Carol had never been vain, but the one aspect of her appearance she’d always taken trouble with was her hair. Naturally thick and blonde, it was always styled to look informally shaggy, but she’d once explained to Tony that it took a lot of skill to make it appear so casual. Now, whoever was cutting it lacked the necessary proficiency and it looked untidy. And the silver she’d kept at bay with clever colouring had asserted itself, changing the shade from honey to ash. The alteration he saw in her spoke volumes to Tony. Carol had lost her pride in herself. She no longer saw value in who she was and what she did.

And what exactly was she doing? Her body shape had undergone some subtle changes too. Her shoulders were broader and she wasn’t carrying any spare weight round her midriff. She’d abandoned the silver twelve-piece Turkish puzzle ring she used to wear and her hands carried the marks of physical labour, yet she’d always been the first to insist on getting someone in when there were any problems with the house. As far as he was aware, she barely knew what a screwdriver was for. Whatever displacement activity she had chosen as her form of therapy, she had moved well outside her previous comfort zone.

And here he was, well outside his own comfort zone, completely reassured by the arrival of a woman who was adamant in her desire not to give a damn about him. Her very presence gave him hope. And now that he had genuine hope, it was possible to examine honestly the hopeless position he’d been in previously. He wondered what he represented to Alex Fielding to make her so swift and sure in her condemnation of him. Was it simply that she sensed a sensational scalp? A headline-grabbing arrest and conviction? It seemed a giant leap to believe him capable of such crimes. After all, BMP had consulted him for years. He’d been trusted to maintain confidentiality and to produce profiles that could be relied on by its officers. He was aware that a significant number of powerful officers thought he was odd, to say the least, but as far as he knew, they didn’t consider him potentially lethal. But for Fielding to have gone on the attack like this, she must have been confident of support from the top brass.

And, realistically, that meant no matter what Paula believed, she couldn’t rescue him from behind the barrier of her official position. If she hadn’t already broken the rules for him, he’d have been lost. Fielding would almost certainly have charged him in the morning and the magistrates almost never granted bail on a murder charge. Definitely not on a double murder charge, regardless of who the accused was. Oscar Pistorius would have had no chance of making bail in a British magistrates’ court.