“What about the brother, Jamil Patel?” Harry asks. “Any messages between him and Charlotte?”
Chen shakes his head. “Nothing. His number isn’t in Charlotte’s phone, and they’re not connected on any social media.”
Sam takes a swig of water and lets the details sit in her mind alongside her headache. Others talk around her and she knowsshe’s missing what’s being said but something about Chen’s information is niggling her. Sam pictures Nando’s. She sees the sticky wooden tables. The cockerel on a stick that the waiter removes once he’s remembered to check that you’re happy with your food. Adrenaline fizzes through her.
“Chen,” Sam says, cutting off whoever is now speaking, mid-flow. Every face turns to her and her head pounds unforgivingly. Adam Taylor’s eyes bore into her from across the room. He looks worried, but she can’t bring herself to wonder why.
“Look again at the brother,” she says.
“What have you got, Sam?” Harry asks.
“Charlotte spent too much,” Sam says.
“Go on,” Harry says, smiling.
“Sixty pounds. It seems to me that Charlotte ordered enough food for three. Charlotte, JessicaandJamil Patel,” Sam says. “Let’s just take another look.”
“Great call, Sam,” Harry says with an approving nod.
“Where have you got to with identifying Denver Brady?” Tina asks.
“Yes… Er…” Sam rises to her feet and takes a long slow breath. “The book sells online as both a physical copy and an ebook from Howtogetawaywithmurder.com, which Brady got people to visit via Reddit. We are prioritizing trying to find the printer of the physical book, as well as following the money from the online sales. The profits from the online sales are landing in a bank in Glasgow—we’re hitting them with a court order.
“We’re leaving the site up for now, to keep the money trail warm and not alert him to the fact we’re looking for him. We’re also running searches against all the victims Denver mentions inHow to Get Away with Murderto see if any real-life crimes match his descriptions. Should that happen, we’ll dig into each case and see if it’s connected to Charlotte in any way. At that point we could also create a geographical profile to determine if Charlotteis linked to any of Denver’s victims or the places they lived and died.” Sam ends, then sits down. She feels exhausted and chastises herself for forgetting to mention the linguist who’s agreed to scour the book for lexical clues, but can’t bring herself to stand back up again.
“Look, folks,” Harry sighs. “We have very little on the table here. We need a big push this week—and Edris, sort a press appeal please. Thanks everyone. Keep at it.”
The briefing room empties slowly, and Sam makes her way back to her desk then flops into her chair.How did I miss a pregnancy test?she thinks to herself, heaving a sigh. She navigates to the central database and pulls up the report from the forensics lab. One, unopened, pregnancy test had been found among Charlotte’s scattered belongings, close to her body. The only fingerprints on the packaging were Charlotte’s. They could, of course, have been made postmortem, but the other, more straightforward explanation is that it was actually Charlotte’s. Sam pulls up a photograph of the pregnancy test. It’s the first real crime scene photograph that she’s managed to look at and she notices her heart rate increase, sending a slight tingle down the insides of her arms. She takes slow breaths as she stares at the image… “Seeing those two blue lines was the best and worst moment of my life, rolled into one,” Sam’s mother had told her. “The best because I knew you were coming”—she’d smiled, kissing Sam’s nose—“and the worst because I knew my parents would never forgive me.” To this day, Sam has never met her maternal grandparents. She doesn’t even know their names.
“Why didn’t Granny and Granda want me?” Sam had asked, one morning. It was her school sports day and there was a Grandparents’ Relay, which she’d be entering with Old Joe, the school caretaker.
“It wasn’t you they didn’t want, darling,” Mum had said. “I was so young. Just sixteen.”
“That’s old!” Sam had said.
“To an eight-year-old it is.” Mum had smiled. “Your dad was older and your grandparents didn’t like that. We had a big fight about it. We still sometimes fight about it, whenever we try to speak.”
“I know that,” Sam had said, swelling with her infant detective skills. “I know you fight with someone because I saw your ears.” Her mum had turned pale then, pulling her hair self-consciously forward and the collar of her polo neck up.
“DI Hansen,” Taylor says, and Sam swipes quickly at her cheeks. “Do you have a minute? I was thinking that we could maybe grab a bite and talk about Sean?”
“I’ve got to head off, Taylor,” Sam says. “Who’s Sean, anyway?” she stands and tugs on her coat.
“You know, Sean fromHow to Get Away with Murder? The guy on the bridge?” Taylor says, and Sam nods, not wanting to admit that she still needs to finish the book.
As she liftsopen her garden gate, Sam hears a high-pitched whining coming from inside her house. The little scruff is waiting for her as she opens the door, its tail wagging so much that its entire back end sways from side to side. Sam is surprised at how much her heart swells at the thought that someone has missed her and is pleased she’s home.
Sam uses toilet roll to collect and flush a little parcel the dog has left in the corner of the kitchen floor. She mops up a couple of puddles, bleaches the floor and then puts a scoop of kibble into the chipped breakfast bowl she’s using as a dog dish. The dog trots over with an uneven gait, and Sam notices that one of its hind legs operates at an odd angle. She puts a puppy pad down in the corner of the kitchen, a needs-must until a spot opens up for it in the dog shelter. As the little creature eats, she takes out her phone and taps in “dog care for beginners.”
“I think, little scruff,” she says, sniffing in its general direction, “that we need to try a bath. I know we’ve only just met, but you’re going to have to trust me.”
The bath is dusty, Sam only ever using the shower, so she rinses it out before filling the tub with warm water and pouring in some TRESemmé. She watches a quick YouTube video and then carefully carries the dog upstairs and bathes the little mutt. In the process, she discovers “it” is in fact a “he.” The little body is painfully thin and Sam concentrates on not rubbing too hard over the protruding ribs and his wonky leg.
She lifts him gently out of the tub and he shakes himself, spattering water everywhere. She runs to the airing cupboard and grabs one of her mum’s guest towels, wrapping him tightly and carrying him back downstairs.
“I think, boy,” she says, scrolling through Google, “that you’re like something called a Border terrier. But you’re a bit too small and a bit too gray, so maybe some sort of mix.” In response, he wobbles down the hallway and scratches at the front door.
“I suppose that means you’d like a walk.” She locates the carrier bag from her lunch-break shop and tries to fit the collar. He doesn’t make it easy; he licks her hand constantly, making Sam’s nose wrinkle. The collar hangs bulky and low on his neck. It’s clearly far too big.
