Dani looked back over to Bill. He’d finished on the phone and was now talking to someone else – a man in his sixties dressed in casual clothes. Bill looked confused and a little disgruntled, like the man was asking him to do something he couldn’t. Dani watched them for a few seconds, trying to figure out what they were talking about, trying to get her detective brain firing again. In the end, coming up with nothing much, she turned away and looked expectantly at the security gates and the corridor beyond.

Not long after, she saw a familiar face approaching from the other side. DI Susan Fletcher. At one time Dani would have gone so far as to say they were friends; they occasionally socialised outside of work, although Dani had sensed in the past that Fletcher had a bit of a bee in her bonnet about Dani being seemingly favoured by the top brass above the other DIs in the team. It was an unspoken angst, and one which had never resulted in any kind of open disagreement. That had been more than two years ago, though, and Dani hadn’t seen Fletcher at all for months now, once the initial well-wishes had dried up. Not that Dani had tried contacting Fletcher since then either.

As Dani watched her colleague she felt a pinch of grievance. Dani had taken the early morning call and hotfooted it out to the crime scene in Moseley, but Ledford’s throwaway comment about Fletcher being joint SIO on the murder case had rattled her, though if it was true, the decision would have been McNair’s not Fletcher’s. Either way, Dani was sure she would soon be brought fully into the loop.

Fletcher touched a small plastic card to the reader on one of the gates and the low glass doors slid open. She walked through and smiled when she saw Dani.

Dani got to her feet and smiled back, but that smile faltered when she noticed Fletcher’s hand smooth down the fabric of her dress around her waist. Fletcher had always been slim, like Dani was, but there was now a clear bump on her belly. She was pregnant. Maybe five, six months. Dani felt a lump in her throat. Dani had always seen Fletcher as a close peer. Career driven but grounded, they’d shared so many similarities. But just how far had their lives now drifted? Fletcher had the looks. The charm. The job. The husband. The home. And now a child.

What did Dani have?

Not that she was jealous. More disappointed in herself, and the way that her life had turned out so differently to how she’d expected it would.

As Fletcher came up to her and reached out to hug her long-time colleague, it was almost impossible for Dani to stop the welling tears from flowing.

Chapter Three