‘There’s another murder, yes . . . But – oh God, I can’t believe it – it’s Wendy Franklin. Our Wendy . . .’

Carmella swallowed into the silence, unable to prevent tears flooding her eyes. She thought of the tenacious, down-to-earth DC with her Black Country accent and slight figure; how hungry she was for success and approval; how desperate to be taken seriously. Wendy hadn’t been Carmella’s favourite person – keen to the point of being irritating – but it seemed inconceivable that she was gone.

‘What happened?’ she croaked, wiping her eyes on her napkin.

‘She’s been stabbed, in a private car park behind the Kingston Rotunda. One of the residents came down to get his car and found her body by the front wheel. Come on, let’s get moving.’

Patrick recovered himself, grabbing his coat from the peg in the hall, but Suzanne stood. ‘Pat, no. There’ll be a team on it already; we’ll only be in the way if we pile in.’

He faced her, coat half on, glaring. ‘Try to stop me. Carmella – you coming?’

Carmella jumped up. ‘Yes, boss. Sorry, Gill.’ Jenny reached out a hand to her, but whether out of sympathy or restraint, Carmella wasn’t sure and didn’t really want to know.

‘Oh for heaven’s sake,’ Suzanne said. ‘Gill, I’m so sorry. Come on, then, you two, we’ll take my car.’

The last thing Carmella saw when she glanced back over her shoulder was Simon, Gill and Jenny sitting in stunned silence at a table covered with half-full plates, meat already beginning to congeal in the gravy.

Chapter 34

Day 11 – Patrick

Patrick was sitting in his car again, his forehead resting on the steering wheel, his eyes squeezed tightly closed. He hadn’t felt this terrible since the day he’d found Gill incoherent on their stairs, and Bonnie half-dead upstairs in her cot.

His team’s offices were a taped-off crime scene now, so they had all been relocated to an empty office downstairs, provided with hot desks and computers to log onto the intranet to carry on with Operation Urchin while a different MIT swarmed over Wendy’s workspace. Over at the Rotunda, reporters with cameras and microphones jostled together trying to keep warm in the chill dawn light, laying claim to the best pitches, waiting for someone to come out and make a statement.

Patrick had held it together all night, listening to the SIO who had been assigned the investigation into Wendy’s murder, a sombre-faced DCI called Vanessa Strong, briefing the other murder investigation team.

He had held it together while DCI Strong instructed Daniel Hamlet to fast-track the post-mortem, feeling deeply relieved for the protocol that insisted a different team investigate a colleague’s death. He wasn’t sure he could have stomached watching Hamlet dissect poor Wendy.

He’d even held it together when Wendy’s mum, Sheryl, had rung from Wolverhampton and asked for him by name because she ‘knew how much Wendy had admired you, she talked about you all the time’. Through her sobs, Sheryl had brokenly repeated, ‘Why? Why? How could you let this happen? She was only twenty-five! Twenty-five!’

He hadn’t been able to tell her how he had let it happen, because he didn’t know. All he did know was that he had let it happen. He hadn’t stopped Wendy from going off under her own steam to meet God-knew who, or why. Hopefully he would know soon, once her mobile phone provider had sent over the records from her stolen phone, and once the lab had thoroughly gone through her computer, but he knew that even then it wouldn’t make him feel any better, not in the slightest.

One of his officers was dead, and he felt utterly responsible. If he hadn’t cut her off when she called him . . .

Winkler pitching up and shaking his head sadly and ostentatiously in his direction hadn’t helped either, the sanctimonious bastard, Pat thought.

But the final straw, after a very long night of straws, came when Suzanne summoned him into her temporary office. As he trudged across, he saw her standing in the doorway, holding an evidence bag containing a bright pink envelope. She had changed out of the grey dress she’d been wearing last night, but her hair was still in the same long, loose curls. Patrick wondered if she had been home, or whether perhaps Simon had brought her in a change of clothes.

‘What’s up?’ he asked, puzzled at how annoyed she looked. When he sat down, she closed the door and gestured at the evidence bag. Through the clear plastic he saw his own name handwritten on the front of the envelope.

‘Would you care to explain the meaning of this?’ Suzanne asked, in the sort of voice that almost made Pat wonder if she was messing with him.

‘Well, I would, if I had any idea what it is,’ he replied, picking it up and examining it. It wasn’t sealed, and when he lifted the envelope’s flap a flash of bright pink appeared. Puzzled, he pulled out a large Valentine’s card – a rather tacky teddy bear clutching a bunch of roses and heart-shaped balloons. Inside there was a message: TO PAT, YOU MAKE ME MELT LIKE CHOCOLATE. BE MY VALENTINE? LOVE FROM A SECRET ADMIRER XXX

He snorted. ‘Is this some kind of joke? Hardly the time or place. Why’s it in an evidence bag?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Patrick, are you insane? Of course it’s not a joke,’ Suzanne snapped back at him. ‘Strong’s team found it in Wendy’s locker.’

She paused to let the realisation sink in.

Patrick gazed speechless at the card, the words inscribed in Wendy’s neat round handwriting.

‘Oh no,’ he said eventually, unable to prevent tears springing into his eyes. He cleared his throat noisily. ‘Oh God.’

‘Is there something you’d like to tell me, Patrick?’

Pat had never heard her use such a frosty voice. When he looked at her, despite the curled hair and still made-up face, she was almost unrecognisable from the relaxed woman who had sat at his dinner table just hours before, laughing and chatting . . . oh, he thought, apart from that awkward little spat she and Gill had had . . . What had that been about? Not that it mattered in the slightest now.

He shook his head. ‘Absolutely not. I had no idea she felt like that towards me. If I’d known, I’d have assigned her to a different team. I’m not an idiot.’

Was it true, he asked himself, that he’d had no idea? If he was honest, he had suspected it for some time. Wendy’s eagerness to please – the same bloody eagerness that had doubtless got her killed – the way her big brown eyes became more puppyish when she gazed at him . . .

He pinched the bridge of his nose to try to regain control of his expression. ‘Poor kid,’ he said. ‘That poor kid.’

‘You sure you had no idea?’

Patrick felt himself getting riled. ‘The clue’s in the words “secret admirer”, Suzanne.’

Tension bristled in the air between them. There was silence for a few moments, broken only by the sound of an early morning cleaner banging a hoover into the corners of the corridor outside.

‘OK. Rather unfortunate timing, that’s all. What are you going to do now?’

Patrick ran his hand through his hair. He hated it when Suzanne was cold with him – although that was currently the least of his problems. ‘I need to get out of here. I’m going to take Carmella and go and speak to that bodyguard guy, Kerry Mangan. Barrett gave me his name – sounds a bit shady. I’m not overly optimistic he’ll know anything, but it’s worth following up.’

Suzanne nodded. She wasn’t smiling, but her voice was softer and she held his gaze. ‘Right. You do that. Let DCI Strong’s team figure out who Wendy was going to meet last night – you need to distance yourself from that for now, OK?’

He shook his head. ‘Wendy called me last night, told me she’d made contact with . . . Well, that’s as far as she got before I cut her off. But she must have meant she’d made contact with somebody connected to Operation Urchin. That’s who she was going to meet. And either that person killed her, or the guy who killed Rose and Jessica found out and stopped her.’