Chris answered after a couple of rings. ‘Ma’am. How did it go?’

‘Not spectacularly. The superintendent’s a fan of protocol. He won’t help.’

‘Oh. Where does that leave us?’

‘Well, expecting more dead bodies, for a start.’

A pause. ‘What shall we do?’

‘Get everyone together back at base. I have an idea, and I need you all on board.’

‘Yes, ma’am. What are we going to do with Mardell?’

‘I’ll explain when I get there,’ Hawkins said. ‘But we’re letting him go.’

43

Hawkins closed her front door and stood in the hallway, shrugging off her coat.

The house was quiet and dark, the sun having disappeared an hour ago, and Mike having done likewise the day before.

You need to call him.

She flicked on the light and checked her watch, feeling an odd novelty at being home in time to catch the six o’clock headlines if she got the TV on in the next ten minutes.

Rock and roll.

She wandered into the lounge, catching sight through the window of the young couple from three doors down, between them carrying a box large enough to contain a flat-packed dining table out of the car park. She moved forwards and watched them shuffle round the corner on to their front path, appreciating the unexpected normality of observing her neighbours in early evening, well before she usually got home.

The hours when ordinary people did ordinary things.

She watched the pair until they disappeared from view, before turning to scan her living room for anything large and homely that she and Mike had transported together into the house. There was nothing.

She and Paul had both skinned knuckles manoeuvring the needlessly wide television cabinet around the dog-leg by the stairs; argued endlessly about whether the settee made more sense up and down or across the room. It had been almost eighteen months since their relationship ended, right here in this room. Since then, Mike had taken his place, initially as cohabiter, then as domestic foe.

Not yet as co-carrier.

It dawned on her that she and Mike hadn’t created any of this. Granted, she and Paul had had not just need, but opportunity to do so, at a time when Hawkins’ career wasn’t quite so all-consuming as it had since become. And the house was still perfectly serviceable when Mike moved in, so no setting-up was required. Yet the place remained exactly as it had been the day Paul moved out.

She felt a sudden impulse to call Mike, ask if he could come home immediately to rearrange the furniture, or go out and buy paint; spend the night completely changing the colour of downstairs. To make their mark on the place. The way people did if they had normal jobs.

Normal lives.