‘So we’re going to sort this.’ Ben gave a nod.

‘Do you think so?’ she asked, a little less cheerfully. ‘I mean, I’ve seen how this stuff goes. Women being stalked and harassed. The full weight of the law means nothing in so many cases.’

‘Agreed,’ Lightman said. ‘But there might be better ways than the law itself to stop him.’

‘Maybe you’re right,’ she answered, thoughtfully. She’d thought that herself, early on, before it had all seemed to pile up on top of her.

‘I can explain things to Jason,’ Lightman said, after a moment. ‘If it comes from me, he’s not going to end up dismissing it.’

Hanson felt her face growing hot. ‘You don’t need to do that.’

‘I honestly think it would help.’

‘It’s OK,’ she said. And then she swallowed. ‘The speed with which he chose to believe it is … well, I think it tells me something. I mean, he’s the one with the bloody degree in criminal psychology. He’s the one who’s supposed to know what to look out for.’

‘I assume your ex-boyfriend played on his feelings,’ Ben said, quietly. ‘I wouldn’t blame him too much.’

‘And yet here you are,’ Hanson countered, ‘not in a relationship with me, and refusing to believe a word of it.’

‘Well,’ Lightman said, ‘as you’ll know, I don’t have any feelings to play on, so …’

Hanson gave a real throaty laugh at that. ‘Fair point.’

‘And can you turn to your right?’

The female officer was softly spoken. She sounded like she came from Swansea, and she seemed sympathetic. Kind, even.

Louise turned as directed, feeling strangely like she was back at her engagement photo shoot with Niall. Though they’d been in the grounds of a National Trust property that day. Not in a small bare room in a police station. She’d been wearing a brand-new wool sweater and jeans, too. Not just her bra and leggings.

And it had only been her constantly smiling mouth that had ached on that day. Not her back. Her head. And somewhere difficult to pinpoint in her chest.

The soft flash of the camera came three times, and the officer asked her to extend her left arm out to the side. Louise twisted, trying to see the arm herself. There must be bruising that she hadn’t discovered yet.

‘If you could just look forwards …’

Louise straightened her head, having caught sight of nothing more than a purplish-yellow tinge on the back of her arm. The camera flashed again.

And then suddenly Louise was not in that room, but face-down on icy grass, the taste of mud and leaves in her mouth. She was fighting to move. To breathe. There was pain in her back, and in her left arm, where his hand was pushing her down.