‘You could look into it,’ Abbey said. ‘As long as all you do is look. He’s starting to creep me out.’

Parker walked up the stairs quickly, Abbey following. He pulled his trousers on and grabbed a jacket. She wet her thumb with her tongue and pressed hard on his cheek, wiping away the streak of mossy paint smeared across his cheekbone. He smiled again and leaned in to kiss her. Every time it had the same impact as the first, a sharp intake of breath before their lips met and a dizzying moment of adjustment afterwards. As though the universe had entirely narrowed its focus into that one moment of time, passing through the neck of an hourglass. For those few seconds when their lips touched, nothing else existed.

‘I’ll walk back to the university with you. Would I be able to sit at the back of your lecture without being noticed?’

‘Probably. It’s a big place and it’s usually at least ninety per cent full. He tends to focus on the first few rows.’

Parker grabbed a cap from a hook on the back of the door and put it on. He lifted her top slightly and placed his hand on her stomach. There was no bump there yet as she was barely three months pregnant, but she liked the feeling of his hand touching her, the sight of his scarred knuckles against her smooth white skin.

‘I’ll keep a low profile. Best to keep to not telling anyone about us just yet. I’ll walk with you a bit of the way then you can go on ahead.’

‘It’s probably nothing,’ she said, knowing it didn’t matter now. It was out of her hands. She had told him and he would look; something about Coley’s behaviour told her Parker would find something.

‘Then let me check. Where’s the harm in that?’

The harm was if it wasn’t nothing. If there was some nefarious agenda at play, Parker would find it and deal with it accordingly. Abbey knew he saw the world through a different lens to most people. She wondered if she had just handed Professor Coley a death sentence.

No. The only way that would happen was if he deserved it. Parker didn’t kill for the sake of it, that’s wasn’t who he was.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Present

Adrian and Imogen sat in the front of Imogen’s car; they had taken to having meetings in there, in case anyone else was listening inside the station. They couldn’t risk being overheard.

‘Where do we even start with this?’ Imogen said.

‘It’s going to be pretty hard while we are playing catch-up. We need to anticipate his moves and not turn up after the bodies,’ Adrian said.

‘These professors, they must be connected in some other way. What is it that they’re doing exactly? Why are they being targeted?’ Imogen said.

‘So, Abigail Lucas said she got the heebie-jeebies from her prof? Because he was being nice to her? Caitlin Watts’ relationship with Gillian Mitchell seemed to have a strong mentor vibe about it. Did Hugh Norris have someone like that? What do we know about Owen Sager, besides evidence of abuse and some past mental health issues? How about Helen Lassiter?’