Page 36

Reid climbed out of the taxi feeling pretty much as bad as he’d ever felt.

On the surface of it, what he was reading now confirmed everything he’d believed about Anna. The manipulation. The willingness to seduce. The way she’d put the story above everyone’s feelings.

And yet the truth underneath it all was so different.

Anna had been sent in there to capture the interest of an undergraduate, and then had done her best to be a friend to him, even if her motives hadn’t been totally pure.

What she’d said to Kit had been right: she’d done nothing to encourage Ryan Jaffett.

But that hadn’t stopped him from assaulting her.

And something much worse could so easily have happened, too.

Which made Reid want to track Ryan down right now and haul him to the police station himself.

Worse, it made him want to ignore everything he was supposed to represent and go and beat the guy senseless.

He felt wretched that she’d been put in that position, and worse that he hadn’t been there for her when it had happened. Instead, it had been up to Kit bloody Frankland to save her.

Reid had been ahead of Anna in understanding that Kit had fallen for her. Of course he’d fallen for her. How could he not want someone so sparky and smart and out of his control?

But the single worst thing was what else Reid could see: that despite what she was actively saying, Anna had fallen for Kit, too. For his clever, manipulative, charming ways.

It had been plain as day from the way she’d walked straight into that hug of his, but from before that, too. From every description of him. There had been a connection there from the start.

And if she’d fallen for him, it meant she wouldn’t have been able to see Kit clearly when she’d needed to. That she would have been vulnerable to him, and to anything he told her about the others.

Reid felt like emailing her back again, trying to somehow warn the Anna of two and a half weeks ago not to trust that feeling. But obviously that was useless. He couldn’t send something back in time.

Thrumming through all this worry was a growing sense that he was going to find out something about Tanya soon. Something that might be worse than what he’d already come to terms with.

If one of them killed her , he thought, I could have stopped it. I could have stopped it, if I’d got her to talk to me.

As he climbed the stairs to James Sedgewick’s third-floor room he had the dark, heavy thought that he might even be about to come face to face with Tanya’s killer in the flesh. And he felt almost glad to see James’s handsome face drain of colour as he opened the door to Reid and his badge.

‘DI Reid Murray,’ Reid said, his voice flat. Professional. ‘I’d like to have a quick word.’

‘Are you… definitely with the police?’ James asked, his voice tight with anxiety.

‘That’s what the badge is for,’ Reid said, smiling but without much humour.

‘Only…’ James glanced into the corridor behind him. ‘You messaged, didn’t you? And I tried to call the station to see if I should come in, and they’d never heard of you.’

Reid felt momentarily wrongfooted. It had never occurred to him that James wouldn’t just call him back on his mobile.

‘Was that here at Cambridge?’

‘Umm… yeah, it was,’ James said. ‘I called 101, so…’

Reid sighed. This could spell trouble if his DCI got told he was overstepping the mark. ‘That’s because I don’t work for Cambridgeshire; I’m with the Metropolitan Police in London,’ he explained, knowing there was nothing else for it. He held the badge out to James. ‘Here.’

James nodded, slowly, looked at him anxiously again, and then let him into a large, slope-ceilinged room.

‘Sorry,’ James said, handing the badge back and perching on his desk chair. ‘Always worry about things being scams and… I didn’t know the Met would do a missing persons here.’

‘There’s some suggestion that the missing person in question might be in London,’ Reid said. He sat himself on the edge of James’s bed, as there was nowhere else to sit. Despite being large, the student room was remarkably empty.

‘Are you talking about Aria?’ James asked, looking at him intently.

‘The young woman you knew as Aria,’ Reid agreed. ‘Her real name is Anna Sousa.’

James gave a slow nod. ‘Is she police?’ he asked.

Reid tried not to show that he was taken aback by this. He’d expected James to either be surprised that she had a double identity, or pretend to be. But instead, James had reacted as though this wasn’t news to him at all.

‘She’s… a civilian,’ Reid said. ‘You don’t seem surprised that she had another name.’

James gave a shrug. ‘She was trying to work out who killed Holly. I knew she probably wasn’t who she said she was. I was… glad she was doing something about it, at first. But then it didn’t seem to go anywhere…’

Reid scrutinised James’s face for a few moments. If he’d known about Anna, that would have given him a possible motive to wish her harm. ‘So you were aware of what she was doing before she went missing?’

‘Yes,’ James said. ‘It took me a while to work out. But the questions she was asking and the way she suddenly appeared…’ He sighed. ‘I got there in the end.’

‘What makes you think she didn’t uncover anything?’ Reid asked.

‘Some things she said at the May Ball,’ James replied. ‘She said she was sorry for letting me down. And I got the impression she was saying goodbye to us all.’

Reid felt a flash of something at that. If Anna had acted like she was going somewhere, maybe she’d left of her own volition. Or had she realised something bad was coming her way?

If she said any of that at all , he thought, watching James’s face. It was hard to read anything there except worry, and James had plenty of innocent reasons for that.

‘Can you think of anyone who might have found that behaviour a threat?’

There was a pause, and James said, ‘Yeah, well… whoever killed Holly might have done.’ He swallowed, looking slightly sick. ‘But I don’t think anyone got to Anna. I hope not. I think she meant to go wherever she’s gone. She left with someone.’

It sounded true. But then, James was supposedly a decent actor, wasn’t he? Though there was a big difference between student Shakespeare on stage, and lying under pressure.

‘You’re sure?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ James said. Reid saw his eyes going back to the badge in Reid’s hand and wondered if he was lying after all. Was that little tell because he was afraid of saying something false to an officer of the law?

‘Can you describe them?’

James looked into the distance, and Reid watched intently. It seemed as though the young man was genuinely trying to recall something. ‘Definitely a guy. Older than we are, I thought, but I was seeing him from the back. I think her height in heels, maybe?’

‘Hair colour?’

James let out a huff of air. ‘It was pretty hard to… Light brown? Cut quite short?’

‘And what time did you say they left?’

‘Straight after the fireworks,’ he said, immediately. ‘So that’s… just before eleven?’

Reid pulled his iPad out and, opening up notepad rather than an official form, wrote all that down.

‘The trouble I have, see, James,’ he said as he was finishing up, ‘is that I’ve been sent the CCTV at the exit and Anna doesn’t appear anywhere on it at around eleven. We’ve checked right up until the survivors’ photo, and nothing.’

He looked up at James and gave him a very flat smile.

For the first time James’s certainty seemed to slide. ‘I… well, I don’t know how… That’s weird,’ he said. And then he added, ‘Look, I… I don’t know. But she’s a really nice person, even if she had to lie to us. I hope she’s OK.’

‘So do I,’ Reid said, quietly.

James rose to open the door, and Reid noticed that his hands were shaking on the latch. A shake that ran right the way through him.