Wondering what she’d got herself into, Harri shivered in the warm sunshine and pocketed the note. She got in her car and drove away from the village as quickly as she could.

Chapter 12

Darkness always seems deeper when you’re scared, the wind bites harder when you’re alone, and shadows take on nightmarish shapes when you are at your most vulnerable. Harri experienced all these accentuations when she returned home. The long dusk had turned to night and the wind had picked up and swept a broil of clouds over Staffordshire. She parked around the corner from her building and hurried along the otherwise deserted street with her front door key protruding between her index and middle fingers like a talon. The sounds of the city seemed so distant, and she felt as though she was in an isolated pocket of the world where anything might happen.

Hanley had once been an engine of the industrial world, but was now a patchwork of retail parks, offices, and apartment blocks that were separated by veiny terraces of Victorian houses. They had managed to cling to the world, remnants of a prosperous time now long gone. With the demise of industry, the town had become a place in search of identity, and, robbed of the qualities that had once made it special, it had floundered and transformed into another sprawl of chain stores, fast food mastheads, and branded pubs. It was the sort of place where a woman’s body could be found in an industrial bin and no one would be able to recall quite where she’d been discovered, but they’d all remember she’d been wearing a pair of Marks & Spencer boots with the heels cut off. Harri knew because she’d once attended a crime scene exactly like that. She realized she was in M & S boots and for a dark moment she pictured Ben Elmys standing over her body engaged in the bizarre ritual of cutting off her heels. She smiled at the absurdity of the image she’d conjured. He might be behaving strangely, but he wasn’t dangerous.

She thought she heard a noise and glanced round, but the street behind her was empty. She hurried along the pavement, and gripped the key even tighter.

You’re being paranoid, she told herself as she unlocked her front door. Am I?

She tried not to think about the information she’d been privy to as a police officer: that most murder victims know their killer, that women were more likely to be slain by someone they were romantically involved with than a stranger, that countless incidents of stalking or acts of violence trace their roots to online relationships.

She pushed the door closed behind her and checked it was locked, and her anxiety faded as she crossed the lobby to the mailboxes. She opened hers to find a sad collection of junk mail and leaflets. She didn’t bother taking them.

As she turned away, she became aware of something in the stairwell next to the lift. The fire door was ajar and there was a figure seated on the steps. He stood, and pushed open the door, and Harri tensed and took a lungful of air, ready to scream. The man stepped from shadow to light and she recognized Sabih Khan.