Jason?

She was about to end the call, she didn’t need this right now, but Jason spoke again before she got the chance.

‘You need to get over here right away,’ he said. ‘It’s DS Easton. He’s been attacked.’

Chapter Thirty

With the help of paracetamol and vast quantities of water, Grant was thankfully feeling more human by the time his final lecture of the day came around at four. He’d woken up earlier that Thursday morning at five a.m. with a stinking hangover. It wasn’t like him to drink so much during the week, and especially not like him to have drunk so much so early in the day with those early beers after golf, followed by him and Mary finishing what she and Julie had earlier started. Namely a litre bottle of gin and a bottle of Chablis.

Annie had been faintly amused, though also slightly embarrassed, when she’d returned home from her friend’s house to find her parents merrily sloshing the wine in their glasses and the words in their mouths. She’d made the sensible decision to shut herself in her bedroom for the rest of the evening.

Grant and Mary hadn’t much minded that. Annie would get over it and Grant knew it was good for him and Mary to both let their hair down, and spend an evening giggling and flirting with each other like they were carefree twenty-somethings rather than middle-aged parents with a violent loser for a son.

Inevitably, though, the alcohol had done its work and by ten p.m. Grant was fast asleep on the sofa in the lounge. He wasn’t sure what time he’d dragged himself to bed, but his confused body clock had woken him up at five, and all in all he felt horrendous for it.

He’d left Mary gently snoring in the bed – she always slept better than him, which really riled him – and after a shower and some plain buttered toast he’d arrived at the university campus just after seven. He’d missed out on an entire day’s work the previous day so it seemed sensible to catch up on some lost time before the grind started again.

After his first lecture in the morning, when he’d staggered about like a zombie, looking and feeling as ropey as the gaggle of students did, he’d steadily worked through his backlog. Now he just had one lecture to go until finally he could call it a day.