Age
34
Married?
No. But has a cat (Hector).
Personality
Easy-going personally, ruthless professionally. Lacks the confidence she should have in her own abilities (as Fawley is well aware).
‘She may look like Miss Marple must have done at thirty-five, but she’s every bit as relentless. Or as Gis always puts it, Ev was definitely a bloodhound in a previous life.’
Name
DC Andrew Baxter
Age
39
Married?
Yes, but no children.
Personality
Stolid but dependable. Good with computers so often gets lumbered with that sort of stuff.
‘A solid man in a suit that’s a bit too small for him. The buttons on his shirt gape slightly. Balding, a little out of breath. Halfway to high blood pressure.’
Name
DC Erica Somer
Age
29
Married?
In a relationship with a
DI
in Hampshire Police, Giles Saumarez.
Personality
Her surname is an anagram of ‘Morse’ – my nod to Oxford’s greatest detective. In the last book, Erica discovered she had cysts on her ovaries and was sent for an
MRI
. She also had an argument with another Thames Valley officer which has resulted in a disciplinary process.
Name
DC Thomas Hansen
Age
25
Personality
Just transferred into Fawley’s team, after
DC
Asante moved sideways into Major Crimes. Previously at Cowley. Shrewd, understated and effective.
Name
DC Chloe Sargent
Age
24
Personality
On secondment with Fawley’s team. She was previously in the
PVP
(Protecting Vulnerable People) unit. Tough but kind, hard-working and insightful.
Name
DC Bradley Carter
Age
23
Personality
Temporarily covering for
DC
Somer and determined to make the most of it. Ambitious and out to impress.
The other members of the team are Alan Challow, Nina Mukerjee and Clive Conway, in the CSI department, Colin Boddie, the pathologist, and Bryan Gow, the profiler.
It’s a perfect night for it. No cloud, and barely any moonlight. Though cold comes with clear skies – they said on the radio it could hit freezing tonight. But he’s done this before and he’s come prepared. The backpack is digging into one shoulder and he hoists it a little higher, then starts off again. His stride is sure, despite the dark: he knows where he’s going – he did the full recce a couple of days ago. All the same, it’s hard slow-going at night, especially with all this kit. But he made allowances for that, and in any case, this game is all about patience. The right time, the right place, the right conditions.
The path is winding up through the woods now, and he feels the earth give like mattress beneath his feet; generations of leaf litter compressed to sponge. There are owls calling to each other, invisible in the thickets above his head, and small animals moving in the undergrowth, and – louder than any of them – the thud of his own heart. When he breaks through the treeline at last he stops on the ridge and inhales deeply on the cold damp air, peppered with woodsmoke from the house in the valley below. There’s nowhere else for miles – the only sign of habitation is a scattering of lights on distant hills, mirroring the constellations. It’s completely silent now, out in the open. Not a wisp of wind, just the earth breathing.
He scans the sky for a moment, then swings down the backpack and crouches next to it, flicking on his torch. He pulls out his mount and night-sight and, his excitement growing, starts to snap them together.
Adam Fawley
21 October
21.15
‘So what do you think? I know Ben’s really young to be a godparent, but if it hadn’t been for him –’
I load the last of the supper plates and straighten up. Alex is watching me from the other side of the kitchen. She looks a little apprehensive, though I don’t know why: she can’t really think I’d say no.
‘Of course – I think it’s a great idea.’
There’s a photo of Ben and Lily stuck to the fridge behind me; his small face managing to look thrilled and nervous all at once, because he’s never held a baby before and is clearly terrified he’s doing it all wrong. It was Ben – our eleven-year-old nephew – who phoned the ambulance when Alex went into premature labour and there was no one else in the house. Certainly not me. I didn’t even know it was happening. Because I was in the cells at Newbury nick, twelve hours and counting from a rape and murder charge. I’m not about to go into all that again – I’m guessing you know already, and if not, I’m sorry, but I’ve tried damned hard, these last few weeks, to stop obsessing about it. Let’s just say that I have two people to thank for being here right now, stacking my dishwasher rather than slopping out a cell. One of them is my wife; the other is Chris Gislingham. Gis who’s in the dictionary under ‘dependable’; Gis who doesn’t know it yet but will be needing to get his wedding suit cleaned, because when Lily is christened in a few weeks’ time, he’ll be standing up next to Ben as her other godfather.
And right on cue there’s a crackle on the baby monitor and I can hear the little breathy snuffling noises of my daughter waking up. She’s a miraculously sunny child – hardly ever cries, even when she needs changing. She just gets this bemused look on her little face, as if surely the world isn’t supposed to work that way. The rest of the time she lies there in her cot, smiling up at me and kicking her tiny feet and breaking my heart. She has her mother’s blue-lilac eyes and a soft down of her mother’s dark auburn hair, and even though I’m as biased as the next new dad, when people tell us how beautiful she is I just think, Hell, you’re right, she bloody is. Beautiful, healthy and, more than anything, here. Against all the odds, after losing Jake, when we thought our last chance was gone –
‘I’ll go,’ says Alex. ‘She’s probably just hungry.’
Which is mother code for ‘so you wouldn’t be much use anyway’. She touches my arm gently as she goes past and I catch a drift of her scent. Shampoo and baby milk and the butter-biscuit smell of her skin. In the last few months of her pregnancy Alex looked haunted, like someone locked on the brink of terror. But that last day, the day Lily was born, something changed. She found herself again. Perhaps it was the hormones, perhaps it was the adrenaline; who knows. Alex has never been able to explain it. But it was the old Alex who worked out where the evidence against me had come from, and made sure, even as they were lifting her into the ambulance, that a message got through to Gis. The old Alex I have always loved, the old Alex who laughed and was spontaneous and stood up to people and could out-think pretty much everyone I know, including me. I didn’t realize it until much, much later, but a daughter wasn’t the only gift I was given that day; I got my wife back too.