‘Do you want to come inside and I’ll see if I can find him for you?’ Imogen said.

The woman clearly needed to sit down. She seemed exhausted and quite nervous.

Imogen led her inside and took her to the family liaison room before pulling out her phone and texting the letters FLR to Adrian, hoping he would understand that she needed him to come to the family liaison room immediately. She watched the woman nervously scratching the back of her hand in a bid to control her nerves.

‘Could I get some water?’ Abbey asked.

Imogen stood up and poured her a cup from the water dispenser in the corner. The door opened and Adrian walked in, but it did nothing to decrease the tension in the air.

‘Detective Miles, I still haven’t heard from my husband and I have a bad feeling.’

‘I spoke with him a couple of days ago,’ Adrian said.

‘It’s unlike him to go this long without contacting me.’

Imogen noticed Abbey shoot a questioning look at Adrian, obviously concerned about speaking freely in front of her.

‘I know about Parker. He saved my life and, for that, I owe him,’ Imogen said, removing the option for Adrian to try to lie to protect her. She had made her decisions, just like he had made his; she didn’t need him to try to cover for her.

‘I don’t know how much you know about what Parker is into,’ Adrian said to Abbey, ‘but he has uncovered a group of lecturers at the university who have been manipulating students, using unfavourable personal circumstances to control them.’

‘For what reason?’ Abbey asked, her eyes narrowing and shifting as though she were trying to understand what they were saying to her.

‘It seems as though they have some kind of point-scoring system depending on what they can convince their students to do,’ Adrian explained.

‘During the course of this investigation we found some emails from one of your old lecturers at the university to Robert Coley about you,’ Imogen said.

‘About me?’

‘Specifically about an incident that took place while you were a student at the university. I’m sure I don’t need to go into the details now. You know what I’m talking about.’

‘Which lecturer?’ Abbey said, losing colour from her face.

‘Helen Lassiter,’ Imogen said.

‘And what did she say about the incident?’ Abbey asked, her voice barely under control.

‘They were going to use it to try to coerce you into doing things,’ Imogen responded.

‘What kind of things?’

‘Petty crime, escalating into bigger things, maybe even murder by the end of it,’ Imogen said.

‘How much did she say about the … incident in the email?’ Abbey asked, immediately holding her breath afterwards, bracing herself for the conversation.

‘Enough.’

‘Who saw this email?’

‘If you’re worried about Parker, he probably did see it. They had been deleted from the computer around the time of the professor’s death, but our tech managed to recover them. I take it Parker didn’t know about the attack on you?’ Adrian said.