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This was what he’d been avoiding for eighteen months. This roiling mass of frustration, confusion, doubt and worry.

Reid had walked away from Cordelia Wynn. He’d had to.

As a detective, as a professional, fleeing had obviously been ridiculous. He’d come to her with questions, and got answers. Just because they were answers he hadn’t expected, that was no reason to go to pieces. He should have been able to adjust.

But somehow hearing everything had been about Tanya had knocked the breath out of him. He’d felt like he might suffocate in that little room.

Cordelia’s face had been drawn with surprise as he’d mumbled something indistinct and run for the door.

He’d relived, on the way down those stairs, that last conversation he’d had with Anna. The one where he’d begged her to stop arguing with him about Tanya’s overdose and accept that she’d done it to herself.

Anna hadn’t listened. She’d kept on and on telling him that it made no sense.

He still remembered how he’d tried to reiterate the facts.

‘You know how much her degree and her hockey career meant to her,’ he’d said. ‘She was already on sertraline for anxiety; we know that. It’s not hard to believe that she would have turned to other drugs, too, when she felt like she had no other option.’

‘But why so much, Reid?’ she’d asked him. ‘Why take four times the amount of Ritalin the average person her size would need? And why take enough modafinil to keep her awake for a week when all she was trying to do was finish an essay?’

‘Because it wasn’t working,’ Reid said. ‘Because she’d been taking more and more for months and she still couldn’t focus!

’ he’d snapped, hating Anna for making him say this.

‘Look, the coroner sought a doctor’s opinion, and he said the problem with these drugs is that people self-medicate on higher and higher doses, not understanding the damage they’re doing to– to their heart.

’ He’d had to swallow and move away from her to go on.

‘One of the dangers of an overdose involving modafinil is also that it can bring on delusions and hallucinations which stop someone from recognising what’s happening to them.

’ He’d felt his mouth trembling as he’d tried not to give in to tears.

‘She wouldn’t have known to save herself. ’

‘She wasn’t stupid, Reid,’ she’d snapped back.

‘Neither am I!’ he’d ended up shouting at her. ‘What right have you got to think you know better than fucking everyone? It’s so– arrogant!’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry for not immediately bowing to your superior intellect,’ she’d said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

Had that been it? The moment when he’d realised he’d been wrong about her all along?

He shook his head. He was sure it hadn’t. He’d felt hurt, but not… not like his whole world had twisted.

And then it came to him, suddenly, as he stepped out into the courtyard. He knew what had made him look at everything differently.

It had been when she told him what she’d done that night.

‘Reid, you have to listen,’ she’d said, standing there in her tight black dress, which he’d already known must be for work.

Anna didn’t buy clothes like that for herself.

‘The whole investigation was inadequate. I got all dressed up tonight and chatted up DC Polwich in the bar the Cambridgeshire detectives go to. And he told me they never even tried to find out where the drugs came from. Never checked CCTV… nothing. It was barely an investigation, like you said in the first place. And we both know that’s not right. ’

It had hit him so hard, what she’d said about going and flirting with an officer. He’d always known she used methods like that when she had to, but she’d said they were Gael’s methods. The Ensign ’s methods.

And there she’d been, his girlfriend, willingly flirting with another man, and telling him as though it was totally OK.

He stopped in the middle of the courtyard, next to the brickwork sculpture, and tried to control the adrenaline flooding through him as he remembered it all in full. How he’d erupted. Told her every terrible thing he thought of her.

He remembered the hurt and anger on her face. How she’d told him she’d been trying to help. But her protests had come up against his absolute conviction that she’d been fooling him all along. That the real Anna didn’t care about him, or Tanya, or anyone else, as long as she got her story.

She’d seemed like a different person to the one he’d spent a year with, as if her mask had fallen away. He’d seen her tight, closed-off expression and it had been easy to say, ‘You’re just a cold-hearted, career-hungry bitch, aren’t you?’

He remembered the way she’d made a small sound as he’d said it, and it had felt like a point finally scored against an unassailable opponent. Like a victory.

It didn’t feel like one now, somehow.

In the eighteen months since he’d walked away she’d thrown herself back into finding Tanya’s killer all over again– into finding Holly’s killer, too. She’d ignored what he’d said… but it hadn’t been about her career, had it?

Anna had taken a big risk to do this. She must have lied to her boss, and everyone else at the Ensign . They would never have let her go off investigating something related to someone she knew so closely.

She’d been doing this for Tanya.

Maybe for me…

He recalled Seaton telling him that she would have rescued him if he’d needed it. And he tried to remember exactly what had convinced him she was a master manipulator, rather than someone using every possible means she could to help. Exactly why he’d been so sure.

But somehow, all he could remember was her hurt. And his own.

‘Fuck!’ he said, explosively, hearing it echo out into the empty courtyard. He felt like tearing at something with his hands. At this feeling, maybe.

Because he knew it wasn’t the frustration, confusion, doubt or worry that was cutting through him. It was guilt, pure and simple. Guilt, and a feeling of having ripped his own life apart for nothing.

You have to get it together , he thought, after a few minutes of wheeling inactivity. This isn’t helping anyone.

She hadn’t necessarily been right about Tanya.

That was the thing he needed to remember.

Tanya had been struggling for months. Perhaps for years, really.

She’d been his baby sister and yet hadn’t been able to tell him when something was wrong.

She had been a perfectionist who was impossibly hard on herself.

It was something he’d had to come to terrible, heart-rending terms with after the coroner’s verdict.

Little by little, he’d acknowledged that the flashes of odd behaviour he’d seen in her had been desperation.

The way she’d suddenly travelled to Paris on the Eurostar when she should have been in lectures, and then called him, laughing about it.

Her abrupt conviction that she needed to move rooms to a higher floor in order to be happy.

The change to a vegan diet, and then the absolute rejection of it a week later.

Even the last time he’d seen her: when she’d arrived at Finsbury Park station with no warning a few hours before the end of his shift.

‘Heyyy, big brother,’ she’d said, as one of their DCs had shown her to his desk. ‘How goes?’

He’d scanned her face, worried that she’d got into some kind of trouble while in London. Why else would she be here?

But she’d looked bright-eyed and merry, her cheeks flushed pink as usual and her short blonde hair wind-blown. She’d looked healthy and happy and glorious.

‘Everything OK?’ he’d asked. ‘Did you get mugged?’

She’d given a laugh, one that he’d taken as carefree then but which he’d later remembered as almost out of control. ‘Oh, is that the minimum requirement to come and see my brother?’

He’d given her a grin. ‘No, but you don’t usually seem so keen.’

At Tanya’s shrug he’d wondered whether there was something she’d wanted to talk about.

He’d glanced at his computer clock, acutely aware that he had two and a half hours left of the day’s work and a lot to squeeze in.

He and his team had been under pressure, running a big surveillance op, which would hopefully precede the arrest of a string of violent thieves.

‘Can you… hang around a couple of hours?’ he’d asked. ‘And we’ll go and get dinner?’

‘I… sure,’ Tanya had said, glancing around.

‘There’s a relatives’ room you can use,’ Reid had volunteered, getting to his feet.

‘Nahh, you’re all right,’ his sister had said. ‘I’ll go and get a drink. If you’re lucky, I’ll have one waiting for you.’

She’d looked as though she couldn’t wait to leave, but then, at the door to the stairs, she’d turned and said, ‘Just a couple of hours?’

‘Yeah, I’ll be quick as I can,’ he’d promised.

Tanya had skipped off down the stairs surprisingly lightly in her boots, and Reid had got his head down and worked as fast as he’d been able to. But less than an hour later, Tanya had messaged to say she’d realised she had to get back to Cambridge, and not to worry– she’d catch him soon.

Reid had thought about that visit over and over since her death. About how he could just have broken off and gone for a coffee with her straight away. Because it was so abundantly clear that she’d needed him.

Now, though, he found a trickle of doubt creeping in. Because he’d assumed she’d needed him to talk through an emotional crisis. That she’d been reaching out for mental help.

But might she not also have been scared? And scared of something very real?

Trinity College porters’ lodge called Reid as he was climbing onto the Cambridge train at King’s Cross station.

Reid had felt a strong need to be moving and doing something after seeing Cordelia, and he knew that it was ridiculous to delay going to Cambridge any longer. Anna had been there when she vanished. The people she’d been with were there.

It seemed that the porters had been doing their due diligence on the CCTV, anyway.