She got up and went to the toilet. As she checked her reflection and waited for the nausea to subside, she realized today was the first time in a long while she didn’t have any plans. They’d never found the missing Cobalt 60, and Ben had denied all knowledge of it. The university wanted to draw a line under the scandalous episode, and had terminated Harri’s engagement a couple of weeks ago, shortly after the jury had passed its verdict. She needed to figure out what to do with her life.

She went to the kitchen and started making coffee. As she put her mug on the counter, she noticed an envelope had been slipped under her front door at some point during the night. She ambled over and picked it up.

There was no name or address, and when she opened it, she found a tiny USB drive with no markings. She went to the living room, sat on the couch, woke her computer, and inserted the drive into one of the USB ports. A folder opened almost immediately, and revealed a single video file.

Harri double-clicked it and her stomach flipped the moment she recognized the location. The camera was pointing towards a set of railway tracks. It was night, and she knew which night. She heard her own voice shouting off camera, and the image changed as the person filming shifted position. The camera swept over the railway tracks, up a steep embankment to take in what was happening in the road, which ran at a right angle to the camera’s viewpoint.

Harri saw herself and Sabih Khan chasing Alan Munro, a dishevelled man in ripped jeans and a frayed T-shirt. He was known to them locally as a homeless person and sometime drunk, but he’d never caused any real trouble. At least not like that night.

Munro was holding a kitchen knife that glinted in the street lights. He’d been threatening people outside the Red Lion pub in Stoke, and Sabih and Harri had happened to be near by and were first on the scene. Munro had a history of mental health issues and had been living on the street for years, but he’d always been polite and respectful to members of the public and police. He’d always tell Harri how beautiful she was, but something had made him snap and become violent that May night.

The camera zoomed in, and Harri saw the wildness in Munro’s eyes as Sabih caught up with him. She wished she could reach out to her old partner and tell him to back off. If he hadn’t tackled Munro, and failed to apprehend him, maybe he wouldn’t have been so eager to prove himself against Ben. Maybe he’d still be alive.

But she couldn’t change the past. She couldn’t reach out to him, and she watched helplessly as Sabih grabbed Munro and they both went down. Munro was agitated and enraged and high on something, and the crack of his head on the road didn’t faze him. He slashed at Sabih with the knife and caught him on the forearm. Sabih recoiled and it was all the opening Munro needed. He lashed out at Sabih, punching him and slashing, and soon Harri’s partner was on his back.