She’d seen him, just once, after he flew home from the Indian Ocean. Sunburned from his long tour. Waiting for her at the train station.

‘Hello.’

‘Hello.’ So familiar, unfamiliar.

They had wandered through the streets of London all day, hands almost touching. It was so hot, an odd quirk of that spring. He bought her red peonies, from a flower stall vivid with colour.

Later the rain came, people splashing through puddles, their shoes ruined, cross, the sky spiked by black umbrellas.

‘This way.’ They ran to the top of Primrose Hill, as the storm flickered around them, the city below like a game. ‘It feels like you’ve climbed into the thunderstorm,’ he shouted over the wind. ‘Into the wilderness.’

‘Madman.’

He kissed her then, just for a moment, the rain hammering down, the city lit up by the storm.

But then he jerked away. ‘I can’t. I’m sorry, Casey. I’m so sorry.’

And he ran. Down the hill in the rain, slipping and sliding in the mud. And she stood there alone, the red peonies falling from her hands.

She knew what had happened to the Royal Marines, of course, out in the heart of the wars. The bootnecks were sent into the worst of it, time and time again. She had watched as the flags dipped for the long drive home. Talked to the women waiting back at the base. And she had interviewed the veterans, afterwards, as doctors battled to fix splintered bodies.

The minds, though. They were different.

He’d left the Navy soon after the Indian Ocean, and found a new sort of life. He was in charge of security for journalists, out in Gaza, in Cairo, Mosul. Watching for trouble, as the hacks searched it out. Yanking them backwards out of danger, as the crowds roared, hungry for blood.

He painted over the cracks, with an artist’s care.

Until one day, she had called him again.

Come with me, please, to the Sahara. We need you.

And he’d come.

‘Ed would know what to do, out in Bangladesh,’ Miranda said now.

‘But he doesn’t look like Dominic Burton-Smith.’ Casey turned away, thoughts of Ed clashing with that expensive Surrey road.

‘He does, you know. Dye his hair a bit darker. He would do.’

‘Miranda,’ said Casey. ‘No.’

‘We will have to find someone though,’ said Miranda. ‘I wouldn’t trust Dominic out there.’

‘No,’ said Casey. ‘Never.’

26

26

‘You could lose the baby,’ Dash said baldly.

They sat there in silence, watching the rain spatter against the window of the investigations room.

‘It’s very unlikely,’ said Miranda.

‘A newborn,’ said Dash. ‘In the middle of Bangladesh.’

‘Children are born there all the time,’ said Miranda.

And they die there all the time, Casey thought.

‘If the Burton-Smiths go to the police . . .’ said Dash.

Blackmail, thought Casey. Attempted murder of the soul, a judge had called it once. It came with a long sentence.