Elliot cut her off. ‘Come with me. Come with me, and I promise I’ll tell you the secret before the day is out. Come with me and by sundown you’ll know why this man has such a hold over me.’

Chapter 39

Elliot wouldn’t tell Harri where they were going. He drove them out of Hanley on the Leek Road, which took them into the rolling hills north-east of the city. The rain stopped, but the grey sky shifted and swirled as though the clouds were being pummelled by an angry god.

‘Did he ever talk about your parents?’ Harri asked as they came to the outskirts of Leek.

Elliot nodded. ‘All the time. He was constantly telling me what good people they were. How they didn’t deserve what happened.’

‘Did they ever find your mum’s body?’ Harri immediately regretted asking when she saw the flash of anguish on Elliot’s face. ‘I’m sorry. That was insensitive of me.’

‘No. They never did,’ he replied.

They drove through the centre of town in silence, passing the old antique shops and takeaways that lined the route. They turned right onto Buxton Road, and were soon in open countryside again.

‘He spent a lot of his time talking about you,’ Elliot recalled. ‘You were an obsession.’

‘We dated for a while. I thought I loved him, but when I started investigating him it got weird,’ Harri confessed. ‘Scary even.’

‘Did you ever get married?’ Elliot asked.

‘We could both do with sensitivity training.’ Harri smiled ruefully. ‘No, I didn’t.’

‘He always said you wouldn’t. He told me you were destined to be together. If not in this life, then in the next,’ Elliot revealed.

Harri shuddered. It was the kind of talk she’d heard from unhinged lovers, stalkers, and serial killers and she didn’t feel good about this man being at large. She hadn’t thought about him for years, but it all came flooding back: their dates, the feeling of completeness she got being with him, the pain of the break-up, the night he’d cornered her in the lift, the strange poems, the walk on the ridge the day the social workers came to assess Elliot.

‘Did he think I was pining for him?’ Harri asked angrily. ‘A man who was responsible for one death and probably murdered at least one other.’

‘You said he was responsible for one death. Do you mean Sabih Khan?’ Elliot asked. He hesitated before adding, ‘What happened that night?’

Harri didn’t answer.

‘I dream about it sometimes,’ Elliot said. ‘I see them fighting. Sometimes he kicks out at your friend. Sometimes your friend just stumbles back and falls over the edge.’

Harri flushed with shame. Her skin burned with the sudden exposure of the past. She’d almost forgotten this young man had been there that night as a child.

‘What really happened?’ Elliot asked.

Harri took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know,’ she confessed. ‘I really don’t. I was angry. Upset I’d lost my friend. I’m not sure what I saw any more.’