She reached the door before he did. He ran towards her, stopped her from opening it with his palm against it. She turned and faced him, angry.

‘Let me go. Now.’

‘What you goin’ to do? About what you saw?’

‘Let me go.’ She struggled to open the door. He still wouldn’t let her.

‘Please, Anni, I need to know.’ Clayton’s voice had dropped to a begging, wheedling tone. ‘Look, it was just a one-off. I’ve never done it before, I’ll never do it again. Please.’

‘I don’t know . . . I don’t know what happened . . .’

She pulled the door again.

‘Please, Anni. You have to tell me. Are you goin’ to tell Phil?’

‘I should do.’

‘Yeah, I know.You goin’ to?’

She stopped struggling, looked at him. Sighed. She was still angry, he could tell. But her features had softened slightly. ‘I don’t know. I should do. But I don’t know.’

He took his hand off the door. She walked through it and strode away from him. Clayton looked back into the car park, saw his BMW sitting there, gleaming. He sighed, shook his head.

What a balls-up.

He followed her back in, letting the door swing shut behind him.

51

Marina sat in the canteen in the police station, notebook open before her, a cup of something at her lips. Someone had made a vague attempt to cheer the place up, make it appear welcoming by providing primary-coloured chairs and tables and non-institutional colours on the walls. But it still looked like what it was. A fuelling station for time-poor public employees.

She took a sip of her drink, not knowing whether it was coffee or tea, suspecting it was veering towards coffee because that was what she had ordered. But not really caring. She sighed, pen poised above her notebook, ready to write something. Process what had just happened, what she had just witnessed, find a way to move forward. She looked at the blank page. Willed the words to appear. Couldn’t do it. Couldn’t think of anything to write. With a sigh she placed the pen back on the table, took another sip of coffee.

She had been right all along. Brotherton was not the killer. Phil had tried to break him down, kept going even after she had spoken to him, told him he wasn’t the killer. He’d repeated the evidence back to Brotherton, over and over again, like a mantra of guilt, asked him to confess, shouted at him to confess, even tried to cajole him into confessing. But he’d got nowhere. Nothing. Not because Brotherton couldn’t be broken down, but because, as Marina knew, he wasn’t guilty.

Eventually Phil had given up, terminated the interview. She hadn’t seen him since. Nor, for that matter, had she seen Fenwick, Anni, any of them. They had all gone straight down the hall once Phil had emerged from the interview room. She didn’t know whether she was supposed to follow them, but none of them had looked back, made any attempt to include her. So, with nowhere to go and nothing to do, she had come to the canteen, planned what to do next.

Go home, she thought. Get back to her day job, back to her life. Just have her baby, build up her private practice, live happily ever after with Tony and never work with the police again. Fenwick had made it quite clear that her expertise wasn’t appreciated and her points weren’t going to be listened to. So why didn’t she just go home? She already had a career. She didn’t need to do this. Leave them to get on with it, sort it out themselves. Forget them. All of them, even Phil.

As soon as the thought was formed, she felt a deep stab of discomfort and instinctively put her hand over her swelling belly. The baby seemed to be registering displeasure at something. Probably the coffee, she thought. Or maybe something more. Like it was reminding her that there was more at stake than the careers and reputations of a few police officers. Dead babies and their mothers. Giving them a voice. Jesus Christ, she said to herself, I must be getting superstitious. Not to mention simple-minded. She moved around in her seat, tried to find a comfortable position to sit in. Couldn’t. She took another mouthful of warm brown liquid, began to pack her notebook away.

So engrossed was she in doing so that she wasn’t aware of another person at her side until he spoke.

‘May I join you?’

She looked up. Ben Fenwick was standing there. She wouldn’t have recognised him from the contrite voice. But it matched the general state of him. He seemed to be disintegrating before her eyes. She hadn’t paid his appearance that much attention in the dark of the observation room, but she looked at him now. The smug political air that he usually affected had now unravelled and dissolved as the pressure of the case increased. He needed a shave, his hair was messed up, and so was his suit. His tie was askew and there were dark half-circles beneath his eyes. She hadn’t noticed it at his press conferences; maybe he saved his grooming for then. Perhaps, she thought, this was what actors looked like when the camera wasn’t on them. She thought again of the seminar she would have been delivering had she still been teaching: Chimerical Masks and Dissociation in the Perception of the Self. How true, she thought.

‘Feel free,’ she said, still packing her bag. ‘I was just leaving. ’

‘Where to?’

‘Off.’

‘Where?’

‘Back to work.’

He nodded. ‘You mean leaving us? For good?’

She stopped what she was doing, looked at him. ‘Why not? I don’t get paid enough to put up with the abuse you give me. To say you haven’t valued my professional opinion or input barely covers it. You’ve belittled and derided anything I’ve said. And in front of the whole team as well.’ She felt her voice rising again, knew that people were starting to stare. She didn’t care.

‘Well, I . . .’

She didn’t want to let up. Time for some home truths, she thought. ‘You ask me what I think, and when I tell you you ignore it because it doesn’t fit in with what you want to believe. And now you’ve got an innocent man sitting in an interview room—’

‘He’s hardly innocent.’

She felt her face reddening, her anger deepening. She kept her voice down but focused. ‘Innocent of the crime you want him to be guilty of. Well, good luck.’ She stood up, swung her bag on to her shoulder. ‘I’ll invoice you.’

‘Wait.’ He placed a hand on her arm. She stopped, looked down at him. There was more than contrition in his eyes. There was also a desperate hope. The kind a shipwrecked man has when clinging to a piece of wreckage. ‘Please. Sit down again. Don’t go yet. Let’s talk first. Please.’

Marina knew what she should have done. Just shaken off his grip, walked out of there. But she didn’t. Instead she took the bag from her shoulder and, anger barely abating, resumed her seat. She said nothing, sitting upright, waiting for him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

She waited, still said nothing. Made him work. Knew there would be more.

There was. ‘I was . . . I was wrong.’ He sighed. ‘Yes. I was wrong. And I admit it. I was wrong to ignore your findings. And I was certainly wrong to speak to you like that in front of everyone at the briefing. That was unforgivable. I was . . . out of order.’

‘You were.’

He nodded. ‘And I’m sorry.’ Another sigh. His shoulders drooped as the air left his body, like he was deflating. ‘I’m very sorry.’ He rubbed his eyes, his face. ‘But we just . . . We need a result on this one. A quick result. It feels like . . . the eyes of the world are upon us.’

Despite the situation, Marina stifled a smile. King Cliché rides again, she thought.

‘So that excuses it. Your behaviour towards me, your grasping at straws . . .’

‘It wasn’t grasping. It was good, solid police work.’

‘It just wasn’t the right man.’

Fenwick sighed. ‘We need to find him. It’s as simple as that. We need to find him. And I thought we had him.’ He balled his hands into fists as he spoke. ‘I wanted, really wanted to believe we had him . . .’ He let the fists go. ‘But we didn’t. And I think that maybe, deep down, I knew it.’ Another sigh. ‘So I’m sorry. I’m afraid you were just a casualty of . . . that.’