‘Thanks,’ Carol said again, leaning back in the seat and wishing the pain in her head would subside. She’d swallowed four paracetamol before they came out, but they hadn’t made even a dent in her suffering.

Arguing with Marijke hadn’t helped. The Dutch detective had been adamant that they were staying put, Carol equally adamant that they didn’t have a moment to lose. After a couple of minutes of getting nowhere, Carol had staggered off towards the door. ‘You can’t keep me here against my will,’ she’d said. ‘It’s not your jurisdiction,’ she’d added with a sardonic edge.

‘What are you going to do? Follow him in a taxi?’ Marijke had protested, snatching up her backpack and following Carol out of the apartment.

‘I know where I can get a car.’ She looked at her watch. ‘They’re still on air for another fifteen minutes. A cab to the car, then drive to the studios. I might just be in time.’

‘You’re not thinking about driving?’ Marijke protested.

‘How else am I going to get there?’

‘You’ve got a head injury. You lost consciousness. You could pass out. You could kill yourself.’

Carol shrugged, wincing. ‘Well, there’s one way to avoid that. You drive.’

Marijke had never met anyone more stubborn. She threw her hands in the air. ‘OK. You win. Where’s this car?’

‘Radecki’s apartment. He left the keys for me in case I wanted to use it.’

They were lucky. A cruising taxi passed within a minute of them reaching the street and soon they were standing on the pavement outside Radecki’s building. ‘You’d better get the car,’ Carol said. ‘I look like I’ve already been in a road traffic accident. Just tell the security man you’re me and that Herr Radecki left the keys for his BMW’

Marijke ran off, leaving Carol propped up against the wall. Left alone, with no action to distract her, there was nothing to keep the nightmare at bay. Her mind’s eye betrayed her, flashing up the defiling images she wanted permanently erased from inside her head. Radecki’s face above hers, the tearing invasion of her body, the transformation of something previously enjoyable into an excursion into brutality. The terrible sense of loss that left her feeling bleached and split open. And the tears that leaked from her eyes in spite of her best intentions.

There was nowhere to go to wrench her mind away from it. It was as if her past had been sprayed with defoliant, withering before her eyes to a shrivelled meaningless husk. And the future was something she dare not think about, since a future that didn’t contain Tony promised nothing but sempiternal guilt.