When she got back the crying had stopped. She sank down on the floor beside the girl and gently rubbed her wrists. ‘Come on, sweetheart. The paramedics will be here soon. You’ll be out of here in no time. I’m Nikki. Can you tell me your name?’

The girl turned a little, and in the hollow eyes and the gaunt face of the heroin addict, Nikki saw the fleeting hint of a smile. Then she said, ‘I’m so cold.’

Nikki slipped off her jacket and wrapped it around the girl’s thin shoulders. Junkie or not, this kid was going to be lucky to make it. She needed to do all she could for her. ‘There you are. You just hold on for a bit longer.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Galena.’ The girl gave a shudder, then whispered. ‘I’m Emily. Emily Drennan.’

Nikki’s eyes flew open and she saw Joseph’s concerned expression.

‘I never recognized her!’ Nikki shook her head violently. ‘It was horrible! Not until she said her name, then I saw something in that ravaged face that I knew. That bastard had taken a beautiful, beautiful child and annihilated every lovely part of her.’

‘And the ambulance didn’t get there in time, did it?’ said Joseph.

‘That RTC I mentioned? Everything was jammed up. She died in my arms,’ said Nikki with a long, painful sigh.

‘And did you get Cox?’

‘It’s amazing what money can do, Joseph. He played the part of the grieving partner, and managed to get some cheap tabloid newspaper editor on his side. Vomit-making stories of how he’d tried to get her off the drink and the drugs.’ Nikki’s face screwed up with distaste. ‘But the worst thing of all was the fact that she had loved him. She died believing that he’d come back for her. How could you build a case when Cox produced a dozen witnesses to say how much he loved her?’

Joseph took a deep breath, then raised one eyebrow. ‘But I’m guessing that you didn’t leave it there?’

‘I hounded him. Every way he turned, he found me watching him. I spent every moment, on and off duty, haunting that evil little murderer. And then I hit on his dealers, and I hit hard. In the end, he moved out of Greenborough. Last I heard, he was in rehab, and his money had run out.’

‘Good. That’s how karma works. What goes round, comes round.’

Nikki picked up her cooling coffee and drank it back. ‘And now, I wonder. If I’d known that my vendetta would wreck my marriage and ultimately leave my only child in a High Dependency Unit, would I have just let him go?’