As she sat in the taxi, her phone beeped again with another message.

‘Sorry for earlier. Will make it up to you.’

The woman snapped the phone shut, put it on silent and dropped it back into her bag. The thing that frustrated her most was that today had been one of those days you waited for, the ones where things got figured out and some poor parents, such as Robert Graves’s, got their closure. These were the nights you were supposed to go out, have a few drinks and a laugh and forget about the rest of the cases that were going nowhere.

She had really wanted to get Jessica alone for a few moments to say how pleased she was for her. The two had become good friends over the past few months but Carrie could see how badly things had been getting to her superior. In quiet moments she had spoken to Dave about the pressure their friend seemed to be under but, aside from solving the case, neither of them had any firm ideas of how to cheer her up.

Meeting Adam for the first time had been nice. Carrie had never known Jessica to have a boyfriend. Behind her back a few people at the station made cruel jibes about her sexual habits but they soon stopped after Dave had pinned one of the other constables up against the wall by the throat. Adam came across really well though. He was a little quiet but had been meeting them for the first time so was bound to be a bit shy. He was obviously clever and had a sharp sense of humour when he opened up. She hoped Jessica would come over later in the week so they could have a proper chat about Adam . . . and her own problems.

The taxi was on the main road a hundred yards or so away from the turn-off to her street and started to slow down. The driver looked over his shoulder and shouted back. ‘Do you mind if I pull in here, love? It’s one-way down there. I end up having to go half a mile out of my way to get back again.’

‘Yeah, no worries.’

The driver pulled over and the constable gave him a ten-pound note, telling him to keep the change. Carrie stepped out onto the pavement and walked a few steps towards her junction but the high blue heels were hurting her feet. They looked great with the dress but weren’t that practical for walking in. She sat on a nearby wall and pulled the shoes off, standing up in her bare feet. Her house was a couple of hundred yards away and it wouldn’t be the first time she had walked back to the property with no shoes on.

She walked slowly down her road, placing her feet carefully in case of loose stones. As she got towards the end of her pathway, she heard a faint noise coming from further down the street. She squinted into the darkness but couldn’t see anything.

Because of the way John Mills, her troublesome neighbour, had converted two properties into one, the blind spot from the street lights coincided with the end of the driveway he had created.

At first it was hard for her to figure out what the noise was but then the constable remembered the smashed-up face of his girlfriend. Even though she had refused to give evidence against him previously, the last thing Carrie wanted was for her to get beaten up again.

She put her bag and shoes down on her pathway and crept forwards into the dark down the pavement towards the noise, crossing onto Mills’s front lawn in an effort to track down where the sound was coming from.

The constable was wearing a short dress and no shoes and didn’t even have her identification, let alone anything else, so didn’t want to be seen walking on his property if it was something innocuous. She felt the dew-soaked grass through her toes and a shiver went down her back. She couldn’t make out what the noise was and couldn’t see anything. She was standing completely hidden by a shadow when she heard a large shout.

Carrie ran towards the sound. There was a small open-topped van parked on the drive that came into view as she reached the end of the lawn. She ran towards the back of the vehicle and saw two men struggling. They were both silhouettes in the gloom and she shouted towards them. Both men turned to face her but, even in the darkness, she could see that one of them was badly hurt. He had twisted around to face her, screaming in agony as he did so. The shout was muffled, almost as if it were being heard from far further away than it was.

Without thinking, Carrie ran towards them, grabbing for the man still standing. She didn’t know if it was John Mills or someone he knew but something serious had happened. She could feel liquid around her toes as she hung on to the man’s top. He grunted and tried to bat her away with his forearm. The blow half-caught her across the head but she didn’t let go and lashed out with her feet, trying to trip him. She could feel the man on the floor still moving near her other foot but wasn’t sure if he was trying to help her.

The man who was standing continued to flail but she managed to duck under his arm and crash her shoulder into him. She might be small but she knew how to look after herself and heard the man exhale loudly and painfully. As he reeled, the constable tried to work her leg behind his to trip him and send him backwards. The man was bigger than she thought though and, as she tried to push, the only noise she heard was her own leg snapping. The pain screamed through her and, as she fell backwards, the last thing she saw was a knife reflecting the moonlight crashing down towards her neck.

24

Jessica couldn’t begin to comprehend what DI Cole was trying to tell her on the phone after it had woken both her and Adam up in the early hours. She wasn’t good in the mornings at the best of times but the alarm clock showed 4.22 and none of her senses seemed to be working. Adam had groaned and rolled over when the phone had begun to ring but she knew she had to answer it.

She heard the words ‘Carrie’, ‘stabbed’, ‘infirmary’ and finally, ‘sorry’ but couldn’t figure it all out. Cole repeated the sentence four times before the significance finally dawned on her. ‘Jessica, I’m at the Royal Infirmary. It’s Carrie, she’s been stabbed. I’m so sorry.’

It was what he hadn’t said that suddenly became clear. He hadn’t told Jessica that Carrie was fine. He hadn’t said they were waiting for results. He hadn’t even called her Detective, or Constable, or Jones.

He had called her Carrie and he had said sorry.

Jessica offered a quick goodbye to Adam and apologised. She told him she didn’t know what was going on but that she had to move quickly. She pulled on whatever clothes were closest and drove as fast as she could to the hospital, not caring if someone tried to pull her over for speeding. Given the mood she was in they wouldn’t have caught her anyway.

Jessica parked her car in one of the emergency vehicle spaces and ran into the main part of the hospital. She held her identification out in front of her and, without even being given Carrie’s name, the receptionist gave her directions.

As she ran down the corridors, Jessica’s vision was blurred, a mix of tears and tiredness. She soon reached the correct ward, bursting through a set of double doors into a waiting area that was empty except for Cole. He was sitting looking at the floor but immediately got to his feet as soon as he saw Jessica. It looked as if there had been tears in his eyes at some point recently too. ‘Jess . . .’

‘Where is she?’

‘Jess, stop.’

Jessica was trying to push past him to go through another set of doors but he was holding her back. ‘Stop.’

She stopped trying to fight past him and took a step backwards. ‘Is she . . . ?’

‘Yes.’

‘What happened?’

‘We don’t know. She was found with a stab wound in her neck on the driveway of a property a few doors down from her house.’