Annie stood up.

“What are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to call in my partner from the car outside, and we’re going to make sure you know your rights before we take you to the police station to make a formal statement. We’ll also be sending a message to the Harrogate police to pick up your brother.”

“What’s going to happen to me?”

“I don’t know, Lauren,” Annie said. Again, she was feeling shitty about doing her job. Harden up, she told herself. Maybe Lauren Anderson didn’t deliberately kill Luke, but she was at least partly responsible for his death, along with Liz Palmer and Ryan Milne. All adults who should have known better than to tamper with the feelings of a confused and disturbed fifteen-year-old. All of whom were selfish and used Luke for their own ends. Even if that end, at least in Lauren’s case, was love. A romantic imagination and adolescent lust could be a dangerous combination.

But maybe, Annie thought, if she didn’t feel pity for a woman in Lauren’s position, then she would lose some of her humanity. One of the things working with Banks had taught her was how to do the job without becoming callous and cynical, the way she had been going before she met him. Lauren would probably get off quite lightly, Annie told herself. If Luke had died during a struggle, the object of which was to stop him from taking an overdose of Valium, and if Lauren had not known of her brother’s botched ransom demand, then she wouldn’t get a very stiff sentence.

Lauren would lose her job, though, and, like Norman Wells, she would become a pariah for some—the seductress and corrupter of youth. And the family would suffer—Robin and Martin—as it was all dragged into the open. Because this would be a high-profile trial, no doubt about it. Neil Byrd’s son, a famous model and a sports star. Not a chance of escaping the media circus. It was a damn shame they couldn’t prosecute Liz and Ryan, Annie thought as she walked Lauren, head hung low, out to the car. They were at least as much to blame for what happened as Lauren was, if not more so. But it wasn’t her judgment to make.

“Jet Harris bent? I can’t believe it,” said Arthur Banks in The Coach and Horses early that evening. Banks had dragged him out there to tell him the full story, and they sat over their pints in the dreary, half-empty pub. Banks felt a craving for nicotine rush through his cells like a desperate need for air, but he pushed it aside. One day at a time. One craving at a time. It passed. People said the cravings got less and less powerful as time went on. But others said you were never rid of the habit. He knew people who had started again after they’d been off for ten years. One day at a time.

Arthur Banks stared at his son in disbelief. “Is this going to come out?” he asked.