I want to tell him he should have thought of that before he started messing with my Facebook account. He probably thought I would just get a warning, a telling-off, and now it has backfired. But I feel so tired I want to drop to the floor where I’m standing. I can’t cope with this. There must be something of the hopelessness I’m feeling in my expression because Ian drops the arm that barred the doorway.

‘Do what you want,’ he says. ‘You always do.’

No, Ian, I think to myself. What I would really like to do right now is see you disappear off the face of the earth – disintegrate in front of my eyes.

But I say nothing and trudge upstairs to get a bag, thinking only about the minimum I can pack to get out of there as quickly as possible.

CHAPTER 19

19

It was ten days since the body of the woman, ‘Penny’, had been found at Pennington Flash, and well over two weeks since she had died. And yet they still didn’t appear to have made any real progress in finding out who she was or where she had come from. The shoes that had caused a flutter of excitement had definitely not belonged to Penny. As well as being the wrong size, the DNA wasn’t a match.

The tox results had confounded them all, with no reasonable explanation for such a weird mix of drugs. Although it was clear from the hair analysis that Penny had been taking some of them for months, they were not the direct cause of her death. Despite forming all kinds of hypotheses about why she had taken this strange concoction, they still had nothing concrete. Tom was hoping that an investigation into the source of the drugs might help them identify Penny, but as yet they hadn’t found anything of use.

Becky rested her chin on her fist. At this rate they wouldn’t solve the case before she went on maternity leave, and that thought was driving her mad. Her frustration was making her irritable, and her partner, Mark, had raised his eyebrows a couple of times when she snapped at something trivial. But he said nothing. It was amazing what you could get away with when you were pregnant.

Becky glanced across at Lynsey. She had settled in well and her confidence was growing, but she was clearly picking up the vibes from the rest of the team. From where Becky sat in the incident room she could see the girl trying to concentrate on the latest reports, but judging by her lack of enthusiasm as she flipped the pages, it was doubtful that they revealed much.

Becky’s phone rang. ‘DI Robinson.’

‘Hello.’ The voice was quiet, hesitant, female. ‘I don’t know if I’m speaking to the right person, but I’m ringing because I think I might have some information.’