Dani was by now feeling a build-up of mixed emotions; regret, sadness, but also anger. What did set her and Ben apart? She’d asked herself that same question countless times during her recovery. She’d never got to a satisfactory answer. Was it just bad luck, bad judgment that had led to his fate? Or if there really was something wrong with him, something in the way his brain was wired that had turned him into a violent criminal, then was Dani not affected by that too? How long before she snapped like he had?

‘I just feel sorry for him,’ Harry said. ‘He must be so lonely in there. He can’t do anything. Ever again.’

‘I can go and see him. For you. If you want me to.’

Once again the words passed Dani’s lips without any real forethought and she immediately regretted them, even though she’d contemplated plenty of times whether seeing Ben could be a good thing for her. Wouldn’t it help her recovery if she were to face him head on? Ask him all of the questions she had to know the answers to, in order to understand what he’d done and why?

‘I think he’d like that,’ Harry said, smiling.

Dani sighed and looked away. What had she just done?

Moments later her phone was ringing. It was Easton.

‘I need to take this. I’ll be back in a sec.’

Dani got up and headed towards a quiet corner in the restaurant.

‘Yeah.’

‘We’ve had a breakthrough. A call to the hotline about the press con.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Yeah. A friend who thinks she knows the vic. She’s coming to the station in an hour.’

Dani looked at her watch. Gemma was due to take the kids back in forty minutes.

‘I’ll be there.’

Chapter Fourteen

It turned out Dani had plenty of time. Having already pushed thoughts of her murderous brother to the back of her mind, she dropped the kids off with Gemma five minutes early and hotfooted it back to Birmingham with ten minutes to spare, only for Rebecca Hargreaves to be nearly forty-five minutes late. That wasn’t too big a problem. While they waited, Dani and Easton sat in an interview room and swapped notes on what they knew so far. Which was little. The post-mortem of Jane Doe was yet to be completed. There were no results from forensics. Easton had managed to speak to only one of the families of the other missing women that Dani had pinpointed, but had again drawn a blank in identifying their murder victim. Which meant a lot of the waiting time was spent with Easton talking about football and his alternative fantasy life as a football agent. He was certainly enthusiastic, if a little naive, and at least there was no talk about the press conference the previous day, or any of Dani’s other problems, for that matter.