‘Don’t be alarmed, Miss Chan,’ he said. ‘It’s only me.’

Her eyes were wide, pupils dilated, and he could tell she’d been crying.

‘How did you know I was here?’ she asked him, her voice fragile.

‘I was speaking to your boss, Miss Cornwall, about various matters and she told me. She also told me that you’ve left Mr Hannigan.’

Her expression darkened. ‘I was awake most of the night thinking about it and decided this morning that we needed some time apart. It’s actually been a long time coming. I’m convinced he’s still taking drugs when I’m not around, despite his denials. And finding out about the threat he sent to Rachel has finally made me realise that he’s not the man I thought he was. I’m not sure I could ever trust him again or if I’ll ever go back.’

‘I got the impression yesterday that you were prepared to forgive him in respect of the card, and that you felt that Rachel had provoked him into sending it,’ James said.

She shook her head ruefully. ‘You being there threw me. My mind was all over the place and I actually found myself feeling sorry for him. And I’m ashamed to admit that it prompted me to hold back a part of my conversation with Rachel.’

‘Why was that?’

‘Because what she told me I found so hard to believe. When I confronted Doug with it after you and your colleague had left, he said it was a lie that she’d made up to turn me against him. And I wanted so much to believe him but it’s played on my mind overnight, along with everything else. That’s why I came out here. I needed to think it through and decide what to do.’

‘Then you should get it off your chest, Miss Chan,’ James said. ‘Tell me what else Rachel said to you.’

She pushed her fringe out of her eyes and nodded. ‘Okay, I will, but I’m still not sure that it’s the right thing to do.’

‘Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?’ James said, desperate now to get it out of her.

She closed her eyes briefly before continuing. ‘It was after she told me about the birthday card Doug foolishly sent to her. I asked her why she didn’t go straight to the police if she was so concerned about it. She claimed that she phoned him after she opened it to tell him she knew it was from him and that she was going to do exactly that. According to her, he just laughed and told her that the police would never be able to prove it was from him. And then he warned her that if she made an issue of it, or even threatened to, he’d pay someone to do something bad to her so that the police wouldn’t be able to link it to him.’

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Douglas Hannigan was now back on James’s list of credible suspects despite his cast-iron alibi. Because if what Rachel told Erika Chan was true, then Hannigan had threatened her not once, but twice.