‘Carry straight on for eight hundred yards.’

She’d rowed with Si this morning. She’d picked a fight with him. And he’d accused her of getting obsessed with this psychopath. But was he right? Was she obsessed? She had always been somewhat obsessive: from Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie to Siouxsie and the Banshees and serial killers. But what he didn’t seem to understand was that this was the way she had to work: she had to get inside this woman’s head, slip her feet into Connie’s shoes. (Had Connie really put on her shoes while she lay there crashed out on her bed?)

‘At the roundabout take the third exit on to Putney Bridge Road.’

She drove over the bridge, the uneven tarmac echoing slaps against the car’s underbelly. She turned to see the view over the river. It was beautiful. The tide was high, the sun was out, and clouds moved fast across the sky. They’d found Connie somewhere down here, stark naked. She turned right and pulled up where she could. She got out of the car, did up her jacket. The wind was strong but not cold; it felt pleasant against her skin. She breathed in the air as she wandered down to the water and away from the bridge. There was a faint whiff of chimney smoke mixed in with river dampness and autumn leaves. The ducks were swimming between the sunken branches of the trees, the water beyond them moving at an incredible speed. She stood there, hands in her pockets, mesmerized by it. Flotsam and jetsam drifted past her and she felt comfort in the transience, the assurance that sooner or later we would all be swept away and replaced. She thought of Connie. The report said she’d fought the police off and in the end they’d had to Taser and sedate her before she was bundled off and sectioned.

Emma stepped back to let a procession of bikes go past in a blur of Lycra. The scent of male sweat engulfed her and she felt irritated by the certainty with which they occupied space. Why did no one ring bicycle bells any more? Were they not aerodynamic enough or was she just old? Beyond them, she focused on a log in the middle of the river, almost the size of a tree.

‘Emma?’ She turned to her right. One of the cyclists had stopped and turned around to look at her.

‘Emma Davis?’ He was clad in skin-hugging black and yellow, like a thin wasp.

‘Yes,’ she said, curious. No one called her Davis. Something about his smile was incredibly familiar. He took off his helmet. Oh my God. It was Dougie.

‘Dougie?’

‘Yes!’

‘Dougie Thompson? Oh my God!’