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Back A Change of Circumstance
Chapters (67)
  1. Cover
  2. One
  3. Two
  4. Three
  5. Four
  6. Five
  7. Six
  8. Seven
  9. Eight
  10. Nine
  11. Ten
  12. Eleven
  13. Twelve
  14. Thirteen
  15. Fourteen
  16. Fifteen
  17. Sixteen
  18. Seventeen
  19. Eighteen
  20. Nineteen
  21. Twenty
  22. Twenty-One
  23. Twenty-Two
  24. Twenty-Three
  25. Twenty-Four
  26. Twenty-Five
  27. Twenty-Six
  28. Twenty-Seven
  29. Twenty-Eight
  30. Twenty-Nine
  31. Thirty
  32. Thirty-One
  33. Thirty-Two
  34. Thirty-Three
  35. Thirty-Four
  36. Thirty-Five
  37. Thirty-Six
  38. Thirty-Seven
  39. Thirty-Eight
  40. Thirty-Nine
  41. Forty
  42. Forty-One
  43. Forty-Two
  44. Forty-Three
  45. Forty-Four
  46. Forty-Five
  47. Forty-Six
  48. Forty-Seven
  49. Forty-Eight
  50. Forty-Nine
  51. Fifty
  52. Fifty-One
  53. Fifty-Two
  54. Fifty-Three
  55. Fifty-Four
  56. Fifty-Five
  57. Fifty-Six
  58. Fifty-Seven
  59. Fifty-Eight
  60. Fifty-Nine
  61. Sixty
  62. Sixty-One
  63. Sixty-Two
  64. Sixty-Three
  65. Sixty-Four
  66. Sixty-Five
  67. Sixty-Six

Kieron had gone straight from the cemetery to London for an ACPO conference, his left leg carefully propped up on the back seat, a stream of files to read on his iPad in advance of the day’s meetings. Simon would send him the post-mortem results as soon as they came in. What they might reveal, anything new or nothing, he had no hunch about, he only knew what he was hoping for.

The door opened, pushing in a blast of freezing air, and in the moment, he was reminded not of any terrible scene from the past, not of what he had witnessed earlier that morning, but of sitting at the table adjacent to the one he occupied now, with Rachel. His sense of her was immediate and vivid, so much so that he glanced up, half expecting her to be there, sternly but at the same time amusedly reminding him not to dash across roads in front of oncoming traffic, holding her coffee cup in both hands, looking at him over the rim, with an expression he could not read. She had been friendly enough, there was certainly no embarrassment, but there was no warmth either. She could have been Cat, or another plain-clothes cop, an old friend, anyone but a woman who had been his lover. There was no flicker of that awareness, no nostalgia, nothing remotely intimate in her voice, her gestures, her expression. Her eyes.

He had finished his coffee and wondered whether to wire himself up with a third, but his phone started to buzz. The day had begun once already but now it seemed to be doing so all over again.

Thirty-One

Lionel Brown was in a side ward which was made for four patients but held six, beds too close together so that Cat could scarcely get between the last two. She had expected the curtains to be drawn round him. He was turned to face the wall, his eyes closed and he looked not to have been attended to that morning. She managed to wedge herself onto a stool pushed up to the bed. On his right, an old man was propped against a back rest but he had slumped over with his pillows sideways on, though he seemed not to be aware of anything. Opposite, another old man, and then two much younger patients, who spoke intermittently to each other, then stared out of the window onto the buildings opposite. A trolley was by the entrance, trays containing half-eaten breakfasts slotted into it, a trolley that should have been cleared away a couple of hours ago and which was partly blocking the exit. Cat’s instinct was to move it herself, out of the ward area altogether, to the lobby beside the lifts but she had come to see Lionel Brown not to be an extra pair of hands.