About the Author

P L KANE is the pseudonym of a number one bestselling and award-winning author and editor, who has had over a hundred books published in the fields of SF, YA and Horror/Dark Fantasy. In terms of crime fiction, previous books include the novel Her Last Secret, the collection Nailbiters and the anthology Exit Wounds, which contains stories by the likes of Lee Child, Dean Koontz, Val McDermid and Dennis Lehane. Kane has been a guest at many events and conventions, and has had work optioned and adapted for film and television (including by Lions Gate/NBC, for primetime US network TV). Several of Kane’s stories have been turned into short movies and Loose Canon Films/Hydra Films have just adapted ‘Men of the Cloth’ into a feature, The Colour of Madness. Kane’s audio drama work for places such as Bafflegab and Spiteful Puppet/ITV features the acting talents of people like Tom Meeten (The Ghoul), Neve McIntosh (Doctor Who/Shetland), Alice Lowe (Prevenge) and Ian Ogilvy (Return of the Saint). Visit www.plkane.com for more details.

Praise for P L Kane

‘Stunning suspense … You’ll be turning those pages faster than you can say, “Didn’t see that coming.” Fabulous book. 5* from me.’ – Helen Fields, bestselling author of Perfect Remains, Perfect Death and Perfect Kill.

‘What are you doing to me, P L Kane? … I think my heart might be broken. Cracking thriller …’ – Jo Jakeman, bestselling author of Sticks and Stones and Safe House.

‘The character-driven plot is intelligent, clever and finely paced, and Jake Radcliffe is a flawed but compassionate protagonist. Exceptional.’ – M W Craven, bestselling author of The Puppet Show and Black Summer.

‘Riveting domestic thriller with a razor-edged twist, courtesy of a new top talent.’ – Paul Finch, Sunday Times bestselling author of Strangers, Shadows and Stolen.

‘A dark, twisty tale with an emotional heart.’ – Roz Watkins, bestselling author of The Devil’s Dice and Dead Man’s Daughter.

‘Kane is a great guide to the dark secrets and lies that wait unexpectedly behind the curtains …’ – Christopher Fowler, bestselling author of Full Dark House, Strange Tide and The Lonely Hour.

‘If you’re looking for something to read then I can certainly recommend Her Last Secret by P L Kane … You won’t be able to put it down.’ – Martyn Waites, bestselling author of The Surrogate, Heartbreaker and The Lost Girl.

‘Tense and twisty! A few times I held my breath and raced through the pages to immerse myself in more of the story.’ – JA Andrews, author of Mummy’s Boy.

‘Wow – what a great book! I was hooked from the start. The idea of a father trying to re-connect with his estranged murdered daughter was so poignant.’ – Liz Mistry, bestselling author of Last Request and Broken Silence.

Also by P L Kane

Her Last Secret

Her Husband’s Grave
P L KANE

ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020

Copyright © P L Kane

P L Kane asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

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

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

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, 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.

Ebook Edition © June 2020 ISBN: 9780008372231

Version: 2020-06-03

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Praise for P L Kane

Also by P L Kane

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Part Two

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

Part Three

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

Part Four

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Extract

Dear Reader …

Keep Reading …

About the Publisher

For my cousins, Helen and Martin.

Prologue

He’d been looking for something else when he made the shocking discovery. The grisly, stomach-churning discovery that would change everything …

He had been walking along, here on the beach, looking for treasure no less – buried or otherwise – if you can believe such a thing. And he did, had done all his life. Believed the tales his father had told him about this place when he was young, about the smugglers and the pirates. Loved it when his old man had read Treasure Island to him at bedtime when he was little.

Jeremy Platt had only recently moved back to the area, partly to keep an eye on his ageing dad now that the man’s wife, Jeremy’s mum, had passed away; partly because his own marriage to Alice – who he’d met at college in the nearby town of Mantlethorpe – had fallen apart. Now, here they both were … alone, together.

They’d joke about it sometimes, over a pint in their local, or a game of dominoes, though their laughter would fade quite quickly. But at least they had each other, the roles reversed from when Jeremy had been little; now he had to read to his father because of his failing eyesight. Something that had put paid to the old bloke’s hobby of amateur writing, and one of the reasons why he liked to stand at the window with those binoculars, looking out over the sea. Or had done, until a couple of days ago.

Until the heart attack.

Jeremy had been the one to make the discovery then too, calling round early because he couldn’t reach him on the phone; all the while telling himself it was just lines down because of the storm. Instead, finding him collapsed on the floor, phone off the hook after clearly trying to reach it and ring for help. Jeremy had rung for an ambulance instead, straight away. They’d whisked him off to hospital, and there had followed an anxious few hours, waiting to hear the worst.

When the doctor came out and told Jeremy his dad had stabilised, he’d almost hugged the fellow. ‘What he needs now, more than anything, is rest,’ the physician had said to Jeremy, ‘and time to recover.’ He’d been allowed to sit by the bedside, even though Mr Platt Snr was still pretty out of it – wires running in and out of him, like some kind of robot. And Jeremy had cried, watching him, realising just how frail he was for the first time. How he might lose another parent before long.

To be honest, he’d come here today to give himself a break more than anything. The hospital had promised to call if there was any change and he could be back in no time.

So here he was, on said beach, looking for excitement, looking for treasure. Just like his old man had promised. All part of a hobby he’d taken up, something to occupy his time while he looked for – and had failed so far to find – work in the area. So, with what was left over from the redundancy package and his share of the marital savings, he’d treated himself to a metal detector.

Jeremy had often spotted people wandering up and down the sands, sweeping those things from left to right, and thought it looked like fun. Well, you never knew what you might find out there. The guy in the shop, that fellow with the beard and cargo trousers – front pockets bulging, so full Jeremy wondered how he walked without falling over – had done nothing to dissuade him. Had been a self-confessed expert on the subject, happy to give him lots of tips … Not to mention sell him the best detector on the market, or so he claimed: the Equinox 800 with the large coil, perfect for places like beaches.

It had continued to rain off and on since the storm, and that made for perfect conditions as far as detecting was concerned. ‘When everything’s wet,’ the bloke from the shop had told him, ‘it soaks into the ground and helps you spot anything that’s deeper down. Ground’s had a drink, see?’

He’d also advised Jeremy not to be in a rush, to expect lots of trash. ‘Ninety-five per cent of what you’ll find,’ cargo guy had said, simultaneously showing him how to swing the machine – not too fast and not in great arcs, ‘it’ll be junk.’

He hadn’t been wrong. In the months he’d been doing this, Jeremy had found enough bottle-tops to pebbledash a house, old-fashioned keys, the backs of watches, tin cans, safety pins, bits of shiny metal that looked like mirrors …

However, he’d also found enough to encourage him to carry on: toy cars (a couple of which had actually ended up being collectors’ items); an old whistle once (which he hadn’t dared blow, recalling an old ghost story he’d read in his teens); a few lighters; a couple of rings; and, though they weren’t doubloons as such, quite a few pound coins that must have fallen out of wallets, purses or pockets. The point was, he had fun while he was doing it – and at the moment he needed that, needed to take his mind off things. Off his dad lying there in bed looking like C-3PO.

He stopped when the beeping in his earphones intensified. Jeremy stared at the screen in front of him: 12 … 13 … no, 14! A pretty good reading, he thought, pulling the ’phones from his ears to wear them around his neck. Bending and taking out his trowel from his pack, he placed the detector down and began digging in the spot it had indicated. What would it be this time – a gold chain perhaps? Down, down, and further down …

Jeremy stopped when he saw the metal, couldn’t help grinning to himself. The last few bits of sand he dug out with his gloved hands, fingers clawing, eager to see what it was he’d uncovered.

He stopped when he reached it, plucked the item out and held it up in front of him – where it glinted in the early morning sun. His smile faded. ‘Just an old ring-pull,’ he said to himself, the kind you wouldn’t get these days because they were fixed to the lid. Sighing, he bagged it anyway, to stop another hunter from making the same mistake – and to keep those beaches clean, of course. They were a far cry from what they’d been when he was a kid, or indeed when his father had been a boy, and Jeremy wasn’t even sure they deserved the name Golden Sands that had been given them now, their colour dull even when it hadn’t been raining.

But it was as he’d contemplated this that he spotted it. Something in that dull sand, along the beach. Something not that well buried at all, sticking out in fact – just ripe for the taking. He looked around him, the beach deserted – though to be fair you wouldn’t really get many tourists on this stretch of it anyway. They’d stick to the main beach for swimming and so they were closer to the pier and shops. Grabbing his stuff, he clambered to his feet and started over. He couldn’t be sure what it was really, but it was glinting.

It was metal. It was gold … Golden at any rate.

Didn’t even need his detector this time, which was real irony for you. All that sweeping, all that beeping. The closer he got the more he saw of it, some kind of strap … a watchstrap! Looked like it belonged to an expensive one, too. Just a bit of it sticking out, but there it was.

Jeremy got down again, started to uncover the find as he had done with the ring-pull. He hadn’t been digging for long, perhaps only a few seconds, when he pulled back sharply. It was a watchstrap all right, with a watch attached. But there was skin there too.

And a wrist.

Swallowing dryly, he moved forward again. His imagination surely, eyes playing tricks on him. He dug a little more, pulled back again.

There was a hand attached to that wrist. A human hand.

Jeremy hadn’t uncovered much of it, but he could tell now – and though it was at an angle, it looked for all the world like a much dryer version of The Lady in the Lake’s hand reaching up for Excalibur. Except there was no sword to catch. And this was no lady’s hand.

He scrabbled backwards again, felt the bile rising in his mouth. That was a body, no doubt about it – and his mind flashed back to when he and his mum used to bury his dad when they went on the sands (might be burying him for real soon, a little voice whispered and he promptly ignored it). But surely nobody would have done that by accident? Left a relative here, especially in this isolated spot.

Jeremy frowned, then reached into his pocket for his mobile. Began to dial a number.

There you go, that same voice had told him, you wanted excitement. An adventure. He shook his head again, shook those thoughts away too.

‘Yes, hello,’ he said when the ringing at the other end stopped and a voice came on the line. Not asking for an ambulance this time, because it was far too late for that. Instead: ‘Yes, could you give me the police please.’

Part One

Golden Sands acquired its name because the first people to settle there were struck by the colour of the beaches. The sands, a vibrant golden shade, remain some of the most impressive and cleanest in Britain. Located on the east coast, not too far from Dracula country and only a hop, skip and a jump from places like Redmarket and Granfield – which is why it remains a popular holiday destination with people who live in those localities – it is a family-orientated town (population of around 12,000, who live there the whole year round … lucky souls!).

For those history buffs among you, Golden Sands was once known as a smugglers’ cove and notorious pirate haunt – you can still ride in the galleon that departs from the harbour at twelve o’clock, midday, and which will take you all around the bay area. Some also say that Golden Sands got its name because those same smugglers and pirates used to hide their treasure in caves or indeed on the beach itself, which is why it attracts its fair share of divers and treasure hunters, keen to uncover a welcome surprise.

Chapter 1

Why did she put herself through this, time and again?

She had no idea. No, that wasn’t true. She knew exactly why she came here: to learn; to document; to look for hidden clues that might help with future cases. With hunting people like this – those who did so much harm. But that wasn’t the main reason, was it? As Robyn Adams made her way down this corridor, having already gone through the various security checks so far, she thought once more about the why of it. The real reason.

And that reason was to see if she’d been right.

Robyn caught a glimpse of herself in some security glass as the guards escorted her, noting how tired she looked. Her blonde hair, which was streaked through with more and more silver these days, was yanked back into a bun, but that was still doing nothing to stretch and conceal the wrinkles that had appeared over the course of the last couple of years or so. Wrinkles that coincided with taking this job on, not that it was – had ever really been – her real job. More of an extra-curricular activity that the university allowed her to partake in, the kudos they got for having someone like her on their payroll more than compensation enough; all those mentions in the academic papers she had published, those stories in the newspapers. As long as she kept up with her lectures and marking, they were happy enough. And as long as she was helping the police to put away the bad guys, their government funding was also more or less assured.

It had been a total accident, how she’d ended up working for the cops. She’d been at a charity event to raise awareness for cancer research, representing their faculty, and due to her lack of a plus-one had been placed at the table for dinner next to a man who introduced himself only as Gordon, which for most of the evening she’d assumed was his first name rather than his last. He was about ten years older than her, but wore it well, even with the dyed hair – had aged better than she was doing recently, that was for sure – and at first she thought he was trying to chat her up. He’d asked about her work, taking more of an interest than she usually expected people to, especially at an event with free wine.

For a couple of hours or more, he’d quizzed her about various disorders and treatments, ranging from OCD to schizophrenia, and when it came time for them to say goodnight she realised she knew barely anything about the guy, aside from the fact he was a widower and a huge Bruce Springsteen fan.

‘Well, it’s been nice talking to you, Gordon,’ Robyn had said, holding out her hand when their respective taxis arrived.

‘You too, Doctor. I’m sorry I monopolised your time, but it was all genuinely fascinating … Oh, and please call me Peter. Or Pete if you prefer.’

Robyn had assumed that was that, because he didn’t ask for her number or anything and didn’t proffer his own. She didn’t find out until a day or so later that she’d spent the entire evening talking to one Superintendent Peter Gordon (whose nickname in some quarters was ‘The Commissioner’ after that famous character in a certain comics series). He got in touch with Robyn through the uni and asked for her to come in to their local station at Hannerton. It had been weird seeing him out of context – the switch between dinner jacket and bow-tie to full dress uniform jarring – but he’d given her that same warm smile from the other night, then offered her a seat across from him as he settled down behind a huge, oak desk.

‘Am … am I in trouble?’ had been her first question to him, and he’d laughed.

‘Far from it, Robyn. Far from it. Indeed, I think we might be ones in trouble and could really use your help.’

Over tea and biscuits, he’d told her about a case his people were working on that had stumped them all. A series of killings that had been in the news – young girls who’d been found dumped in various locations. Who’d been killed, bitten and partially eaten, then wrapped up in rope. ‘Some kind of bondage thing, was our initial assessment,’ Gordon informed her and Robyn had frowned. ‘What?’

‘I don’t think the tying up is a sex thing, Superintendent.’

He shook his head and for a moment she thought he was disagreeing with her, but then he said, ‘Peter, or Pete. Or plain old Gordon. Look, maybe it’s best if I take you over and introduce you to some of the team working on this. Get you to have a look at what they’ve come up with so far …’ He paused suddenly. ‘If that’s okay with you, of course?’

She’d nodded and that’s exactly what Gordon had done: he introduced Robyn to people like DI Rick Cavendish and his loyal band of DS’s and DC’s, many of whom had worked together for ages. She hadn’t exactly been welcomed with open arms by everyone, some saying that Gordon was too trusting and they didn’t need a person like her – a psychologist – sticking her nose in. But once she was given access to the findings so far, the evidence they’d been sorting through, she’d come up with some theories, and even the naysayers had started to take notice.

Then, after she’d drafted a profile that helped them catch the person they were looking for, Robyn was definitely flavour of the month – especially when she insisted it be classed as a team effort. ‘You guys had already done the legwork on this; it just needed a fresh set of eyes was all.’

Fresh eyes to see that the cannibalism was the key, that the person they were looking for – Adrian Nance – thought he could outdo Iranian serial killer ‘The Spider’, Saeed Hanaei. But Nance not only lured women back to his place like flies into a web, he also tied them up and ate bits of them, ‘becoming’ the arachnid he wanted to emulate. That extended to actually keeping spiders, the more exotic the better, and that was how they found him in the end: tracking anyone who’d bought such animals in the area.

So now, whenever Cavendish and his team needed those eyes of hers, she was called upon. In the time she’d spent with them, she’d helped with cases such as the so-called Postcode Killer, who was chopping up people who lived in a certain location; and Dennis Wilde, who some called The Baby, because he was leaving bodies in the foetal position … Right up to this last case she’d worked on, paying a personal price for his incarceration.

Kevin Sykes. The one who’d taken her prisoner, who’d almost killed her. The man she was on her way to see right now, today. Who was the reason she was hesitating, questioning why she was coming here in the first place and putting herself through all this.

Breathing in deeply, she just placed one foot in front of the other. The material of her trouser suit was swishing with each step, causing her to wince, every sound magnified in this place of echoes. Even her shoes – flats rather than heels (for one thing, the latter could be used as a weapon if any of the inmates got hold of them) – were still making clacking sounds, beating out the rhythm of her journey, matching her heartbeat that was quickening with each metre she covered in this place. The place they called Gateside. Located out in the middle of nowhere, this maximum-security facility for the criminally insane was definitely a misnomer, because it only had one gate – at the front, rather than on the sides – which was so heavily guarded that even if an inmate somehow reached it they would get no further.

Those who called Gordon ‘The Commissioner’ also referred to Gateside as Arkham, though once again they were totally wrong. Far from the gothic monstrosity that asylum was, this was new and clean – all white walls and metal and toughened glass. None of which made her feel any better about being inside its walls. Because as much as she knew the science of how the people kept here ticked, as much as she’d studied things like nature versus nurture, behavioural patterns and brain scans showing whether people had shrunken amygdalae (the seat of emotion, of empathy, conscience and remorse) or not, when you got right down to it, the prisoners shut away in this place were just plain scary.

Robyn usually did her best to hide her fear, putting on a front as always, because showing it only made things worse. You’d get nothing out of subjects if they thought you were terrified; it would just make them want to ‘play’ with you more. Serial killers liked to be in control, liked that feeling. If Robyn was to find out anything during her visits to Gateside, she had to at least appear as if she was the one in the driving seat. Easier said than done, when the man you were facing had once towered above you and been ready to take your life.

All too soon she was there, at the final door. Robyn peered in through the square of glass in an otherwise solid metal barrier, seeing him handcuffed at the table there, attached to chains that ran through metal hooks welded to the table – which itself was bolted to the floor for added security. She would be safe enough, especially with the guards just outside the doors here. Sykes wasn’t deemed as dangerous as some in Gateside, who you could only communicate with through bars or toughened glass, guards on either side ready to taser the person. She was at least allowed to sit in a room, sit down at a table with her … patient. A patient Robyn knew would never, ever be cured.

She swallowed again, sucked in another breath, and nodded at one of the guards who’d been with her since the inner door. He was dressed like something out of Judge Dredd, everything padded for his own protection, baton hanging from a belt at his waist – taser on the other side, looking for all the world like some kind of futuristic handgun. When he nodded back, helmet wobbling slightly, he reached out with gloved hands and undid the lock with a key-card, then held his hand out for Robyn to enter, like he was a butler at some kind of swish stately home.

Sykes barely looked up when she stepped inside the room, which was probably a good thing because the door slamming shut again made her start a little. Instead, he kept his head down, as if he was studying something in front of him on the table – though there was nothing there – bald patch on top clearly visible; premature for someone of his age. He wore the pale-yellow boiler-suit-style uniform of all the prisoners here, the theory being you wouldn’t then confuse them with the guards who were in muted blues and greys. Here, yellow rather than orange was the new black, but then Robyn doubted any of them were concerned about fashion.

Only when she reached the table itself did Sykes acknowledge her presence, looking up slowly and regarding her with those penetrating eyes. The ones she’d gazed into when she thought she was about to die.

‘Hello, Dr Adams,’ he said with a smile that sent shivers down her spine. ‘I wondered when I’d see you again.’

Chapter 2

Sykes’ tone was even and considered; unemotional.

Yet it was as if he knew Robyn couldn’t stay away, that she’d have to return and look again into those eyes, even though most people would have emigrated and spent the rest of their lives trying to forget the whole thing ever happened.

Not her. She was drawn back to this kind of thing again and again, and somehow Sykes knew that. Sensed it.

‘I’m just sorry it took so long, Kevin,’ she told him.

‘Well,’ he said, leaning back as best he could, ‘you were recovering. How are the scars, Doctor?’

She flashed back then to the attack, brutal and unrelenting, before dismissing it from her mind. ‘Pretty much healed,’ she replied, which was true enough. The scars from the cuts had almost healed, the most you could see now were the white lines where they’d been. As for the emotional scars, that was something else entirely. Robyn pulled the chair out, unintentionally scraping the floor and causing Sykes to wince. Then she sat down, taking out her micro-recorder and placing it on the table. ‘Do you mind if I …’

Sykes shrugged, then nodded to the cameras in the corners of the room behind her, which were scrutinising everything, as if to say: why bother?

‘This is for my benefit,’ Robyn explained. ‘My own research.’

He smiled again. ‘I see. If you’re expecting my help to catch Buffalo Bill, though …’

Robyn gave a snort, thinking to herself: Don’t kid yourself, you’re no Anthony Hopkins, mate. ‘Just hoping to talk to you, Kevin. That’s all.’

‘I would have thought you knew everything there is to know about me already, Doctor. How else would you have caught me? Oh, except you didn’t actually catch me, did you. I caught you if anything.’

‘And why did you do that, Kevin? It’s not as if I fitted your usual pattern. I wasn’t even the right sex, was I? Which was why, when it came right down to it, you couldn’t—’

‘I wanted to … to make you pay,’ he cut in. ‘For ruining everything.’

‘For stopping you from ruining any more lives, from taking any more lives.’ It was a statement rather than a question. ‘Devastating other families, like the ones you’ve already destroyed. Children who will grow up now without fathers, because of you.’

Sykes spat on the floor and Robyn couldn’t help herself, she instinctively sat back in her own chair, putting more distance between them both. It was a show of emotion she hadn’t been expecting – usually killers like this were good at mimicking those, but lacked the capacity to feel them. Then again, she had just mentioned his trigger. The father figure.

Kevin Sykes had grown up in an environment where his father was definitely the one in control, who made it clear in no uncertain terms that he wanted Kevin to be a real man when he was older … tough and strong and as in command as that man was, especially when it came to ruling a household. Ruling over Kevin’s mother, who couldn’t do a thing to stop him. But no matter what he did, Kevin was always destined to fall short of the mark – and that constant abuse would eventually turn him into the killer he was destined to become.

‘They’re better off without their fathers,’ Sykes told her then.

‘I think they might disagree with you there, Kevin. Those men you kidnapped, took, on their way home from work … and then killed. They weren’t like your own dad; they were loved. And they loved their children, took care of them.’

Sykes’ lip curled. ‘They’re all the same. They deserved what they got.’

Robyn shook her head. ‘No. No, they didn’t. You were trying to punish your father, I realise that. He died before you could do what you wanted to do to him. But those men, they didn’t deserve that kind of treatment.’

‘What’s deserve got to do with it?’ snapped Sykes.

‘Everything,’ said Robyn sadly. ‘No one deserved what you did. Not even your father.’

‘You don’t know … You think you understand, but …’ Sykes shook his head.

Robyn understood enough. Had worked out from studying the case, a series of missing persons – all male, thirty-five to forty-something, all fathers – that whoever took them wanted to punish someone. Punish a father figure definitely, but also by association punish a wife and mother. Might also see it as freeing the children left behind somehow, like he was doing some good. From there, working with Cavendish and the team, they’d figured out how he was selecting the victims – how he had to have known enough about them to cherry-pick.

‘Who do we give information like that to?’ she’d said, thinking out loud one night in the station, Cavendish nearby and supplying her with cup after cup of coffee.

‘The government, doctors, people in positions of power,’ the DI had replied, leaning on a nearby desk, playing with that ponytail of his and narrowing his eyebrows.

‘All positions of trust, yes. And of course that’s how Shipman was able to do what he did. But … no, I don’t think we’re dealing with someone who’d spend years training to do all that. I think he was quite eager to get started once he became an adult, those fantasies he dreamed of when he was young nagging at him more and more. Needing to move on from the Aura Phase to the Trolling Phase pretty quickly. From imagining it, to planning. These might not even be his first victims, Cav,’ she’d told him, comfortable now using the name other members of his team called him by. ‘He might have done this elsewhere; we just wouldn’t have put it together.’

‘So someone still quite young, you reckon?’ he’d asked her, scratching his goatee beard now; combined with his hair, it made him look a bit like a Musketeer she always thought.

‘Yeah, I think so. And what kind of jobs can young people walk into that give them access to that kind of information?’ Robyn had tapped a pen against her mouth as she thought about it. ‘Maybe even without any background checks … Telemarketing perhaps, or …’ They’d both turned to each other at the same time and said it:

‘Street marketing!’

The kind of people who annoy you by stopping you in the street, asking you questions. ‘We never really ask for their credentials,’ Robyn had continued. ‘It might not even be his real job. Offer some kind of incentive, like a prize draw for a holiday or whatever, get them to fill in a form. He might even get them to post back a questionnaire, have a PO Box set up?’

‘And Bob’s your uncle,’ Cavendish had said with a whistle. ‘Instant victim database. He’d know if people had wives or not, kids …’

‘Most importantly,’ Robyn had said, ‘he’d know their work and home addresses. He’d know just where to grab them between the two.’

‘Christ. That’s it! That’s how we’ll get him.’

And they had – almost. Teams had been organised to question the questionnaire people in the city of Hannerton and the neighbouring towns, asking for credentials. Only one person had bolted, led officers quite a merry chase before they lost him again. But in the process, he dropped his clipboard. Dropped the questionnaires he’d been handing out, complete with the PO Box people should send it back to in order to win a non-existent car. They traced the person who’d set it all up to a bedsit, a small apartment that had been searched thoroughly – with Robyn present. Kevin Sykes had fitted her profile almost exactly: mid-twenties and having lost his father a few years beforehand – his mother rotting away in some state-run home – he wasn’t originally from the area.

‘Now all we need to do is find him,’ Cavendish said, though they were all painfully aware he could be anywhere now. Might be setting something similar up somewhere else, under a different name. There was nothing stopping him.

A week or two went by after that, and Robyn had been walking to her Citroën in the university’s car park when she felt sure someone was following her. Racing to her vehicle she’d beeped it open and thrown herself inside, shrugging off her coat and pulling out her mobile, ready to report anything amiss. Only Sykes had been waiting inside the car for her, in the back seat, and the next thing she knew there was a handkerchief over her mouth and nose, the strong smell of chloroform assaulting her nostrils.

Then everything went black …

When she woke up again, everything was still black. Her eyelids fluttered, were definitely open, yet she couldn’t see anything. Was she blind? Robyn also couldn’t move very much, but realised that her hands were tied behind her back – felt like a plastic zip-tie – as were her legs, pulled together at the ankles. Her cheek kept brushing a cold, smooth surface, so she knew she was on the floor somewhere. Just didn’t have a clue where. What’s more, the police wouldn’t have a clue either.

She had no idea how long she’d waited in there, but a sudden banging made her start. And when the place was flooded with light suddenly, Robyn knew whoever had taken her was back. Grateful – when she blinked once, twice, making out shapes – that she wasn’t actually blind, her gratitude soon evaporated when she realised what was surrounding her. Or at least what little she could see from that floor.

The walls threw back her reflection … reflections, because they were covered in mirrors of all shapes and sizes; some with frames, others without. When she could tear her eyes away from them, Robyn saw that the room – which was no more than about fifteen feet by fifteen – seemingly had no way out. No, that wasn’t correct: the door, which itself was covered in mirrors, was shut, locked, and there was someone else in the space with her now. Might have been there for some time before he put the lights on, who knows.

He was average build, hairline receding at the front, and dressed in a shirt and trousers. She found out later that Sykes’ father had equated jeans with layabouts, always ‘encouraging’ his son to dress properly. Clean-shaven, the guy didn’t even have sideburns, but those eyes … dear God, his eyes! He was also wearing latex gloves, and when she looked down Robyn understood why the floor was so smooth.

It was covered in plastic, pinned down tightly. The kind that would be easy to roll up and get rid of, getting rid of evidence at the same time.

She was in Sykes’ murder room, the place he’d taken those men to kill them. The one bit of the puzzle they hadn’t figured out yet. But where … where …

Suddenly, he was moving towards her – and he had a knife in his hand. ‘Kevin. Kevin, wait!’ Robyn shouted. She didn’t bother calling out for help, figuring that if this was where he dispatched his prey it was bound to either be soundproofed or there was nobody around for miles. Couldn’t risk being discovered, being interrupted in his work, whatever that was (they’d had no bodies to examine on that score, none of the missing men having been recovered – alive or dead – though it was probably safe to say they were no longer breathing).

Towering over her, he hadn’t spoken a word, just lunged with the knife … To cut the plastic ties holding her ankles together. Then, moments later, she was on her feet – almost fell over sideways because legs that were practically dead were attempting to hold her weight. Robyn hoped the rest of her wasn’t about to follow suit. ‘Kevin, look, we can talk about this. I’m Dr Adams and—’

‘I know who you are!’ he’d said with a snarl. Of course he did, he’d been waiting for her in the car. Knew where she worked, knew that she’d been assisting the police to find him, and Lord knows what else. ‘You’re the reason I have to start again, move away!’

‘I can help you, Kevin. Talk to me, tell me what you—’

‘No talk,’ he whispered in her ear, pulling them both around to face one of the mirrors. ‘It’s time to end this.’

But then he’d paused, as if he was used to doing something at this point with his victims. Used to saying or getting them to say something into the reflective surface. But he just hung his head, shook it. ‘No … no.’

Robyn saw her window of opportunity, and seized it. ‘What? What is it, Kevin? Something to do with your dad? Is that it? To do with mirrors and your dad?’

‘No … No!’

‘What? What is it you do with those men, to those men? To make you feel better, to make you feel like you’re in charge? In contro—’

But she pushed it too far and Sykes grabbed her, shoving her back into one of the mirrors, which shattered behind her, showering her with glass. Robyn even felt one or two of the shards embedding themselves into her shoulder blades through the blouse she was wearing, having been relieved at some point of her jacket. He swung Robyn again and again into more of the mirrors that were clearly somehow significant to him and his practices, until she fell to her knees. Then he lowered the knife and held it to her throat.

This is it, thought Robyn. After all these cases, after all the good I’ve done, this is the end for me.

Except Sykes hadn’t been able to do it. Hadn’t been able to kill her, as frustrating as that seemed to be for him. Then the sirens had come, the breaking open of the door and the men entering with their guns up and aiming at Sykes. Forcing him down, as Cavendish rushed over to Robyn – now on the floor again. Shouting for the paramedics, he’d freed her hands.

That was the last thing she remembered before waking up in the hospital, surrounded by Cav, Gordon and a few of her other colleagues, all with looks of huge relief on their faces. ‘How … how did you …?’ Robyn was aware she was slurring her words, on some kind of strong painkillers, but they understood what she was trying to ask.

‘He’d registered a lock-up in his mother’s name,’ the DI told her. ‘We didn’t find out about it until after you’d been taken. Just sorry it took so long.’

Sorry it took so long … Her words to Sykes when she arrived, and it brought her back to the here and now, sitting across the table from the man they now knew had carved up all of those missing men and carried bits of them away in cases to dispose of, to bury. He’d told them happily after he was in custody where they could find them, was even proud of what he’d done. Oddly, he hadn’t used the knife to take their lives, but rather had strangled his victims. More intimate, Robyn had informed Cavendish, and slower, giving him time to see the life leave them as they fought for breath.

‘You weren’t able to kill me, though, were you Kevin,’ she said to him now, as their allotted hour drew to a close. ‘Weren’t able to do to me what you did to those men.’

‘I did enough.’

Robyn shook her head. What he’d done, he’d done out of annoyance not out of revenge. ‘You see, I think a part of you understood that your mother didn’t have a choice. That she was frightened of your dad. It’s why you’ve only killed men, only killed fathers.’ The press had dubbed Sykes ‘The Oedipus Killer’ after the fact, but as with all things they totally misunderstood what he was about. Oedipus wanted to kill his father and sleep with his mother, while Sykes had simply wanted his father dead; had no interest in anything else. ‘But why the mirrors, Kevin?’

‘You tell me,’ he said to her.

‘I have my theories, but I’d rather hear it from you. What did your father used to do with them? Why were they significant?’

Sykes shrugged once more, as if he didn’t see any reason to withhold it now. ‘He … he would grab me by the neck, point to himself and say, “That’s what a man looks like, boy!” Then he’d force me to look at myself and ask me what I saw.’

‘And what did you say back?’

Sykes sneered at her.

She shook her head. ‘All those families,’ Robyn said again.

‘They’re better off,’ Sykes repeated. ‘Sometimes it’s better to be by yourself.’ He studied her. ‘You disagree?’

Robyn said nothing. Then, without warning, ‘I feel very sorry for you, Kevin. Even after everything you’ve done.’ And she meant it.

‘I feel more sorry for you,’ he threw back.

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m alone by choice. You’re not. Who do you have, Doctor? Not a boyfriend, or husband. I know that from following you.’ That made Robyn shiver again, the thought that Sykes had been tailing her before he jumped her. ‘You try and make up for it with your little police friends, but somehow that just doesn’t cut it, does it? At least I had a family, as messed up as it was. Who do you have? Nobody, I think.’

Perhaps he was as perceptive as Lecter after all, she thought. Then she rose, switching off her recorder as she snatched it up. Robyn walked to the door as calmly as she could, rapping on it to be let out. But his words trailed her as she left Sykes behind in that room.

‘Who do you have? Nobody you can turn to … nobody who’ll ever really need you.’

***

Robyn made it to her car, sliding in behind the wheel again – checking the back seat first, as was her habit now – before the tears came.

She’d thought she was ready for this, had always been a big believer in facing your demons. They were, after all, stock in trade where her line of work was concerned. Both Cav and Gordon had warned her it was too soon, said that she really should talk to someone herself, but she’d wanted to prove them wrong she supposed. And it had at least proved some of those theories correct she’d had about Sykes, about his father, about the mirrors. But oh, the price she’d paid, back then and now.

He’d got inside her head. How had he done that? Was it purely because they’d spent that time together in the lock-up – how vulnerable that had made her, how scared Robyn had been that she was going to die? Or something more, the way he’d studied her almost like she studied people like him, like she’d come up with notions about his life … And hadn’t he been proved just as correct back there?

Who do you have? Nobody.

Who did she have?

Your little police friends.

They’d accepted her, they needed her – didn’t they? Robyn told herself they did, but Cav and his team had been solving crimes long before she came along. And some were still wary of having a psychologist around, weren’t they? In case she saw something she shouldn’t, was analysing them or whatever? Suspicious of her.

How many of them ever invite you to their houses, Robyn? she said to herself. They’re your friends, like family – that’s how you think of them anyway – and yet …

Then there was Cav. Happily married Cav.

Sometimes it’s better to be by yourself …

Not a boyfriend, or husband.

Robyn began slamming the steering wheel, pounding it with the heels of her hands – so hard it rocked the car from side to side – and she screamed. Then she threw herself back into the seat, suddenly looking about her, worried that she might have drawn attention to herself, even though she’d deliberately parked all the way at the back of the facility’s car park.

Nobody had seen her outburst, her tantrum as her late mother would have called it when she was little. Robyn’s back ached, the soreness returning that she knew was just psychosomatic. Yet she found herself reaching into her pocket again for the painkillers, the ones they’d returned to her when she left the facility, along with anything else she wasn’t allowed to take in with her.

She popped a couple into her mouth and held them there for a moment, relishing the sourness of their taste … before reaching into the glove compartment for the bottle of water there. She’d been signed off from the pills for a couple of weeks, but found that she couldn’t really do without them. Had sourced some herself when her doctor wouldn’t give her any more, said that she was worried Robyn might become addicted. If you knew the right people, however, and especially if you were in the profession, you could get hold of just about anything. She’d be the judge of when she needed to come off them! When the pain stopped, Robyn promised herself. When things didn’t hurt quite so much. When she could sleep without relying on other pills, or alcohol.

Like mother, like—

The tinkling sound of her phone – which had also been recently returned to her – made her start again. It would be Gordon or Cav, seeing if she was okay after the visit.

Who do you have, Doctor?

Would be able to tell from her tone that she was far from all right, and would probably say, ‘We told you so’. Robyn fished out the phone and for a moment thought about just switching it off, letting it go to voicemail, but that wouldn’t really address the problem. Then she spotted the number, and frowned. It wasn’t one she immediately recognised, certainly not one the phone recognised or a name would have flashed up on the screen.

Probably just a nuisance caller, someone trying to sell her insurance or going on about PPI. But something made her swipe the green symbol across to take the call.

‘H-Hello?’ said Robyn, trying to keep her voice steady and failing miserably.

‘I … Hi, Robyn? Is that you?’

‘Er … yes.’ She vaguely recognised that voice, knew it from somewhere, but it sounded weird. Strange and strained, much worse than she herself was coming across.

‘Robyn. Oh, thank God! I’ve been trying to get hold of you.’

‘What … Who is …’

‘It’s Vicky.’ There was a pause and Robyn thought she heard a faint intake of breath, maybe even the sound of this woman crying herself. ‘I … I need you, Robyn. I know you’re really busy and everything but … I didn’t know who else to turn to. I’m … I’m sorry, but … Well, I really need you, Robs.’

Who do you have? Nobody you can turn to … nobody who’ll ever really need you.

‘What’s happened?’ Robyn asked.

‘I … I’m …’ Another pause. ‘Look, would you be able to come? I wouldn’t ask only … Robyn, I could really use your help.’

Chapter 3

With every mile that went by, it was as if she was travelling back in time.

As the concrete of tower blocks and huge industrial chimneys had given way to countryside, different shades of greens and yellows passing by, then finally the sea, the cliffs … The town spread out like a child’s toy in front of her.

Golden Sands: the place where she’d spent every summer, growing up.

And suddenly she was on the high street, driving through it and taking in everything on either side, still slightly in a state of wonderment. The old place hadn’t really altered massively in the last fifteen years or so: certain shops had changed hands by the looks of it, but still sold the same things, like postcards, a rack of which were outside the newsagents.

Robyn spotted a few knick-knack shops, a second-hand book place and a traditional seaside chippy, or so it claimed. But the real change was the pound shops that had cropped up, reflecting the current state of the economy. The offices of The Torch newspaper were still in the same location, she noted. And there was The Majestic hotel up ahead, which they hadn’t really frequented as teens on a night out because it was too posh and expensive. That was looking a little the worse for wear, but still practically the same, still standing. And not far away their old local, The Barnacle – though it looked like it had become part of a chain.

She checked the sat-nav to find that it had stopped working a while ago, especially now that she needed it and couldn’t go from memory. She’d been warned in advance that parts of this place had that effect on technology, sent things a bit screwy. Back when she’d been here last, mobiles and the internet were still relatively new, definitely hadn’t caught on here like they had now. Switching to a paper map instead, she eventually found the street she was searching for, complete with one or two news vans and a handful of disinterested reporters still scattered around.

Spotting the right number house, a new build, Robyn parked up, summoning the courage to get out and head up the path. To knock on the door.

The face that greeted her when it opened took her aback, made Robyn wonder if she’d got the right house after all. Framed by a mop of frizzy ginger hair – straight out of a bottle – that face sported more lines than Robyn needed to worry about, not to mention a pair of colourful glasses Dame Edna would have been proud of. She also hadn’t expected the person to look so stern.

Robyn wasn’t quite sure what to say at first, but managed: ‘I … er … This is number 17?’

The woman nodded, expression still pretty severe. ‘And you are?’

‘I’m … My name’s Robyn Adams, I’m Vic … Mrs Carter’s—’

‘Cousin!’ she heard a voice say from behind the woman. ‘She’s my cousin.’

The woman with the frizz and glasses grudgingly stepped to one side, allowing Robyn to see past her. To see the woman standing there wearing a green trackie top and grey jogging bottoms. And though the face had definitely aged, it hadn’t done so dramatically and was still recognisably Vicky’s. The only real shock was that she’d had her hair cut short, getting rid of those raven locks that Robyn had been so envious of back when they were young.

‘It’s okay, Tracy, this is the lady I told you about,’ confirmed Vicky. ‘My cousin Robyn.’

The woman nodded, but still didn’t move. Robyn cocked her head, waiting at least for an introduction, which the woman finally gave her. ‘Oh, I’m Tracy Dobbs. I’m the FLO assigned to this case. That means—’

‘Family Liaison Officer, yes I know.’ She wished she didn’t, and hadn’t meant to say it in quite such an offhand way, but she was still getting some weird vibes from this woman and for some reason they were making her defensive. Obliterating that sense of belonging she’d been starting to feel again. ‘Sorry,’ said Robyn and stuck out her hand.

The woman’s face relaxed slightly, but she didn’t take the proffered hand. Robyn might have said the woman was in the wrong line of work, but Vicky explained she’d had to answer the door and fend off quite a number of reporters and ‘well-wishers’ recently – checking first whether Vicky knew them or not. It was bound to make you a bit tetchy. Or was it more than that? How much had this woman been told about her, and did that have something to do with the attitude? Nevertheless, Tracy offered to make some tea.

‘That would be … er, thanks,’ Robyn told her, not even sure she was included. ‘Milk, no sugar,’ she ventured anyway.

When Tracy wandered off to the kitchen and Robyn closed the front door behind her, Vicky finally approached. There was an awkward moment or two, when neither of them was quite sure what to do, then Vicky moved forward, wrapped her arms around Robyn and hugged her harder than she’d ever been hugged before. She winced a little at the pain from her back, but fought that down because Vicky needed this – probably more than she’d needed anything in her life. More even than any help Robyn could offer her. And so she bit back the discomfort and embraced her cousin too, rubbing her back and telling her it would be all right, even though she didn’t believe that for a second. Things, for Vicky, would never be all right again.

When her cousin finally pulled away, there were tears in her eyes. Those same tears she’d heard her crying over the phone as she attempted to explain the situation. ‘Robyn … Robs, I … Thanks so much for coming. I-I’m so glad you’re here.’

‘Me too,’ said Robyn, then added: ‘I mean, it’s … I’m not glad to be here because of …’ For someone who dealt with depression and grief as much as she did, and usually considered their words with care, she wasn’t half making a mess of this. But then, how often was it someone she knew on the receiving end of such dramatic events?

‘I know what you mean,’ Vicky told her, letting her off the hook. ‘Hope I didn’t cause too much of a problem, with your work or …’

‘I’m owed some time off,’ Robyn reassured her. ‘From both my jobs actually.’ Gordon had been more than happy for her to take some time away visiting family, and she’d already had so much time off from uni because of what had happened that they told her it was better if the students finish the year with the substitute lecturer.

Vicky nodded. ‘I’m just so pleased to see you, Robs, you have no idea.’

‘Same goes,’ she replied. ‘How … how’re you—’

‘It’s like a nightmare,’ Vicky broke in before she could even finish the sentence. ‘Honestly, I keep waiting to wake up from it. You know what I mean?’

Robyn nodded. Sadly, she knew all too well – and a picture of being hauled around that lock-up flashed into her mind. She’d woken from the darkness, only to find more waiting for her … even when the lights had been turned on. And there hadn’t been one moment in that place of mirrors Robyn hadn’t prayed it was all some kind of dream, that she’d wake up properly in her own bed in her own flat. It didn’t happen, though, because she’d been awake already. Unfortunately for Vicky so was she.

‘I can’t even begin to get my head around—’

It was then that a noise – a bumping and thumping noise – cut through the conversation. Robyn looked up and over to see a small figure scrambling down the stairs, holding on to the rail so far and then just giving up and sliding the last few steps on her bottom. Then that same little missile came hurtling towards her, pigtails flapping from side to side, hugging her just like her mother had, except this time it was around the legs and knees.

‘Aunty Robyn!’ shouted the girl. Robyn looked down and when the little girl cocked her head back to meet her gaze, she was shocked not only by how much she resembled Vicky at that age, but also how much she’d grown in the time since she’d last seen her. She’d been what, three then? And, thinking that, Robyn was suddenly incredibly impressed that the girl – who was wearing a T-shirt and a miniature set of dungarees – even remembered her at all.

‘Wow!’ Robyn said, reaching down to pat her on the back, not having the faintest idea how to respond.

‘Mia! Put your Aunty Robyn down now, let her get into the house properly.’

‘It’s okay,’ Robyn said with a faint smile, and actually it was. She found she was getting used to having those arms around her knees and thighs. ‘Really. I can’t get over how you’ve …’ Robyn broke eye contact to glance over at Vicky again. ‘She’s how old? Six now?’

‘Nearly seven!’ Mia announced and when Robyn looked back again she saw her pouting. Realised she should have been talking to Mia anyway, addressing the question about her age to the child herself. Rookie mistake.

‘You’re a big girl now,’ she stated and the pout quickly transformed into a smile.

‘Come on, young lady,’ said Vicky, holding out her hand and having to practically prise Mia away from Robyn, ‘let’s all go into the living room. Tracy’s making some tea.’ Mia pulled a face at that. ‘I’m sure if you asked her nicely, she could fix you a juice instead.’

With that, Mia went racing off towards the kitchen to put in her drinks request.

Vicky wrenched her neck to the side, and Robyn followed as she made her way through into the lounge. ‘I can’t believe she remembers me,’ said Robyn as they went, putting into words what she’d been thinking. ‘It was what, four years ago …’

‘Your mum’s funeral,’ Vicky said sombrely. ‘I brought her to the city for the day.’

‘That’s right,’ Robyn replied, feeling embarrassed that she’d forgotten the exact nature of their last meeting – but then there’d been a lot to organise. Distant relatives flying in to pay their respects, friends from the home and their carers. She vaguely remembered saying hello to Vicky and Mia, but not really spending a vast amount of time with them. Certainly not enough to catch up. Then the evening had become a haze of alcohol and condolences.

Vicky and Mia, but no Simon. The reason Robyn was here today.

She was about to ask again about exactly what had happened, when suddenly the little girl was back with them again, having put in her order for juice. Tracy wasn’t long after that with the tea, carrying it in on a tray – if she was a FLO worth her salt she was probably used to making it every hour or so anyway. They all sat down, Mia flocking to Robyn again who was taking off her jacket; she cuddled up to her aunty on the sofa. Nobody really spoke except the little girl for a while or so, telling the newcomer about this and that, her friends and getting into trouble for talking to her bestie Jay in class the last time she’d been in school.

‘I haven’t been there for a while, though,’ Mia concluded with. ‘Maybe it’s because I was talking?’

Robyn glanced over at Vicky sitting in a chair, who answered. ‘It’s … it’s not because you were talking, sweetheart. You’re not in trouble. You just finished school a bit early this year, is all.’

‘But how come I’m not allowed to play outside?’

‘We talked about this, Mia. It’s just for a little bit longer, till the rest of your friends break up. You can play with Tracy upstairs if you like? You’d like that.’

‘Can I play with Aunty Robyn?’ asked the child hopefully, which drew a bit of a strange look from Tracy.

‘Aunty Robyn … I need to have a chat with her myself first, if that’s all right?’

The girl pouted again. ‘But I haven’t seen her in sooooo long. Not since I was really, really little.’

Robyn’s turn to save her cousin now, let her off the hook. ‘There’ll be plenty of time for us to play, Mia,’ she promised. ‘I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.’ Robyn couldn’t help noticing the expression of relief on Vicky’s face at that. Tracy appeared less impressed.

Mia seemed to accept this, hopping down off the couch, holding out her hand and saying to Tracy, ‘Come on then.’ Before she left the room completely, however, she turned and asked Robyn: ‘Why haven’t you ever been here before? Why did it take you so long to come?’ Thankfully, she didn’t draw out the ‘so’ this time, but it still left Robyn lost for words.

‘Your aunty’s a very busy lady, Mia,’ Vicky chipped in. ‘A very important lady.’ And was there a hint of resentment there, or was it just Robyn’s imagination? Then the moment was gone and Vicky was attempting a smile.

Mia simply shrugged and went off up the stairs with Tracy to play with whatever toys she had up there. Finally able to, Robyn reached forward to the coffee table, took hold of her cup and had a sip of tea, her mouth suddenly incredibly dry. Seconds later, Vicky was up and walking across, taking Mia’s place next to her on the sofa.

‘She doesn’t know yet?’ asked Robyn.

Vicky shook her head, eyes tearing up again. ‘I wasn’t sure what to say to her.’

‘No,’ agreed Robyn. ‘She’s bright though. She remembered me.’

‘Sharp as a tack, that one,’ Vicky told her, with no small amount of pride. ‘Like you were back then, Robs. Must be from your branch of the family.’

‘Like her mother, too,’ Robyn said to her. Vicky was definitely no idiot; might not have been academically minded (or perhaps just never had the chance?) but she was far from stupid. Robyn wouldn’t have got on with her so well if she had been. ‘Who does she think Tracy is?’

‘Just a new friend of Mummy’s, and a sort of nanny I guess.’ Vicky shook her head. ‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s all such a mess.’

Robyn wondered what the little girl thought about the crowds that had probably been outside until today, what she thought about Tracy answering the door and telling people to get lost, like she’d almost done with her.

Wondered where she thought her father was.

Now she couldn’t help it; Robyn was scanning the room, taking in the photos hanging on the walls and those standing on the small wooden mantelpiece. Snapshots of a life she’d had nothing whatsoever to do with. Simon – tall, broad, short dark hair, stubbled chin and a warm, charming smile – with his arm around Vicky in most. Then ones with Mia over the years. A couple with the proud grandparents, Robyn’s Aunty Sue – her mother’s sister – and Uncle Trev, though Mia had only been a baby when they were still alive. Finally a wedding photo – Simon and Vicky being sprayed with confetti …

Robyn had missed that bit of the day, only managing to get to the evening reception – at a cheaper venue outside town, rather than The Majestic – and then only for a couple of hours before heading off to the motel she was staying in. Her thoughts, her memories, were interrupted by Vicky putting her head on Robyn’s shoulder like she’d done so many times when they were younger if she was upset about something. Her summer ‘sister’, a little younger than herself, who she’d spent so much time with when Robyn’s mother used to offload her here for the holidays. Robyn responded by doing now what she’d done on all those occasions in the past – she put her arm around Vicky, comforted her.

‘She hasn’t asked where Simon is?’ said Robyn, bringing it back to the conversation about Mia.

‘He … he very often stays out for a few days at a time,’ Vicky told her, half mumbling into her shoulder. ‘It’s why I wasn’t particularly worried when he didn’t …’ Really? thought Robyn, I would have been. Most folk would have been, wouldn’t they? But if that was their routine … And Robyn knew absolutely nothing about their private life; wasn’t sure she wanted to. ‘Wasn’t worried. Not until … Simon works … worked a few different jobs, you see. Had to since I lost my job at the newsagent’s, and that was only part-time anyway. It’s not easy finding employment around here, Robs. A lot of it’s seasonal. If … if he was working at the local Spa shop, he might stay over – particularly if they were busy, like they are at the moment.’

‘Spa?’ asked Robyn. Like the pound shops, this was obviously a new-ish thing in Golden Sands. They definitely hadn’t had one when she’d been visiting this place.

‘Er … yeah, started up a good few years ago,’ Vicky said, voice wavering. Might just have been her getting upset again, or … ‘It’s at the old castle,’ she then said suddenly. The one neither of them really had any interest in when they were young. Who needed history?

‘Okay … Listen, Vicky, I know you told me a little on the phone and this must be so hard for you, but … well, could you tell me a bit more about what happened?’

Her cousin shifted about uncomfortably, pulling herself up off Robyn and drying her eyes with the backs of her sleeves. Robyn opened her handbag and pulled out a pack of tissues, passing one to her. ‘Thanks. I’m not sure what else to tell you, Robs. They … Someone found him. Simon. Not long after that big storm we had.’ Vicky said this as if Robyn had been around. ‘He’d been … He was on the beach. Someone came to tell me, from the police, that he’d been found. I think … T-There was some talk that he might have drowned or something? That’s another thing, he helps out on the boats occasionally. Fishing, you know.’

‘Though surely it would have been reported if he’d fallen overboard?’ Robyn offered.

Vicky shrugged, then shook her head as if she couldn’t decide. ‘Not necessarily.’ And she got what her cousin meant then, that not all of his work was legit. ‘But, anyway … that’s not …’ Vicky began to cry again and Robyn reached for her cousin’s tea, handing it to her.

‘Take it slowly,’ she told her. ‘There’s no rush.’

Vicky nodded. ‘You should have seen him, Robs. There on that metal. In the morgue. I-I had to—’

Robyn was aware of someone lurking in the doorway then. Tracy – she hadn’t even noticed she’d come back down again. Had she been listening? Seeing she’d been spotted, Tracy entered and picked something up off the sideboard; Robyn didn’t even see what it was. ‘Sorry, I just forgot …’ Didn’t really help in identifying the object, either – and then Tracy was gone again.

‘Is she …’ Robyn said, frowning.

‘Tracy? Oh, she’s okay,’ replied Vicky, who apparently saw nothing odd in the woman’s behaviour. ‘Been a big help, actually.’

Robyn was still frowning, but told her cousin to continue. ‘You were saying you had to …’

‘Right, yeah. It was horrible. I had to identify Simon, you see. Next of kin.’ Sadly, that wasn’t an uncommon thing for Robyn, seeing dead bodies – in the morgue or at crime scenes – but she said nothing. ‘He didn’t have anyone else since his folks passed, same as me.’ She caught Robyn’s eye and apologised. ‘Not that … I mean you’re—’

She held up a hand. Vicky had every right – she hadn’t been around for a long time. They hadn’t been close for a good while. ‘It’s okay, really.’

‘That’s why I called. You’re still family, Robs. I still think of you as …’ She shook her head again and sipped more tea, then put down the cup. ‘There were these marks, you see. Around his throat. They said it was consistent with … with strangulation.’

‘He’d been choked?’ asked Robyn, and immediately her mind flashed back to Sykes. What he’d done to those fathers, how he’d ruined so many lives. She was beginning to get a very uneasy feeling.

No. A coincidence. Just a coincidence.

Another nod from Vicky. ‘They asked me if I could think of anyone who might want to do him harm, but for the life of me I … You know what I’m like, I’m quite a private person anyway, don’t really like talking about that kind of stuff with anyone who’s not … And Simon, he was so lovely, he didn’t have any enemies; he’d make friends with anyone, you know? Would help anyone out. But I can’t really find out anything more about … I get the feeling I’m being fobbed off, Robs. I mean Tracy’s really nice and everything, but she doesn’t seem to know a great deal.’ Or won’t tell you, thought Robyn. ‘And I can’t …’

Robyn sat back on the couch. ‘That’s why you got in touch with me,’ she stated, without trying to make it sound like an accusation.

‘Not … not the only reason, Robs. I needed … need you. To be honest, there have been times over the last few years that …’ The tears were coming once more, and she dabbed at her eyes with the tissue. ‘I picked up the phone so many times. I mean I had your numbers … Just didn’t think you’d come.’

‘I …’ Robyn began, then opened her arms wide and beckoned Vicky to hug her once more, barely feeling the pain from those wounds this time. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘Why … why didn’t you ever visit?’ Vicky asked, twisting on the sofa and speaking into her neck this time. Echoing her daughter’s question.

‘I …’ There was a noise from the stairs, Mia barrelling down them this time, making up for Tracy’s stealth. Vicky pulled away from Robyn, straightening herself, drying her eyes – though it was plainly obvious she’d been crying. Trying to protect her kid, though how much longer she could do that for was anyone’s guess; if Robyn had learned one thing from those psychology lectures and seminars at uni, it was that kids pick up on things. All kinds of things.

Case in point: ‘What’s … what’s the matter, Mum?’ asked Mia, as soon as she was close enough to see her obvious distress. Tracy was making her way back down the stairs again, saying she was sorry, that Mia got away from her.

‘Nothing. Nothing sweetheart.’ She mirrored Robyn then, opening her arms wide so that the little girl could run into them for a hug. Which Mia did, but kept glancing sideways at Robyn – who reached out and rubbed the kid’s arm.

And there they sat, the three of them huddled up together on the sofa.

Sat there for what felt like an eternity.

Chapter 4

Robyn stood back and looked at all the papers, the pictures that were covering the bed.

This was how she always did it, stepping back and looking at the big picture, though ideally on an evidence wall or board. Maybe walking to clear her head and making use of the ‘dead time’, if you’d pardon the expression: when you switched your mind off and your subconscious was doing the work for you. She knew of people who could ask themselves questions just before going to sleep, only to wake up the next morning with solutions. It wasn’t quite as easy as that for her, but she did dream about the cases she’d worked on. Dreamt – when she could sleep that was – of her time in the lock-up in the dark, then surrounded by reflective glass throwing back images of her own face.

She gazed at the photos of Simon’s wounds, copies taken out of Manila files and laid on the bed. Robyn was glad this room, the spare room of the house, had a lock on it from the inside because there was no danger of Mia barging in and seeing all this. Vicky was putting her to bed anyway.

The files, the photos and paperwork done so far hadn’t been easy to get hold of either. But she’d promised Vicky she would look into things, so that’s what she intended to do. Robyn had left the house that afternoon, after Tracy had fixed people sandwiches and she’d asked the FLO for directions to the police station. There had been another one of those flickers then, those looks of wariness, and she thought the woman might not tell her or might ask why she wanted to know, but in the end she just told Robyn how to get there. As with the castle, the station was one of those places she’d never really had cause to frequent – though she could think of at least one occasion when she probably should have.

Like everything else, it was within walking distance – but Robyn took the car anyway, as she figured it would be quicker. Though not before Vicky had shown her where to put her case – the spare room Robyn was presently standing in and remembering her day …

Robyn had found the place she was looking for without much difficulty this time, a squat but long two-storey brick building with a grey entrance lumped on the side. A faded yellow handrail guided the way to the door, covered by one solitary CCTV camera, and when she entered Robyn found it pretty quiet inside the waiting room. Only two people sat in there, one guy with his head in his heads for some reason. The desk sergeant on duty, leaning on the wooden desk in question, was talking to a thin man with a backpack. There was no glass – safety or otherwise – separating them and she thought to herself what a far cry from Gateside all this was.

Not safe, not secure.

Posters covered the walls in that room, some dating back to the years of ‘Watch Out! There’s a Thief About!’ – the helpful illustration of a silhouetted man stealing a letter getting the message across for the hard of understanding. She pretended to read some of them while the sergeant and thin man conducted their business, but couldn’t help overhearing the tail end of the conversation.

‘Well, could you just let them know that Jeremy Platt was in again. And if there’s anything else I can do to help …’

The sergeant, whose comb-over wasn’t fooling anyone and who looked about one pork pie away from going the way of late Uncle Trevor – a heart attack in his fifties – nodded. ‘Yes, I’ll tell them, Jeremy.’ The use of the man’s first name and the conversational manner implied that they knew each other. ‘Just like I told them yesterday and the day before. They have your statement.’

‘Yes. Yes, I know. I just thought maybe we might have missed something about that morning. I was the person who found him, you know.’

The desk sergeant sighed. ‘I know you were. We all do. But I’m sure Inspector O’Brien and DS Watts didn’t miss anything. They know what they’re doing.’ He emphasised ‘they’ to drive home the fact that this man was not actually part of whatever inquiry was happening, regardless of what he thought. ‘Look, shouldn’t you be somewhere else. Your dad?’

The man hung his head, and sighed himself. ‘Yes, right. Okay. But if you need me, Bob, you know how to get hold of me. I’ll be at the hospital, Chester Ward. But I’ll have my mobile on me. The number’s—’

‘Yes, yes. We have your numbers, Jeremy – mobile, and landline. Thank you!’ For a second or two, Robyn thought the sergeant was going to come round and start chasing the man away with a broom. She watched as he slunk off without any further provocation however, wondering if what she’d heard related to Simon’s case at all. If it didn’t, then given his talk of finding someone, Golden Sands was rapidly become a crime capital. Then again, how did she know the man was talking about a person? ‘Him’ might have been a pet dog for all Robyn knew, though somehow she doubted it.

Facing front, now the way was clear, she’d stepped up to the desk, ignoring the way the policeman there was looking her up and down. Robyn couldn’t tell if he was being lecherous or just didn’t like strangers in his nick. Possibly both, she decided. Another ‘warm’ welcome. ‘Yes, miss,’ he said at last. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘I’d like to speak with the people in charge of the Carter case, please.’

The comb-over man’s left eyebrow – which, as if to mock the top of his head, was thick and bushy – had shot up. ‘I see. And who might you be?’

‘I might be the cousin of the victim’s spouse,’ she informed him, her back up.

His right eyebrow rose now to match the other one. ‘Right. I see … Very well, I’ll go and see if they’re around.’

He disappeared momentarily, leaving her to stare at the posters once again. When he returned, the sergeant told her that there was nobody around who could see her right at that moment and perhaps she could come back another time.

It was Robyn’s turn to sigh. ‘Look, Bob,’ she said, watching as the thick eyebrows that had just about settled down again both rose in response. ‘Why don’t you tell …’ She went for broke. ‘Either Inspector O’Brien and/or DS Watts that Dr Robyn Adams would like to see them.’

‘Now look here—’ said the man, finger up and wagging in her direction.

She’d had enough of his ‘run along, dear’ bullshit and needed to front it out. ‘No. You look. I’m well within my rights to ask to see them; I’m more than versed in police procedure. So why don’t you go back there and talk to them again … please.’ She added the last word to be nice, but she was fast running out of patience. Throwing her weight around didn’t come naturally to Robyn, especially at the moment, but the situation demanded it.

The sergeant opened his mouth and looked like he was going to say something else, but then straightened out the rest of his fingers and flapped his hand. It just wasn’t worth the hassle of causing a scene; there were people above his pay grade who should be handling this. Vanishing again behind the scenes, Sergeant Bob returned a few minutes later with a woman in her early to mid-forties wearing a trouser suit not dissimilar to Robyn’s, but with a navy blouse instead of a cream one. Her nut-brown hair had been layered to give it volume, and fell almost across one eye in a way that would have driven Robyn crackers if it had belonged to her. The woman’s face was pretty, features delicate, but she was giving Tracy’s stern look a run for its money. If Robyn was feeling pissed off, then this woman’s face embodied it.

‘Thanks Bob,’ she told the uniformed man, who took up his place again leaning on the desk. Then she motioned for Robyn to step to the far side, away from the people in the waiting area. ‘Dr Adams?’ she asked, making sure she used the full title that had been passed along with the sergeant.

‘Please, call me Robyn,’ she said with a weak smile. Now she’d got past Bob, who had definitely needed a firmer hand, she was trying to be tactful. After all, she wanted information from these people and was so far off her own patch it was ridiculous. Off her patch and vulnerable.

‘I’m Inspector O’Brien, SIO on the Simon Carter case. That means—’

‘Senior Investigating Officer, yes I know,’ said Robyn, without thinking. But, in her defence, it had been the second time someone had tried to explain these terms to her today; even if she didn’t work with the police herself, they were fairly common weren’t they, from the amount of cop shows on TV?

O’Brien nodded, perhaps thinking this was the case rather than Robyn having first-hand experience. ‘All I can really disclose at this time is that we’re following up every lead we can.’ It was the standard line she’d probably been feeding to the press since this whole thing began. ‘So, unless there’s—’

‘I-I was just wondering if forensics had turned anything up,’ said Robyn.

‘Forensics …’ The inspector frowned, definitely thinking now that this woman fitted into the category of ‘watched too many episodes of Luther’ or simply fancied herself as an armchair detective, like the guy Bob had sent off with a flea in his ear. But then the frown turned to one of puzzlement, like she was trying to work something out. ‘Dr Adams … Where do I know that name from?’

Robyn was about to answer, when a figure appeared from behind the DI. This man was a good ten years younger than O’Brien, with hair that was shaved at the sides and swept over the top of his head so that it resembled one of those waves out there on the ocean. He was smartly dressed, his suit cut well and his tie pulled so tight it looked like it was threatening to cut off his oxygen (like Simon, Robyn couldn’t help thinking … then shoved the comparison aside). ‘You should know it, guv,’ he said, causing the woman – his superior – to turn around. The inspector still looked puzzled. ‘The Spider, the Postcode Killer … Oedipus.’

The last one caused Robyn to wince, an involuntary action but the man couldn’t help spotting it. O’Brien turned back around, a look of slow, dawning realisation washing over her face. It appeared that her ‘exploits’ had not only reached cousin Vicky, but the local plod at Golden Sands. They didn’t know the half of it though, no matter how much they’d read or seen; none of them did. ‘Right,’ said the woman.

There was an awkward silence then, not dissimilar to the one that had passed between her and Vicky when she first arrived. In the end, Robyn broke it, saying: ‘I thought I’d come along and see if—’

‘And you’re the cousin of the victim’s wife, is that right?’ O’Brien asked, knowing full well that she was.

Robyn nodded. ‘That is true, but—’

‘With all due respect, Dr Adams …’ Still not Robyn. ‘We have enough on here trying to investigate this without relatives or any other do-gooders getting under our feet.’ It was the young man’s turn to frown now, staring at the back of O’Brien’s head as if something was crawling out of it. ‘Christ, the guy who found Mr Carter keeps coming in and offering to help as well. This is a police investigation. I don’t want it turning into some kind of bloody circus.’

‘I just want to help.’ A fresh pair of eyes … ‘I-I might be able to offer some—’

‘And I suppose it’s your relative who’s asked you to look into all this?’ O’Brien wasn’t budging an inch, that much was clear.

‘Guv, maybe we should—’ began the man behind her, and she gave him a withering glare.

‘Maybe you should return to your duties, DS Watts.’ So, he was the other detective assigned to the case, thought Robyn. Good to put a face to the name. ‘As for you, Dr Adams, I think the best thing you can do is go back and comfort your cousin. She’s been through a lot.’

O’Brien turned that withering gaze on Robyn, but she tried to hold it. A respect thing, if nothing else. In the end it was the DI who looked away first, but only because she was walking away, taking her DS with her, who looked over his shoulder apologetically at Robyn. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting, definitely not to be welcomed with open arms – the same way Vicky had done – but not that kind of rudeness, either. Cav’s team had been wary at first, until she’d proven herself – and perhaps she thought that might earn her a shortcut here. Might buy her the chance to look over the case at least, and if it had been up to Watts that definitely would have happened. But O’Brien … No, she was a different kettle of fish altogether. Sure, the woman had a right to be worried because Robyn was related to the dead man’s wife, to the man himself – conflict of interest and all that – but she hadn’t even bothered to find out their connection. That she wasn’t … that she and Vicky hadn’t been close for years; that they hadn’t even seen each other since her mum’s … That Robyn could remain detached. Probably. Definitely.

But if it was a pissing contest she wanted, psychology 101, then Robyn seemingly had no choice. She took out her mobile and sighed again when she saw there was no signal, before drifting over to the payphone near the entrance.

Fifteen minutes after placing her call, and sitting down in the waiting area – putting some distance between herself and the guy with his head in his hands, who’d since begun moaning softly too; it was actually quite unsettling – DI O’Brien appeared again behind that desk. She pulled a face when she saw Robyn there, then pointed at her. If it had been a gun, the psychologist would have been filled with lead in no time. ‘You. Dr Adams.’ The rigid finger crooked then. ‘Follow me.’

Robyn got up and went to the desk, waiting for Sergeant Bob to let her through. O’Brien, however, didn’t wait – had already rounded the corner into the station proper by the time Robyn was allowed past the barrier. She caught the woman up, turning the corner as well and catching the door that was being held open for her after the DI had carded herself back in. At least they have some kind of security here, thought Robyn, not just old Bob and his desk, sitting there like a guard at a set of medieval gates.

The room she found herself in was small compared to the station back home, maybe a dozen desks or less – and only a few of those were occupied at present. O’Brien strode up to the closest, where DS Watts was sitting with his back to them, his jacket off and slung over his seat. She tapped him on the shoulder and he shifted around in the chair, which didn’t even look like it was a swivel one. Without looking at Robyn, O’Brien said, ‘DS Watts here will assist you with whatever you need to see … Within reason.’

Then she strode off again away from the desk, away from the pair of them as if washing her hands of the whole thing. Once she’d gone, the DS grinned up at Robyn. ‘Friends in high places, eh? That’ll put a few noses out of joint.’

Robyn flashed an awkward smile, reminding herself of the promise that she would spring for dinner and a pair of tickets the next time The Boss was over in this country; it seemed appropriate given they’d just shown O’Brien who was the real person in charge. ‘Friends of friends, I think. Really shouldn’t have come to that, though,’ she told him.

‘Aww, don’t mind Grace. She’s okay once you get to know her,’ said Watts. ‘Just doesn’t like being told what to do, being pushed around. Most of the time this is like her little private kingdom.’

Robyn nodded. ‘I can see that.’

The man rose, holding out his hand. ‘DS Watts. Ashley Watts … Ash.’

Robyn took the hand and shook it. ‘Pleased to meet you DS Watts, Ashley Watts, Ash.’

He gave her another grin. ‘Likewise.’

‘I’m Robyn, as I tried to tell your DI.’

She wasn’t sure whether he’d heard her or not; he was busy gaping at her like he had done with the back of O’Brien’s head. Then suddenly he said, ‘You’re a bit of a legend around here.’ Watts looked about him, where nobody else was taking any notice whatsoever. ‘I mean … that is, as far as I’m concerned.’

‘Well, that’s very …’ She looked down at her hand, which Watts was still holding even though he’d stopped shaking it. He followed her gaze and let go of it like it was a live electrical cable with a bare end.

‘Those cases, I mean … God, where do you start?’

‘Where indeed,’ replied Robyn, hoping he wouldn’t.

‘The guy with the foetuses, you know?’

Robyn thought about correcting him, telling him there had actually been no foetuses involved in ‘The Baby’ case, but remained quiet. Up to now, Watts was the only ally she had in this province. So she nodded once more and said, ‘Uh-huh.’

‘I’d love to work on something high-profile like that. It would …’ Watts stopped, aware that he was going on a bit. ‘I’m sorry, I’m just—’

‘Excited?’ she ventured.

His cheeks flushed red, though he didn’t say anything back. Instead he segued into: ‘But you’re not here for … You want to know what happened to your cousin’s husband, right?’

‘Yes,’ she confirmed, then added, ‘So anything you can give me – scene of crime reports, autopsy records, forensics – would be really helpful … Ash.’

He’d smiled a final time at that, then gone off to round up what he could about the case, promising to give her copies of anything that was relevant – though not before arranging for someone to get her a coffee while she waited.

When he returned, handing her what he’d gathered as she sat at his desk, Robyn had got up and thanked him, shaking his hand again. He made a deliberate effort this time not to hold on for too long, but had broken off the shake with, ‘Maybe … well, feel free to give me a call or drop me an email or whatever if you need anything else, Dr Adams … Robyn.’ Then he handed her his card.

She held it up as she said, ‘I’m sure I’ll be in touch.’

Leaving with the files and case notes, relieved to note the moaning man had disappeared from the waiting room, she’d almost opened them up on the way to the car; Robyn had never been the most patient of people. Instead, she looked around her, did a quick check of the back seat, got in, then started reading inside. Eyes scanning the information, she took in how Jeremy the ‘do-gooder’ had found Simon – buried on the beach – while he was searching for treasure with his metal detector. How SOCOs had carefully dug him up to take him away, as if he was some kind of artefact from centuries ago that had been preserved. How the sand, water from the rain and the tide, had all obliterated any evidence of real value.

Then the pictures of his wounds, indentations at the neck showing that it had been strangulation, rather than a garrotte or anything else, used to end his life. That took more effort than people realised, a powerful grip – especially given Simon’s physical fitness and build. She scanned more and more of the pages and pictures, losing track of time cocooned in her car, and when Robyn finally sat up, sat back again with her head against the rest, she caught a glimpse of herself in the rear-view mirror. Another reflection.

It was then that she realised she was crying. Twin tears tracking down her cheeks, which she brushed away, just as Vicky had done, with the backs of her sleeves. Vicky … poor, poor Vicky. And Mia. Jesus. Having to grow up like those kids who’d had their fathers snatched away – literally – by Sykes.

Exciting? Hardly.

There was a sudden bang on the top of her car that made her start. Robyn twisted around, trying to see who it was … only for the seagull that had landed on there to hop onto the bonnet from the roof. It glared at her through the windscreen, reminding her of the way Tracy, Sergeant Bob and O’Brien had regarded her.

Catching her breath, she took out a couple of her pills and washed them down with the water from the glove compartment, then started the engine and pulled away, forcing the seagull to take off. By the time she arrived back, Tracy had left for the day, having helped Vicky with the evening’s dinner: pasta and sauce, something simple. Vicky had asked Robyn if she wanted any, shoving the food around on her own plate like she was trying to create abstract art, but she’d said no – didn’t have the stomach for it at the moment. Would head up and get straightened out if that was all right, unpacked or whatever. Mia had been getting up from the table to go to her, but Vicky made her stay where she was and finish.

Once up there, however, Robyn had totally ignored the case of clothes, instead sitting down with those files again on the bed. Though not before making sure the bolt was on … It felt almost like she was locking herself away in one of the cells at Gateside.

She was aware that time had passed again, Vicky coming up and knocking on the door to see if she was all right a couple of times – which again made her jump – then informing her eventually she was putting Mia to bed, and asking if she wanted to say goodnight. Robyn had slipped out then, closing the door quickly behind her, to give Mia a kiss and a hug, then returned to her room saying she’d be down shortly.

That had been … she glanced at her watch as she stood looking at the bed … bloody hell, two hours or more ago! The action of looking broke the spell, and she gathered up all the case files again, placing them on the top of the wardrobe.

It was time to head down, face Vicky. Talk to her. But before that, she needed to wipe away the tears that had come again.

Tears she’d had trouble getting under control this time.

Chapter 5

Finally, the tears had stopped.

Vicky sat in the living room on the sofa, staring at the TV but not really watching it. She’d switched over from the news a while ago to some gardening programme, but while she hadn’t been concentrating that had morphed into an old black and white movie about a guy who was trying to kill some woman’s husband at her behest. That was the last thing she wanted to watch or think about. Husband killing.

‘And when did you last see your husband, Mrs Carter? Can you account for your whereabouts in the couple of days after that?’

Vicky switched over again, only to find an American sitcom with a laughter track that sounded so fake it hurt, the image pixilating like a son of a bitch and making the actors look like Transformers. She pressed another button, which gave her a wildlife documentary. That would do, and she zoned out again, having another drink of the wine she was clutching.

No more tears. Not now … Maybe they’d dried up completely? But then she’d thought that before Robyn arrived, and yet there they’d been again, her blubbing and holding on for dear life. Whatever must she have thought? Getting all worked up like that, when Robyn was so used to dealing with death.

Getting all worked up because it was Simon. Because Simon is gone, she reminded herself and felt that familiar pricking at the corners of her eyes. Because she’d never see him again, would she?

When was the last time she’d seen him? On a slab in the morgue, his skin blue-white, those marks around his neck. And before that, a flying visit, barely enough time to say hello and goodbye he was so busy – bringing in money to make sure they were all right (she couldn’t help wondering how they would cope now … don’t think about that).

But the last time, the real last time she’d seen him, when they’d spent time together … That Saturday night, when Mia was at a sleepover with some of her mates. Vicky had been drinking that night as well; they both had. An evening of drink and chat and watching that live band massacre Bon Jovi numbers at the pub that had once been called The Barnacle. Then, rolling home after last orders, practically falling in through the door. Kissing in the hallway, then upstairs, knowing they had the place to themselves and could be as loud as they liked. Pulling each other’s clothes off and tumbling into bed, acting like they had when they first met, when they were so young and everything had been brand new.

Simon was right – it had done them good. After months of barely even bothering, and, when they did, it being over in minutes; hardly even worth getting worked up. Yes, there was Mia to consider, but even so … Vicky was beginning to think he’d gone off her. When was the last time they’d done that, just let themselves go? It wouldn’t happen again now. Would never happen again …

Because he was dead. The man she loved, the man she’d married – who worked so hard for them – was gone. Murdered and buried, covered up like some dirty secret. And as she thought back to the day she was told, those police officers at the door delivering the message, she realised she’d drained the wine in her glass and reached out for the bottle that was already well over half empty. The one she’d started in on after she’d finally got Mia to bed, after telling her again and again to just go to sleep and stop asking questions about what was wrong. After looking in her daughter’s eyes and understanding that she knew something pretty serious had happened.

‘She doesn’t know yet?’

‘I wasn’t sure what to say to her.’

‘What’s … what’s the matter, Mum?’

‘Nothing. Nothing sweetheart.’

After days of trying to keep the truth from her, protecting her the best way she knew how. Of lying about why Tracy was there, why she was answering the door and fielding phone calls … And shouldn’t she have answered some of those? Vicky had friends … kind of. The school mums, Jay’s mother especially. If anyone knew how she felt then it was that woman, just in a different way. But she hadn’t felt like talking to anyone. Just wanted her own mum back; fucking cancer! Her mum and dad. Needed her family. Needed—

Robyn. The sister she’d never had. The one person she’d always been able to turn to, rely on … until she couldn’t. Until that connection had been severed somehow, two people drifting apart who had nothing in common anymore. But still family.

That was when she’d dug out the numbers and made the call, not even knowing if it was still current or not. Getting the answerphone on the landline, finally getting her on her mobile. Realising something was ‘off’ about Robyn herself. Like she was also upset; like she’d caught her at a bad moment or something.

Vicky would have laughed at that if she’d had it in her. Bad moment? What could possibly be worse than all this mess?

You know what helps with that? More alcohol.

Vicky took a gulp of the wine she’d just poured.

She’d left it as long as she could before ringing her, had been surprised really when she agreed to come – so much for being busy. In fact, hadn’t she sounded like she wanted to get away from there, for whatever reason? Didn’t matter, she reminded herself, because Robyn was here now; had been owed some time off. She was helping her. Although she hadn’t seen her most of the day, all evening. Had left Vicky alone with the TV, with the wine. Grappling with those tears again she thought she was done with, letting David Attenborough’s lecture about the lifespan of a turtle wash over her.

She started, suddenly aware of someone in the doorway – almost spilling the wine on herself. Classy. How long had she been there, Robyn, watching her? Hadn’t been around all this time and then appeared as if by magic, or like that blue guy from the X-Men movies Mia used to watch with Daddy. Wouldn’t ever watch again, because—

‘Sorry,’ said Robyn, rushing into the room and pausing again, like she’d lost signal as well, had pixilated and been forced to freeze. ‘I didn’t mean to …’

‘It’s … it’s okay,’ Vicky told her, grabbing the remote and turning the sound down. ‘Are you … is everything …’

‘May I?’ asked Robyn, nodding at one of the empty chairs. Since when had they become so polite with each other, so … ill at ease? Even that afternoon, the crying, the hugging – it hadn’t felt the most natural thing. They used to talk, share everything, be so close. When exactly had they become like this? Like strangers?

‘’Course,’ said Vicky. ‘Our home’s your home, Robyn … Robs.’ Even that shortening of her name, which used to trip off the tongue, sounded so odd. Didn’t fit with the person taking her seat, with the person Vicky knew her to be now – not that she really knew her at all, or anything much about her world. Didn’t even know if she was seeing anyone, living with anyone. If so, how did they feel about her just taking off like this to help her cousin? ‘Would you like a …’ Vicky held up the glass of pinot she’d almost ended up wearing. ‘It’s only cheap stuff, nothing fancy.’

Robyn shook her head. ‘I shouldn’t.’

‘I guess, as a doctor, you’d tell me not to either.’

‘I’m not that kind of doctor, Vicky.’ There was another pause. ‘But if I was, I’d probably say, “Fuck it, pour yourself a large one”. After what you’ve been through …’

‘Have one too,’ Vicky said. ‘Please.’ Her cousin nodded and Vicky made to get up and fetch her a glass.

‘You stay where you are, I’ll get it,’ Robyn told her. ‘Where …?’

‘Top cupboard just as you walk in,’ Vicky informed her. ‘There’s another bottle in there as well.’

Moments later, Robyn returned with the wine and a glass for herself. She opened the fresh bottle, as Vicky was in the process of polishing off the first one, and poured herself a small measure. Took an equally small sip. ‘It’s nice,’ she said.

‘Probably not what you’re used to.’

Robyn shook her head. ‘To be honest, I’m more of a vodka girl these days.’

Vicky gave a single nod, impressed. ‘I’ll have to get some in.’

‘Please, not on my account.’

‘Maybe I’ll get some for me,’ Vicky told her. ‘If … if it helps.’

‘I … I’m really not sure it will,’ Robyn informed her, sadly. Vicky reached down the side of the sofa and took out the pack of cigarettes that were there, opened it up. Robyn’s face soured. ‘Now those, they certainly won’t help.’

Vicky let out a big sigh. ‘I quit you know. Used to use those vape things for a while, chew gum. But what with everything that’s …’ She put the pack down again. ‘You’re right, though. Horrible habit – you always used to say that didn’t you.’

‘I still do. Not good for Mia, either.’

She knew Robyn was absolutely right, but something about that last statement made her angry.

‘She doesn’t know yet?’

Robyn wasn’t a mother, didn’t know what it was like to have kids. Wasn’t a wife either, as far as Vicky knew. Didn’t understand what it was like to suddenly not be one anymore, because—

‘Look,’ said Robyn, as if reading her mind; as if they weren’t really strangers after all. ‘I can only imagine what you’re going through. All I can say is that I’m very sorry this happened and I’ll do all I can to help. In whatever way.’

‘I will tell her, you know,’ Vicky blurted out. ‘It’s just … I haven’t found the right moment. I need more time to—’

‘Is there ever going to be a right moment to tell a child something like that?’ asked Robyn and Vicky bristled again.

‘Probably not,’ she replied with an edge to her voice.

Robyn nodded slowly. ‘If it helps, they’re more resilient than you think. And she definitely knows something’s happening.’ Before Vicky could answer that, her cousin continued: ‘I used to know with Mum at that age, her … problems. Kids pick up on things. It affects them. Hiding stuff is the worst thing you can possibly do.’

‘I know,’ snapped Vicky. Then, more softly, ‘I know. Sorry. You’re only trying to … And I’m sorry about your mum, I never said that to you. I know it was rough.’

Robyn took a much larger sip of her wine this time. ‘All … It’s water under the bridge.’

Vicky doubted it was. ‘How did you … I didn’t want to talk about it while Mia was still up, but did you—’

‘How did I get on with the police?’ Robyn smiled weakly. ‘They teach us well at psychology school. I …’ She shook her head. ‘You really want to talk about this tonight? Maybe it’s not the right—’

‘Is there ever going to be a right moment?’ said Vicky, throwing Robyn’s words back at her.

‘Touché. All right then. Well, I dealt with a rather charming officer called O’Brien who you’ve probably come across yourself.’

Vicky nodded. She’d been the one who asked her the questions about Simon.

‘Makes Attila the Hun look like Mickey Mouse, right?’ Vicky wouldn’t have put it quite that way, but the woman was intimidating it had to be said. Not that Robyn had let it put her off, apparently. Strong Robyn, always knew what she was doing; always so together. ‘Fortunately I’m owed a few favours and her DS, Ashley Watts, was very helpful.’

‘First-name basis already; you do work quick.’ Vicky hadn’t meant it to come out that way – the wine talking – but Robyn didn’t take anything from it. Or if she did, she didn’t show it.

‘You probably guessed I’ve been going through everything, piecing it all together.’ Her cousin drank more wine. ‘And the good news—’

‘There’s good news?’

Robyn continued, in spite of the interruption. ‘The good news is that the police haven’t been stonewalling you, Vicky. They haven’t told you anything because they don’t really know that much yet. Where the body was … where Simon was found …’ Robyn sucked a breath, let it out again. ‘It didn’t really help matters in terms of gathering evidence, and there was the storm you told me about … All they really know for sure is what you do: that he was killed by asphyxiation. He died from lack of oxygen. There were no ligature marks, but there were indentations consistent with strangulation – not a hope in hell of getting any fingerprints, regrettably – although they did also find salt water in his lungs.’

‘What … what does that mean? He was drowned and strangled?’ Those tears were threatening to come.

Robyn held up her hand flat out horizontally, then tilted it left and right to show it was unclear. ‘The water got in his lungs when he was still alive, but … Well, I’d say it was probably the strangulation that killed him.’

‘Oh Jesus,’ said Vicky, images of her husband gasping for air flitting through her mind. Clutching at the hands that were taking his life away from him. Taking him away from her. Those tears finally broke free, and Robyn came over to sit with her, putting an arm around her again.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered.

‘You … you deal with this kind of thing all the time, don’t you?’ Vicky said, between sobs.

‘Not exactly this,’ Robyn told her. ‘But I see a lot of death, yeah.’

‘How … how can someone do something like that?’

Robyn took another deep breath, something Simon had been unable to do at the end, Vicky thought bitterly. ‘In the kind of cases I deal with, it’s complicated. It usually goes back to childhood, to teenage years, that kind of thing. And they’re repeat offenders. I don’t think that’s what happened here, with Simon.’

Vicky lifted her head to look at Robyn. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I think there was a reason he was killed. I don’t know what it is yet, but …’

‘But you’re going to find out, aren’t you? I mean, that’s what you do.’

‘Working with the police usually, Vicky. I-I’m not sure how much they even want me here. O’Brien certainly doesn’t.’

‘I want you here,’ she said then. ‘Mia definitely wants you here. You’re all we’ve got. We’re family; we should stick together.’

Robyn opened her mouth, then closed it again and gave a nod.

‘And I want you to know …’ Vicky shook her head. ‘Talk to me, Robs. You asked me if I was okay, but are you?’ Not that much of a stranger, she could see it in her eyes. They never had been very good at hiding things from each other, at keeping secrets. Robyn had been the first person she’d told when she got her period, when she first slept with a guy – and vice versa. They’d talked constantly back then; shared those secrets. ‘Has something happened, you know, in your world?’

Robyn drained the last of her wine. ‘Not enough of this stuff in the world, Vicky.’

‘Did someone … Has someone hurt you?’

She looked down then, avoiding Robyn’s eyes. ‘Please. Not now, not tonight. I can’t.’

‘Okay, okay. But, I want you to know, I’m always … I know I’m a bit of a mess at the moment …’

‘With good reason,’ said Robyn.

This time she made a concerted effort to finish what she’d been trying to say. ‘But I’m always here for you, Robs. I always was.’

‘I know,’ came the reply.

‘So why …’

‘Why haven’t you ever been here before? Why did it take you so long to come?’

‘Have some more wine,’ said Robyn, shuffling forwards and reaching for the bottle to pour herself a glass as well, twice the amount as last time.

‘Yeah, thanks.’ A distraction and Vicky knew it; Robyn wasn’t the only one who understood how people ticked. ‘We used to be so close, Robs. What happened?’

Robyn shook her head.

‘I know we kinda went our different ways, but I always thought we’d stay … We were so, so close,’ Vicky repeated. ‘I’ve missed you.’

‘I’ve missed you too.’

‘So what happened?’

‘We’ve seen each other over the years,’ argued Robyn, but there was no weight to it. It sounded apologetic more than anything. ‘When Mum passed, your wedding …’

‘I hardly even got to spend time with you then, to speak to you at those. But I guess it wasn’t really the right …’ Vicky’s sentence tailed off. ‘You spent most of your time at our reception with one of Simon’s mates from back then. What was his name now …’

‘Ben,’ said Robyn and sounded even more apologetic.

‘Went off with him at the end of the night, if I remember rightly. Which is fine, that’s okay, don’t get me wrong. Glad you had a good time and everything.’

‘Wasn’t that great a time,’ Robyn assured her. ‘With him, I mean.’

‘Okay,’ Vicky said. ‘That’s not what I was trying to say. I would have liked to have chatted more, just—’

‘It’s … Look, Vicky, it’s complicated.’

‘Like your criminals,’ she ventured.

‘Not really. It’s just … It’s the same with my old home; I never really had a lot to do with Mum after I went to uni. That place where she lived, it had mostly bad memories. Golden Sands …’

‘I thought you liked it here,’ Vicky chipped in. ‘That’s what you told me. You couldn’t wait to get here, hated going back.’

‘There are lots of good memories, definitely. I was thinking about some of them on the drive over.’ Robyn looked sad again, as if she wanted to be back there. If she was being honest with herself, at that precise moment, so did Vicky.

‘We had some great times, didn’t we?’ she said then, thinking back herself. Remembering days on the beach, evening barbecues in the garden, fishing for crabs.

Robyn leaned back into the couch again, relaxing. ‘Yeah. Yeah we did.’

‘Do you remember …’ Vicky started chuckling, couldn’t help herself because the memory was so funny. ‘Do you remember, we used to wait till Dad was asleep in his deckchair and then we’d do a pincer movement with the water pistols.’

Robyn laughed too, though whether it was the wine or the shared memory was unclear – perhaps both. ‘Then we’d spring up and shoot him, wet him through.’

‘And run off in opposite directions so he didn’t know which one of us to chase after.’ She thought Robyn was going to spit out the wine she had in her mouth. ‘Mum would pretend to be mad, but really she’d be pissing herself. Covering her mouth up so Dad didn’t see it.’

‘Good times,’ Robyn said with another chuckle and Vicky agreed.

‘Then everything changed. We graduated from school, you went off to university and—’

‘You could have gone too, Vicky. You’re clever enough.’

Vicky touched her chest. ‘Me? Naw. Plus which, I’m nowhere near as confident as you were … are …’

‘I’m not that confident,’ Robyn protested. ‘Really. Just good at pretending. A bit more savvy now maybe, I’ll give you that. In my old age.’

Vicky laughed at that one. ‘You’re not old.’

‘Perhaps I just feel it,’ said her cousin, knocking back the wine she had left.

Silence for a moment or two, then Vicky broke it with, ‘I was so jealous of you, you know. Back then.’

Robyn gaped at her, brow furrowing. ‘Jealous? Of me? Why?’

‘You were going off on your adventures. Studying, having fun. Meeting people.’ Meeting guys, she meant, but didn’t say it. Robyn had always been more confident in that way as well in the end. There certainly seemed to be a different bloke every other month, according to her letters. Going by her stories when she summered with them.

‘I probably made it sound better than it was. Uni was a lot of hard work, basically.’

‘Even so … It was worth it, look at you now!’

Robyn levered herself up off the cushions and poured herself more wine. For someone who shouldn’t, she’d definitely decided to. ‘You want to know something now?’

Vicky pushed herself up on her elbow, almost spilt her drink again. Maybe this was it, maybe she was about to find out the thing that had been nagging Robyn, that had kept them apart all these years. That was still on her mind. ‘Sure,’ she told her.

‘I was jealous of you, too.’

She hadn’t been expecting that. ‘You were … Why? I just stayed where I was, too scared to go anywhere, do anything with my life.’

‘You built a life. Here, with your family, in the place you love. The place you call home.’

Vicky blinked once, twice. Robyn sounded genuinely envious; she’d had no idea. But at the same time, that line about family and home made her think about what she’d lost this past week, and how easily everything had fallen apart. She began to cry again. ‘I had a life. A home. Now … Oh, Robs, I’m just not sure how I’m going to cope.’

‘You’ll be all right,’ said her cousin, facing her, in a way that almost made her believe it. ‘You’re stronger than you realise. So’s Mia.’

‘But … God,’ she said, suddenly realising something. ‘I don’t even know how I’m going to pay for the funeral, let alone …’ She waved her free hand around to indicate the home Robyn had been talking about. They’d been struggling before, especially since Vicky had been let go from the newsagent’s; hence all the jobs Simon had to work. She shouldn’t even be thinking about that, but now he was gone …

‘That’s another thing I can help with,’ Robyn told her.

‘I can’t let you—’

She smiled warmly. ‘It’s not even up for discussion.’ Then Vicky looked down, because Robyn had taken her free hand in her own. ‘You said it yourself, we’re family. We’re all we’ve got, right? We need to stick together.’

Vicky smiled back. ‘And that means … You’ll find the person who did this? Who did this to my … our family?’

‘I can’t make any cast-iron promises, but I … I’ll do my best.’

‘Robs,’ said Vicky, putting down her glass and motioning for her cousin to do the same. ‘That’s good enough for me.’

They hugged then, like they had earlier on with Mia in tow. On the couch, Vicky not wanting to let go. But when they did, she found that she wasn’t crying.

That, finally, the tears had stopped.

Chapter 6

They’re crying with laughter.

Tears rolling down their faces as they share a joke, probably fuelled by the alcohol they’re drinking: blue and pink liquid in bottles, that aren’t very strong but if you drink enough of them … Music is playing, some kind of dance remix of an old number – well, a few years old anyway – and they’re swaying, half-dancing to the beat as they stand near to the bar. It’s one of those places that fancies itself as some kind of half-arsed nightclub come nine o’clock, but really all they do is turn the ordinary lights down low, switch the multi-coloured ones on and let the mirror ball on the ceiling do its thing.

One of the girls, dressed in a short satin skirt and boob tube, plastered in make-up, knocks the other one’s shoulder when she tells her something. The first, in a low-cut black dress that stops just below her waist, with tights to match, puts on a mock ‘what?’ look, then starts laughing again. They both have hair that’s back-combed and sprayed to within an inch of its life, whoofed up and home-styled because neither of them have that much money and what they do have they save for nights out like this one.

They’re looking over to a group of guys in the corner, a couple of them they recognise as being those hunks that go out with the lifeboat when seafaring vessels get into trouble. The men – boys really, not that much older than them – are all holding pints, wearing tight-fitting jeans and shirts that are open at the top, some of them almost to the stomach like that parody their mums and dads used to watch; all that’s missing are the medallions.

A guy in his mid-forties, or maybe even older, who’s had far too much to drink, takes to what they laughably call the dance floor here, which basically means they’ve moved a few of the tables and chairs to the sides of the room. He’s really giving it some – gyrating, throwing out his considerable paunch – and in danger of throwing out his back at the same time, whilst still holding his own pint, which is only half-full but slopping over the sides.

The girls, distracted by this – who in the entire place isn’t? – start to point and laugh at him instead. Hanging on to his youth for grim death, but not doing a very good job. He’s known for it. For some reason he seems to think it will attract a mate, because his eyes keep sweeping left and right, flitting from female to female – doesn’t matter what age, including them – like he’s a monkey in a jungle or something. Looks a bit like one, as well.

This time when he looks over at the two young girls and points back – perhaps thinking this is part of the mating ritual, not that they’re making fun of him – the one in the boob tube whispers something along the lines of, ‘Imagine doing it with him!’

The second, the one in the black dress, just pulls a face and shouts this time: ‘Urgh!’

Maybe he sees the face, maybe he hears what she says, but the middle-aged man suddenly spins around in search of more amenable fare – good luck! Except he spins a bit too quickly and ends up toppling over, the pint going flying and smashing on the ground. The barman is there in seconds, helping him up again and walking him to an empty booth where he can get his bearings again. The barman wags a finger at hi, though, a warning probably that he should stay off the ‘dance floor’ or perhaps that he’s not getting another drink, seeing as one of the barmaids is now having to mop and sweep up the one he dropped because of his acrobatics.

Both the girls are wetting themselves now, hands over their mouths. And it’s only as the excitement dies down again that they remember the guys over in that corner, the ones they’ve been looking at all night and who have been looking over at them. One of the girls, the one wearing the satin skirt, catches the eye of a muscular lad in a T-shirt. He smiles; she smiles back. The girl in the black dress nudges her friend, dragging her attention back – because she’s just got another round in. Cocktails this time, or this place’s version of them at any rate – like something Del Boy might drink in Only Fools and Horses because he wants to look cultured. Pink and blue drinks again, only this time they’re served in glasses with tall stems and what look like upside down triangles on top; miniature umbrellas and bits of fruit that have no right to be anywhere near an alcoholic beverage complete the look.

It’s only a matter of time before one of the guys in the corner comes over and tries his luck – with black dress or boob tube, or maybe both – then the floodgates will have broken, leaving the way clear for any of them to have a crack. More mating rituals, no less ridiculous than the older generation’s. Nobody really knows what they’re doing, boy or girl. They just pretend they do – give off an air of confidence … or at least some of them do. That’s probably why alcohol was invented in the first place, to make all this easier. To grease the wheels.

And all the time, this whole time, they’re being watched. They’re being observed, just like an animal on a wildlife programme might be.

The man watches the guys in the corner, watches the two girls, safe in the knowledge he hasn’t been spotted.

Watches, and waits to see what transpires.

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