Martina was about to brush her off – she was off to visit her sister tonight – but the words wouldn’t come out. She felt a sudden light-headedness. Martina swayed as if she’d got up too quickly, losing balance and coherence. She laughed and righted herself. Cyn was talking to her – checking she was ok – but already her voice was sounding muffled and distant. A hand was on her arm, which suddenly felt so heavy, in fact all of her suddenly felt heavy. What the hell was going on? And then there was Caroline lying prone on the floor of the van. How did she get there? What wa-
Then suddenly everything went black.
Helen made sure she was first in the office. Having abandoned herself so completely with Mark the previous day, doubts had subsequently set in. Helen’s default position of caution – the closed circle – was assailing her again. She fought it off – for once determined not to give in – but she wasn’t sure how her mask would be when she first saw him, so she got in early to give herself time to prepare.
Mark came in promptly and got straight on with his work. By now most of the team were in. Helen shot a surreptitious glance Mark’s way – she wondered if anyone else within the team noticed how much better he was looking these days. He’d lost weight, gained colour and the whole haunted look had completely disappeared. Helen wondered if it was going to be a day of politely tiptoeing round the subtle change in their relationship, but Charlie soon put paid to that. She came round early in the day to update Helen on the latest developments.
Helen had done her old trick – keeping the suspect in custody long enough to arrange a search warrant – so that Hannah Mickery had had no time to prepare her defences or dispose of any evidence. They’d taken her computer – she flipped at that – and most of her diaries, journals, etc. They obviously couldn’t touch her case files – these were confidential – but there were ways of getting information on patients if one had a mind to. But that was for later.
One thing was clear straight away. She knew an awful lot about these killings. She had all the cuttings about Sam’s death, Ben’s, Marie and Anna’s, but also pictures. And not just those culled from local papers (which had in turn been taken from Facebook, school albums, etc.). No, these were photos she’d taken of Amy and Peter after the event. Helen also found Amy’s phone number scribbled in her journal. Why did she have this number, when she had neither met Amy nor according to her testimony ever been allowed to talk to her?