Chapter Five

Adrian lay in Imogen’s bed. His house had felt haunted since he lost Lucy, the girl he had fallen for, the girl he’d barely had enough time to get to know, the girl who had been killed to teach him a lesson. It seemed as though that haunted feeling was following him around though; maybe it wasn’t the house at all. Maybe it was him.

Behind him, the door opened. Imogen walked into the room and slid under the covers. White T-shirt and bare legs. He turned and stretched his arm out for her to rest her head on. Neither one of them liked being alone and so this filled a need, and they could trust each other with it.

Adrian was having one of those rare moments of simplicity. He wondered why they felt like they needed to keep this a secret, not just from the rest of the world, their friends and families – but from each other, from themselves. It was as though there was something wrong with this platonic intimacy, as though it were weird because they weren’t ripping each other’s clothes off. It almost made him feel dirty in a way that sex wouldn’t, more complicated, less understandable. Why would anyone want this? They never spoke about it; it was a silent agreement between the two of them. They had yet to acknowledge it even happened outside of this house. This was a moment, in context, that didn’t exist anywhere else. They drifted off together and in the morning one of them would go before the other awoke.

Adrian’s phone rang at six thirty a.m., a whole hour before his alarm was due to wake him. He looked at the screen, it was Denise. The bed was empty.

‘Denise? Why are you calling me?’ Adrian said quietly before realising that Imogen wasn’t next to him and so he didn’t need to keep his voice down.

‘Good morning, sunshine.’

‘Get on with it,’ he snapped.

‘There’s been a murder up at the university.’

‘What?’

‘The call just came in. I thought you might want to get up there. I tried to call you before the new DI got up there, but DCI Kapoor called him and asked him to deal with it.’

‘So, he’s already there?’

‘Yeah, him and DS Grey.’

‘What?’ he said, managing to soften it a moment before it came out of his mouth.

‘She said she tried to call you, but you didn’t answer.’

‘I’m on my way.’ He hung up and jumped out of Imogen’s bed.

Adrian pulled his jeans on and roughly pulled back the sheets, noticing the full mug of coffee on the side table. He picked it up and it was still warm; she hadn’t long left. This was her apology. He drank it and left it on the bedside table.

At the university it didn’t take him long to find them, and as he walked through the halls of the humanities department, he could hear Imogen speaking before he saw her. He turned the corner to see her standing next to DI Matt Walsh, the newbie in CID. He must have been approaching fifty years old, with white-grey hair, but somehow still quite youthful in appearance. He wore jeans and a blazer, and his hair was thick and floppy, reminiscent of the nineties somewhat.