“If they get read, and it’s a big if. I guess you’re prepared for this to backfire horribly? The very fact that you’ve been engaging, in a sympathetic sense, with the boy who caused her injuries could turn her against you and him for good.”

“It’s a risk I’m prepared to take, because I believe that beneath all the negative feelings she’s experiencing right now, her natural empathy is alive and well. And it’s that, more than anything, that’ll help her to start moving past the trauma. Would you agree with that?”

“We wouldn’t be having this conversation if I didn’t. So now, do you want to hear what I think of the letters?”

He gestured for her to go ahead.

Opening the file they’d been scanned to on her laptop, she said slowly, thoughtfully, “He writes more honestly than I expected him to, and probably better than he imagined he could, but is he winning my heart?”

Dan waited, keen for an honest answer.

“Not entirely,” she confessed, “although I think my feelings about it don’t really matter, it’s Marcy and Claudia he has to reach and the way to do that is for him to confirm a connection to Huxley-Browne. If you or Helen had persuaded him to do that there would be a much better chance of these letters even getting into their hands.”

With a sigh he said, “You’re right, and I’m still working on it, but if I push too hard it could make him clam up altogether.”

“We know threats have been made against his mother to keep him quiet, so how to get around that?”

“Good question,” Dan said. “He talks in his letters about the supply of chemsex drugs to PC clients and we know Huxley-Browne and his cronies were users. I’d say it’s very probably the middlemen, the suppliers, this BJ character and the gang bosses, who’ve made the threats either on Huxley-Browne’s behalf, or their own.”

“Or both.” Andee returned to the letters. “Have you told Archie yet that you’re about to show these to Marcy?”

“He knows it’s imminent, but I don’t plan to discuss it with him until we have a clearer idea of which way it’s going to go.”

Andee glanced up at the sound of voices outside. “Looks like we’re about to take our first step in finding out,” she told him, and closing the files on her laptop, she went to open the front door.

Chapter Thirty-Seven