‘Their names?’

Angel thought of Annie Carter. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Lenny took me away from there and they set the fire and got the people in the flat below out.’

‘Do you know what they did with the body? There was no body in the flat.’

‘No. I don’t,’ said Angel, wondering about that. Without a body, could she still be charged with Donny’s murder? Didn’t they need a body, to prosecute? But she thought they had everything they needed to get her convicted; after all, she had means, motive and opportunity.

They both fell silent. Finally Angel said: ‘So what happens now?’

Farmer heaved a sigh and stood up. ‘I have to think this through.’

Not saying another word, he walked off, leaving Angel staring after him.

164

Christ, what a mess.

It was all Cory Farmer could think of, all the way home. He couldn’t face going in to the station. When he got back to his flat, he took the shower he hadn’t had time for first thing, when he’d been busy stopping Angel from turning herself in.

He’d always known it, really. As he soaped himself and dried off, he admitted to himself that his instincts had told him quite a while back that Angel was at the centre of this. The woman he’d made love with last night, who was so passionate, so gentle, so sweet, was a killer. As a mere teenager, she’d murdered a man.

Justifiable?

God alive, he couldn’t start thinking down that road.

But that bastard Donny Maguire had tormented her mother, then tormented her. Farmer had seen men like this, he had case files stacked high that were full of them. Sorry gutless excuses for men who got their pathetic kicks by abusing women. Mostly, it was the women who died. This time, the tables had been turned and Donny Maguire had kissed goodbye to the world.

What would any woman do – no, not a woman, a girl – caught up in a situation like that?

Most would tolerate it, too cowed into submission to fight back. Time and again he’d come across domestics where the wife or girlfriend was on the receiving end of abuse, and time after time they withdrew their charges, retracted their statements, when the rotten bastard who’d beaten them up cried and said it would never happen again.

Of course, it did. Nearly always, it did.

Farmer ate a late breakfast and then left the flat and drove over to Fiona Maguire’s house.

As an officer of the law, you should arrest Angel right now, he thought as he stood at Fiona’s front door and rang the bell. He glanced around at the front lawn, now immaculately mown, and the neat borders. But it wasn’t Fiona who came to the door. It was a smiling-eyed dark-haired woman of about twenty in jeans and a bright yellow top that was strained tight over the vast bulge of her pregnancy.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Can I help?’