was Rocket. My friends had given up on me. Laughing my absence off at the fact that I was in love and that life never gets better than this honeymoon period. They were right about one thing. Life never did get any better, it only got worse. I was totally complicit in my own demise and I wasn’t even aware of it until it was far too late.

It wasn’t for a full year that I began to really notice what was happening. Rocket had asked me to move in with him and I’d said yes. He and JD shared a house but JD worked a lot and was never home. My parents helped me move my things, and then we said our goodbyes. I assumed I would see them a week or so later, but I didn’t see them again for two months, and the time after that it had almost been half a year since we’d met up. In fact, I didn’t really see anyone from before I’d met Rocket – this man that I was so blindly in love with that I accepted everything he did or said without question.

JD started dating a bottle blonde and moved in with her; she was pretty but she talked so much. It was hard to imagine him being with a girl like her. Maybe her constant noise took the pressure of talking away from him. Sometimes I caught him looking at me across the room when we were all together. He didn’t make me feel nervous or bad though. I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time, but I realise now he was checking that I was OK, looking for outward signs of stress or distress. He knew where this was going; he had been here before. But still he didn’t warn me.

Rocket would sit next to me wherever we went, his arm always around me, or if he couldn’t do that then his hand would be on my knee or my shoulder. I thought this was affection, but I now know that it was possession. I belonged to him, he had plucked me straight from my parents’ arms and put his hooks in me. He had never mistreated me, but I had never stepped out of line, I had never done anything unexpected or out of the ordinary. Until then I had never done anything that he saw as questionable. He had moulded me into the girlfriend he wanted – adoring, loyal and fiercely in love.

He got a promotion at work and so he told me I could stop working if I wanted to, but I didn’t want to, I enjoyed my job. It wasn’t the most glamorous of jobs admittedly, but I liked the hours. I started at 5 a.m., worked for eight hours a day and still had half the day to enjoy myself. I think, looking back, this was part of the problem. Those few hours between when I finished work and Rocket came home from his shifts at the hospital. He didn’t know what I had been doing and that bothered him.

His friend owned the camera shop SNAPPO’S and Rocket got me a job there so we could meet for lunch every day as it was near the hospital. I left my waitressing job and started working in the camera shop. I had talked to him before about how much I had always wanted to be a photographer and so he bought me a camera. It wasn’t an expensive one, it was an old Russian camera that I had mentioned; it produced imperfect images and that was the kind of art I wanted to create, maybe because I had always felt imperfect myself. I thought Rocket was supporting my love of photography by finding me a job more suited to my interests. Although I missed having my free afternoons, it was good to be doing something different. The manager paid my wages in cash to Rocket, but at least I got my films developed for free as a perk of the job.

In a little over a year my life had been transformed. I had no family around me anymore and it seemed as though my friends were all moving in a different direction to me – it wasn’t until much later that I realised they just didn’t like him, they didn’t trust him. I wish someone had told me, had made me look at what I was getting into, but no one said anything. There was nothing to say, I suppose; for all intents and purposes, he was lovely. I couldn’t fault him – there was nothing to fault. He was generous and kind and he was always good to me. Until he wasn’t.

Chapter 13

The toilets were empty when Selina walked in; she hurried into the stall and closed the door. They had a ten-minute break before the next lesson and she had a terrible stomach cramp. She held her breath as the exterior door opened and more people piled into the bathroom. The faint aroma of cigarettes, Impulse and hairspray in the air told her it was Pippa, Liza and Naomi. They ran the taps and she listened to them speak, imagining them reapplying the black lines to the corners of their eyes, curling their eyelashes and applying a rosy lip gloss. This was their bathroom ritual, it was how they managed to look preened at all hours of the day.

‘So, did he take you ALL the way home then?’ Naomi said, her raspy voice instantly recognisable.

‘A lady never tells!’ Pippa said.

‘Right, so what happened then?’ Liza’s deep and sultry tones were also easy to spot as she jibed Pippa.

‘Bitch,’ Pippa said and they all burst out laughing.

‘So, what did his dick look like?’ Naomi said quietly. The laughter continued.

‘Naomi!’ Pippa called out, indignant.

‘No! I mean is he like, circumcised? I heard all Americans do that shit. Is it weird? What’s it look like? Are you seeing him again?’

‘We’re hooking up at the weekend.’

Selina guessed they were talking about her new neighbour, Connor. His arrival at the school had caused quite a stir. Most of the kids in school all knew each other from primary or even nursery school – they were all from similar neighbourhoods, so when someone new came in all eyes were on them. Add to that the fact that Connor had an American accent and he was one of those typically chiselled sporty boys, there was no chance these girls weren’t going to get their hooks into him. She looked at her watch; it was almost time for class and she didn’t want to be late. She flushed the toilet and took a deep breath before exiting the cubicle to face the girls.

‘Have a good listen, Dildo?’ Pippa said.

‘You’re such a fucking freak,’ Naomi muttered.

Selina walked up to the sink and washed her hands. She could feel them all staring at her.

‘You should let me straighten your hair, you know, it would look so much better than that ratty mess,’ Liza said.

Selina pushed past them and out into the hall, finally exhaling properly. Since she had started at the secondary school, those three girls in particular had made her life hell. Having a surname like Dilley didn’t help, completely lending itself to the term Dildo, which had been her unofficial name since she had been twelve years old. It didn’t bother her as much as they probably hoped it did. She had much bigger things on her mind than those idiots.

Connor stood by the rugby pitch watching the rest of the class. He had been dreading his first sports lesson and for it to come just a couple of days after an argument with his father made him even more nervous. He liked to play sports, but he was worried about the changing rooms afterwards, aware that he had a lot of marks on his body, more than the usual teenager. He knew he could lie about where they came from, but he didn’t like the attention. He tried to stay in the moment and just focus on the game for now, trying to discern who the weaker players were. He already knew the rules, as his father had always made them watch matches together and so it wasn’t something he couldn’t pick up. It was strange not to be kitted out and protected, strange to just run on into danger. Connor liked the idea of it.

Mr Wallis, the P.E. teacher, blew the whistle and subbed Connor into the game. There were only a few minutes left, but he got the ball and ran hard with it, right into the fray. Within seconds, he was under a pile of guys. The whistle blew again.

‘Can I have a word, Connor?’ Mr Wallis called him over before shouting at the class. ‘Everyone back in formation. Start again.’

Connor ran to the teacher, slightly breathless, slightly out of practice. He had been kicked off the team a few months earlier at home and so his physical fitness was not as hot as usual. It wouldn’t take him long though, a bit of training and he would be back on top.

‘Yes, sir?’

‘You sure you’re up for this? You’ll have to unlearn a few things, and despite what you might think, it’s quite different to the football you’re used to, not harder – but different. Rugby is tougher in the sense that players play the ball continuously. But with American football, because of all the breaks, you get to play harder when the ball is in play. You’ll need to conserve energy at certain times with rugby. You don’t need to go full out every time you have the ball. You’ll learn soon enough, but if you play like that constantly you’re going to end up with some pretty nasty injuries in no time.’

‘I can handle it.’

‘I’m sure you think you can. But for now, humour me.’

‘OK, sir.’

Mr Wallis blew the whistle and the boys stopped playing immediately. They all rushed back towards the school building with much more enthusiasm than they had when playing rugby.

‘I read about some of your sporting achievements at your other school and we’re lucky to have you here. You just have to keep it together. We play rugby on Mondays and Fridays and then general games on a Thursday, until next term, and then we switch to football – or soccer as you might call it – for spring, then back to rugby in the summer term. We’re looking forward to seeing what you can do.’

‘Thank you, I’ll do my best.’

‘I’m sure you will. Now go get showered and changed.’

Connor grabbed his things and headed for the changing rooms. When he got in, all the other boys were out already and drying themselves off which was a relief as it meant he got to shower alone. One of the other boys in the class smiled at Connor as he opened his locker.

‘Hey, Connor.’

‘Hi …’ he replied.

‘It’s Neil. You did great out there, it’s good to have some fresh blood on the field. How did it feel without all that padded crap you guys wear?’

‘It felt pretty good.’ Connor was used to this kind of talk; he had heard it his whole life from his father.

‘Hey, I have my driving test soon. If I pass we’re all going out. Do you want to come?’

‘Sounds cool, sure.’

‘Great,’ Neil said, ‘I’ll let you know.’

Connor waited for Neil to turn his back and then slipped into the shower when he was sure no one was looking. He got under the water, the heat of the shower soothing against his bruises. They didn’t hurt as much as they should have because he was used to feeling bruised. The first few times it was much worse, but now, he could take it. This was the norm and maybe it was exactly what he deserved. Playing rugby would provide the perfect excuse for the large purple lesions left behind by the buckle on his father’s belt; it had pierced the skin as it always did, faded versions of the same marks mottled the rest of his body. There were several marks across his torso. It was the reason he threw himself into football back home. Because people just accept that you get bruised when you play sports. He never got asked any questions, not once.

Connor put his clothes on, his hair still wet, the collar of his shirt cold and damp against his neck. He gathered his things and threw his backpack over his shoulder, both eager to get out of here and anxious to get home. He hoped his father would be out at work today, he couldn’t handle the pretence and he hadn’t seen him all weekend, not since the beating.

Walking home, he saw the girl from the house next door on the opposite side of the street to him. She kept her head down as she walked. He hadn’t noticed her at all at school during the course of the day. She obviously hung in different circles. He could tell she knew he was there, she must have seen him and she didn’t want him to speak to her. She walked a little faster and then disappeared into her house. He found himself walking faster to get home, to get to his tree house, to watch her.

Chapter 14

‘Nothing,’ Adrian said flatly.

‘What do you mean, nothing?’ Imogen put two cups of coffee on the desk and sat down next to Adrian, looking at the clock – it was a little after ten in the morning. He picked his up immediately and started drinking. She wondered how long he had been sitting here.

‘Absolutely nothing on the CCTV, not even her. I’ve watched everything from around the cathedral and the circle outwards to her house. I even got hold of the surrounding shops. Everything that was working, anyway. It’s taken forever and there’s not one single image as far as I can see.’

‘What about the drawing? The one Tanya Maslin instructed on?’

‘Here. Take a look at that and tell me what you see.’ He handed her a photocopy of the picture Tanya Maslin had come in to create with the sketch artist that morning before she started work. There was something very familiar about him.

‘Isn’t that Kurt Cobain?’

‘She must have her wires crossed or something. We know it wasn’t him at least, he’s dead.’

‘Well, if you believe the theories, then he’s living on a desert island somewhere. Or at least I like to think so.’ Imogen had cried when she’d heard that Kurt Cobain had shot himself; she had idolised him as a teen. Now just reduced to being another member of the twenty-seven club, an ever-expanding group of celebrities who’d died at that age – Cobain, Winehouse, Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison. Strangely, all musicians that Imogen had listened to growing up. Twenty-seven, the same age as Imogen.

‘According to Tanya Maslin, he was in The Bay Tree with Erica Lawson,’ Adrian said.

‘She didn’t seem like a liar, maybe he really did look like this.’

‘Seen anyone like that wandering around town?’

‘Maybe he wasn’t local.’ Imogen shrugged. ‘What did the DCI say?’

‘She didn’t think he was that hot.’ Adrian let out a cheeky smile.

‘I mean about what she wants us to do with it.’

‘Hit the neighbours again, see if they saw him come or go. Maybe the pic will jog their memory,’ Adrian said.

‘Fair enough. Anything else?’

‘Gary has some news on the social media front, but Erica was conspicuously absent from all the usual haunts. He wants us to go see him.’

Adrian stood up and rubbed his eyes. She guessed he had been here all night watching all those tapes, and probably slept at his desk. Worrying about Adrian was definitely a good way to distract her from her own problems. They made their way to Gary’s office.

‘How are you holding up? You look tired,’ Imogen said.

‘Home is crazy. It’s hard. Andrea is acting like the wife I never had and it’s just so overwhelming, I never get any time to …’ he trailed off.

‘Is she looking for her own place?’

‘No, she’s in major denial about what’s going on. We’re headed for a big conversation. I don’t want to, but I just need some space.’

‘You can’t have your ex living with you, especially with you guys’ history.’

‘I can’t kick her out, Grey.’

‘Well if you ever need a break, you’re welcome at mine,’ she offered.

As they arrived at the tech lab, Gary shot Imogen a look, a question in his eyes: is Adrian OK?

She shrugged almost imperceptibly in response. As good as can be expected.

‘Welcome! Can I get you some coffee?’ Gary asked. ‘I bought my own machine, one of the ones with the little capsules. Don’t tell everyone though.’

‘Just had one thanks. But you’ll be getting a lot more visits from me in the future,’ Imogen said.

‘Why do you think I got the machine?’ he said, grinning.

‘So, what do you have? Did you find out anything new about her? Was her relationship with her sister as solid as it seemed?’ Adrian asked, skipping past the small talk.

‘Sarah Lawson gave me access to their personal emails and texts and as far as I can see the sisters were very close. No big arguments, just the occasional passive-aggressive advice. As far as Sarah Lawson goes, she wasn’t aware of any social media accounts Erica had and it’s definitely trickier without her laptop to see what websites she was using, but we contacted her ISP and got a full history.’

‘And?’ Imogen said impatiently.

‘She had a Facebook account under a different name. All her own pictures, but the name is Nina Lawless. I searched Nina Lawless and found several profiles on various free social messenger and dating sites. She wasn’t stupid though, there was no indication of where she lived from her online photos. You would be surprised how many people post pictures that show their house, street name, all sorts.’

‘She was hooking up with people?’ Imogen said.

‘I don’t know how many she actually hooked up with, but she was most active on one of the apps connected to Facebook. It’s a social game where you trade on your avatars, your profile photos, buy and raise each other’s value, like commodities. It’s all done online, like a stock exchange type thing. People from all over the world take part. Everyone owns someone and everyone is owned by some else. You can see her profile here.’ He pulled up a profile and some music started to play: ‘Where Have All The Cowboys Gone’. It was a hazy romantic visual of Erica, photos of her sitting on her bed, a little cleavage showing, a little pout, then a picture of her hugging her cat, the camera angled to make her eyes look bigger. The next photo was her holding her hands in a heart shape. Further down the screen was a little bio. Erica was looking for love, or at least some affection.

‘So how do we see who she was talking to on this thing?’ Imogen said.

‘Well it’s tricky because it’s not a UK-based organisation, but I have requested access to the other accounts that we know of. We should get access to Facebook within a couple of days. This one might take a bit longer, if they even decide to comply. But take a look here.’

Gary scrolled further down the screen and they could see messages posted on the page, her wall; some were obviously first messages from people she had not interacted with before. There were other messages though, fragments of conversations between ‘Nina’ and various people. Men from all over the country, all over the world. Gary clicked on some of the thumbnails that linked back to their walls; some had pictures of male models that had been adopted as their personas, some had candid pictures of lesser known actors that they were pretending were pictures of themselves. There were greetings from ‘Nina’ on their walls, too, all friendly, all very generic.

‘All these messages seem pretty innocuous though, would he be this obvious? Can you private message in this app?’ Imogen asked.

‘Yeah, once we gain access we will be able to see the personal messages, they’ll be on this wall here but in red. We can’t see them at the moment, they’re hidden. I’m working on it.’

‘I didn’t even know things like this existed. It’s weird,’ Adrian said.

‘It’s fun for some people. Not everyone is as good-looking as you,’ Gary said.

‘Are you on this app?’ Imogen asked, worried that Adrian had touched a nerve.

‘No, but I have been on games like this before,’ Gary said.

‘Why are they free? What’s the point of them?’

Gary pointed to the screen. ‘People buy gifts, the game developers get rich. Here, look, you can give gifts to the person whose profile it is. The majority of the gifts are free, and you can earn tokens to buy bigger gifts, but you can also buy the tokens: a hundred pounds for three hundred tokens.’

‘What kind of gifts?’

‘So here, for five tokens you can buy someone a daisy, but for a hundred tokens you can buy someone a ruby. Erica has several diamond rings on her profile. They have been given as gifts by admirers. Each one of those cost the person in question twenty pounds.’

‘But that’s just an image, not a real gift.’

‘Yeah, but the more expensive the gifts you get, the more valuable you seem as a commodity.’

‘Why the hell would anyone do that?’ Adrian said.

‘Social media romances can be intense, and these games are very competitive. It’s all about displaying how popular you are and how much you’re worth in the game.’

‘How much was Erica worth? What was her rank in the game?’ Imogen asked.

‘She was a middle-level player,’ Gary said, ‘which is actually pretty high. Imagine it in terms of a Hollywood hierarchy in the real world. She would be a supporting soap star, as opposed to an A-list movie star.’

‘I don’t really understand anything you just said,’ Adrian interjected.

‘I get it. I may or may not have been on something similar to this in the past. Briefly, mind,’ Imogen said.

‘Really?’ Adrian shot her a look and she scalded him with her eyes, hoping he would understand what she was trying to do. Adrian probably couldn’t understand what it was like for Gary, who was lovely but didn’t have the same confidence with women that Adrian did. She had witnessed Adrian’s effect on the opposite sex on several occasions, mystifying as it was, but Gary certainly had completely different experiences when it came to women.

Imogen noticed that each name had a country flag next to it; she assumed it was the user’s country of origin.

‘Is there any way to know where the people who visited are from, like exactly?’ she asked Gary.

‘Maybe, if she had a tracker set into the code. It’s pretty standard practice and easy enough to do. It looks like she was well into this game, her wall is quite artistic and stuff, a lot of specialised coding – it wouldn’t be unrealistic to assume she had a tracker built in. Once we get the other side of the account it should be easy enough to find out. Although you can fool the tracker by tricking it into thinking you are from somewhere else by using a VPN, but not everyone would even think to do that, so you never know.’

‘Can you track on all social media then?’ Imogen asked, unfamiliar with Gary’s capability or even which code the game developers used.

‘It’s much easier on these sites where you power your own HTML code and have access to customise themes and designs through the code itself. Not really as straightforward in apps that don’t give you that kind of access.’

‘And what’s this counter for?’ Imogen said.

‘It’s how many visits her page has received since she started on the game.’

‘Oh good, it’s over a hundred thousand,’ Imogen said sarcastically.

‘Looks like she’s been playing it for a couple of years. There’s also a chance that this isn’t her first account. There’s one thing for sure though.’

‘What’s that?’ Imogen said.

‘She definitely had a personal computer or laptop; there is no way she would have been able to maintain this level of involvement with just a phone. So, if you can find that, you will find out a lot more about her and who she interacted with. Nina Lawless has a big online presence. She was pretty obsessed with this game and, the way it works, it makes sense to have more than one profile, so a dummy account to interact with you to make you look more popular.’

‘Really? People do that?’

‘Yes, any one of these could be Erica’s profile as well. She might have wanted to make someone jealous, make fake money or tokens in the game to send herself gifts. Who knows?’

‘You understand all of this? I can’t get my head around it,’ Adrian said to Imogen, shaking his head.

‘Is there any indication of a possible suspect among the evidence we have so far?’ Imogen asked.

‘I think judging by the way her attacker has managed to avoid all cameras and stuff, we should work on the assumption that he lives quite close to here. At least in the UK. Once we get into the account I can look at her tracker if she has one. I think most people do,’ Gary said.

‘What if she doesn’t?’ Adrian asked.

‘How about we set up a profile for me?’ Imogen said, surprising herself. ‘Gary, you would have to be in control and keep an eye on it. But let’s assume the guy found her through that. If he knew where she was from, then it’s possible that he was specifically targeting someone from this area, someone close to him.’

‘Not a bad idea, I guess,’ Gary said.

‘You can try and connect with the people that she connected with. See if any of them raise any alarms,’ Imogen said to Gary, whose face lit up.

‘Ooh catfishing, my favourite,’ Gary said.

‘You worry me, mate,’ Adrian said.

‘Can you be a convincing girl though?’ Imogen asked Gary.

‘Can you?’ Adrian said to Imogen. Imogen thumped him in the arm, relieved to see the trace of a smile on his face.

‘This isn’t my first rodeo,’ Gary said. Adrian raised his eyebrow; Gary’s capacity to know things was genuinely impressive. He didn’t know where he found the time.

‘OK – make me a profile and I’ll send over some suitably cheesy photos,’ Imogen said. ‘Gary, can I borrow your cat?’

Gary laughed. ‘Um, sure? I can take the photos for you if you want? I’ll drop by your place with my camera.’

‘OK, great.’

Adrian was still staring at the website. ‘What I don’t get is why use fake photos? Like photos of models and stuff?’ he said.

‘Because some people collect other people for friendship, and some people collect styles of pictures.’ Gary clicked on a profile picture that was electric blue digital art; sure enough the rest of the wall was full of electric blue profile pictures interacting with the user. Almost like little cliques within the game.

‘You’ve got a handle on this though? You know how to play? You can get up to the same rank as her?’ Imogen said.

‘I can. I kind of love this sort of thing. I’ll let you know tomorrow how it’s going. Why are we using your photos though? Why not a fake?’

‘In case anyone wants to meet, or video chat or whatever.’

‘Try to make your pictures a bit naff, don’t look too hot or anything. Look normal and like a cat person,’ Adrian said.

‘What does a cat person look like?’ Gary said, that offended tone in his voice again. Was the bromance over? Adrian seemed to be getting on his nerves, or maybe it was something else.

‘I don’t think there’s any danger of me looking too hot,’ Imogen said.

‘Nonsense, Grey, you’re a solid nine.’ Adrian got up and walked out.

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