It would be eleven years before I next saw him, and I never saw Samantha again. I never had another gay relationship, either. So as much as I resented him saying what he said, I guess he was right.

34

Present Day
Gemma

Gemma drove up to the main gates of the estate for the second time that day and switched off the car engine. It was a perfect English summer’s evening, everything an even more vibrant green than usual after the earlier thunderstorm, sheep grazing placidly in the field outside the estate, all the previous humidity replaced by a cool, brisk breeze.

She had been home to pack an overnight bag, then back to the station to finish writing up her daily report, and to inform Mavis and Lincoln that she was relocating to Minstead for a few days.

It was 6.00 p.m. precisely, the time she’d asked Meredith to get the security guard to let her in. She craned her neck to look through the tall wrought-iron gates to the house, thinking back to Mavis’s earlier words: ‘Let’s hope you can get some significant intel off of her, or there’d be no need for you to be there. I mean, it’s pretty secure, isn’t it? Security twenty-four/seven, a locked gate, fence around the perimeter…’

‘I’m going in as her FLO, not her bodyguard,’ Gemma had said, trying not to shudder at the words ‘off of’. She had once, during a dull stake-out, compiled a mental top ten of irritating things Mavis said, and ‘off of’ was definitely in the top three. ‘She’s just lost two people close to her.’

‘Why don’t you just go in tomorrow? You’ll only have a few hours with her tonight.’

‘I wish I could. But she doesn’t want to be on her own, and her brother’s busy tonight. She specifically asked if I could come now, and she doesn’t strike me as the needy type.’

‘How did she seem, in herself, when you were talking to her? Doesn’t sound like she’s coping.’

‘No, I don’t think she is. She sounded scared. She admitted that she thinks the same person who killed both of them only did it to get at her, after what happened to her in the nineties. It’s just a case of trying to figure out if she’s got reason to believe it, or if she’s just being paranoid. Lots of people who’ve been in the public eye – people who’ve never been through anything like what she went through – are paranoid too.’

‘Or lying,’ Mavis said, darkly. ‘We can’t rule that out yet, either. But, assuming she didn’t do it, somebody killed Ralph Allerton and Andrea Horvath. It’s pretty unlikely that it was two separate random murderers.’