‘You and Millie Downton are friends, aren’t you?’ DCI Hollander says. ‘Very good friends, I understand. In fact, she was here, in this house, with you just this afternoon.’

‘You seem very well informed.’

‘A man is missing, Mrs Porter. And I’m interested in why you haven’t reported it.’

‘Because he’s not missing!’

‘Ah, yes. You just don’t know where he is.’

‘In case you hadn’t noticed, he’s not particularly popular right now,’ Stacey says. ‘A lot of investors are baying for his blood. He’s got good reason to keep his head down.’

‘Except your husband disappeared five days before the Copper Beech scandal broke.’

‘What are you trying to say, detective?’

The man’s expression doesn’t flicker. ‘I just wanted to ask you, Mrs Porter,’ DCI Hollander says, ‘whether you think Mrs Downton may have something to do with your husband’s disappearance.’

‘You’ll have to ask her that,’ Stacey says.

He smiles. ‘I thought you might say that,’ he says.

chapter 41

millie

I don’t have time to dwell on how Harper Conway ended up on my operating table. Her life hangs in the balance, and it’s my job to save it.

Fortunately she has two things going for her: she’s young and healthy, and I’m one of the best cardiothoracic surgeons in the country. But every surgery has risks, particularly when it comes to the heart. I put her chances of survival at no more than fifty-fifty.

I can’t think about her two little boys at home asleep in their beds, confident that Mummy will be there to make them breakfast in the morning. My ability to put my personal feelings aside is one of the things that makes me so good at my job.

Harper isn’t going to thank me for slicing her open from her chest to her abdomen, but whether or not she’ll ever wear a bikini again is the least of my concerns. The visceral segment fenestration surgery I’m about to perform stresses the body in significant ways, bringing risk of major complications including stroke, heart attack, kidney failure, and damage to the colon or other organs if there’s an insufficient blood supply. Harper’s youth and good health reduce that risk, but if a livid scar is all she has to show for her time on my table, she’ll be lucky.

Spreading her ribs, I move aside multiple organs – lungs, colon, kidney, spleen, pancreas, stomach – in order to reach the part of her aorta that needs to be fixed. I signal to my team to give her medication to thin her blood, and clamp the aorta and major branches feeding the abdominal organs and kidney before starting to repair the damaged section.

For a moment, I literally hold Harper’s heart in my hand.