We walk out to the garage. The doors stand open, and I can see Thea’s car parked next to a Land Rover.

‘We use that if we get snowed in,’ she says, ‘but we don’t need it today. We can take my car. The doctor’s is a bit big to park in town.’ She points to a black Mercedes on the other side of the Land Rover.

The lethargy has dropped away, and suddenly I feel I could take Ian on and win. I don’t realise I am driving too fast until Thea touches my arm and points to the speedometer.

‘Oh gosh, I’m so sorry. I was miles away, thinking of all the damage I would like to do to Ian.’ I take my foot off the accelerator and slow the car down to a respectable speed.

Thea laughs. ‘What do you think he deserves for everything he’s done?’

People say all the time, ‘I could kill him,’ but I don’t want to because I know it would hold a ring of truth.

CHAPTER 27

27

Tom was no longer concentrating most of his energy on the Pennington Flash case. Philippa was right: there were other cases that demanded more of his time, and each member of his team needed a fair share of his attention. He hadn’t been ignoring them, of course, but he had been preoccupied with Penny and he needed to give the other crimes more focus. But Penny kept intruding into his thoughts simply because hers was the most intriguing case. All murders had to be solved and the perpetrators brought to justice, but most were relatively straightforward. His team often had an immediate idea where the guilt lay, and it was just a matter of amassing the evidence. But Penny was unique, and try as he might to focus elsewhere, she kept forcing her way into his head.

There was a knock on his open door, and Tom looked up to see Lynsey standing in the doorway.

‘Excuse me, sir. Do you have a moment?’ she asked, flushing as she always did when she spoke to him. ‘DI Robinson said I should come and have a word with you.’

‘Come in, Lynsey. Have a seat.’ She hurried forward and sat down, a bundle of papers held tightly in her hands. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘It’s about the drugs that were found in Penny’s tox analysis, sir. I know they have already been flagged as an unusual combination, but I’ve been looking into ways in which she might have obtained them, and when I wrote down the order in which the hair sample tells us they were taken, it seemed a bit strange.’

Tom looked at her anxious face. It was always difficult to be a novice detective desperate to make the grade, and he wanted to put her at ease. ‘That sounds interesting. What are you thinking, Lynsey?’