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the emotional disorder to arrive. But it had taken so long that he’d begun to think it might have bypassed him altogether. So he had left the house today as normal.
    That decision now seemed foolish in the extreme as he’d been overcome, almost collapsing in the street.
    He swallowed hard, having to concentrate so his legs didn’t give way, until he became aware of something else.
    In the distance, his own voice was telling him to pick up the key.
    He scanned the ground, not seeing it at first. Then it appeared, partly hidden in the weeds by his feet. He stared at it as he bent, reaching out.
    Gripping the key, he instructed his body to straighten. Slowly it complied and, this time, despite hands that feltlike they belonged to someone else, the key slotted home in the lock with a dull click.
    The door opened to reveal a small kitchen, as unfamiliar to him as everything else had become in the last few hours. He stepped inside, his gaze immediately catching hers.
    Jessica Anderton regarded him from the opposite side of the room.
    He turned his face away, cowering for a moment, before he lurched over and tore the picture from its pin, angered suddenly by the inequity of his situation. But recent history flared again, and the hands he had managed to control sufficiently to begin ripping the picture in two froze mid-reprisal.
    These thoughts were poisoning him.
    And still she stared.
    He turned the picture away, unable to meet her unwavering gaze, bright and immortalized. Eyes that challenged him.
    Eyes of a woman he had killed.



TUESDAY

6.
     
    Hawkins waited while the stragglers took their seats, drumming her fingers on the desk and glaring from face to face. The wall clock said 08:36.
    Unfortunately it also showed the date, whose significance Hawkins was trying to ignore. Back in June, when she and Paul were still pretending things were salvageable, they had almost booked a holiday in Barbados over Christmas and New Year. In fact, they might have been in the air at this very moment.
    Still waiting for the laggards to settle, Hawkins reflected briefly on her path to acting Chief Inspector, and the moment she’d received fortuitous expedition. The day when, after seventeen years of service with a flawless health and attendance record, her boss, DCI Norman Parr, had collapsed on duty and died. Hawkins’ feelings for him hadn’t changed, despite his tragic end: she’d considered him a slimy, underhand backstabber ever since they’d begun working together three years earlier. But that hadn’t put her off stepping into his role when it had been offered to her.
    And so for now, a week before Christmas, she was shackled to a case she wouldn’t have wished on a City banker, presiding over a bunch of corpses that looked like props from the
Saw
movies.
    Fortunately, her core team understood the gravity ofthe situation sufficiently to have arrived on time. Her most experienced DI, a forty-five-year-old Geordie named Frank Todd, sat in the front row, next to the younger and far more exotic Detective Sergeant Amala Yasir. John Barclay and Eddie Connor occupied seats on the other side of the central aisle.
    She’d have to explain later to the four of them that the frustration she was about to show wasn’t with them. Todd and Yasir had been in early to prepare this briefing room with the latest information, and she had to admit they’d done a great job. Connor had only been here a day, and she’d arrived in her office that morning to find the huge stack of files from another case she’d assigned to Barclay the previous week for analysis. The excerpt she’d checked seemed flawless. She couldn’t imagine where he’d found the time to get them all done.
    But the rest of her extended team really weren’t helping themselves.
    The rest of the medium-sized briefing room had filled up fast, with officers of varying familiarity. A small group of uniforms huddled in the far corner, the ringleader holding forth about his shed roof.