The room was showered with blood and bits of flesh and bone. It was a horrible thing to witness, and for some seconds I stopped breathing and it felt like I was swirling in currents.

Then I clutched at my stomach and rushed out of the room into the hallway where I dry-retched violently and felt sharp tears prick at my eyes.

The next ten minutes passed as if in slow motion. I stood in Slack’s kitchen feeling dizzy and nauseous, while mentally rewinding what had happened.

Drummond eventually came to join me, his face pale and drawn.

‘It’s probably already obvious to you but he’s just been certified dead,’ he said.

I nodded. ‘I’d have preferred it if he’d died slowly and painfully of cancer.’

‘Me too. But at least he’s finally gone and the world’s a better place for it.’

‘His gun-toting bitch is still out there, though,’ I said. ‘And we still don’t know where she is.’

‘There’s something else you have to know, Laura,’ he said. ‘I’ve read Slack’s suicide note, which basically says what he told us before he topped himself. But I’ve also opened the other envelope. The one he said contained a surprise for us.’

‘And?’

His expression darkened. ‘Well, it’s more than just a surprise, Laura. It’s a gut-wrenching shock.’

73

Laura

I could tell that she knew. It was obvious from the look in her eyes as Drummond and I strode towards her across the office, followed by a detective and two uniforms.

A fierce rage was burning in me, but I stamped on it, pushed it down, because Drummond had warned me not to lose the plot. But it was a real struggle because I wanted to wring her neck and tear her eyes out.

The bitch had blood on her hands. The blood of Dave Prentiss, Marion Nash, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and my Aidan.

She was the one who had given Slack all our personal and confidential details. The one who’d been leaking information to him for years. The rat. The mole. The animal who, according to Slack, had persuaded him to arrange for the murder of the detective husband who’d dumped her for a younger woman.

She should have known at the time that one day Slack would use it against her. And that it was probably the only reason he had agreed to do it.

She was sitting at her desk and it looked to me as though she had already been crying. She stood up when we reached her, and fragments of memory flashed through my mind. The jobs we went on together, the drinks we shared, the conversations we had.

It was painful to know that she’d betrayed me and the rest of her colleagues. And it had been the worst kind of betrayal because she’d been a party to murder.