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There was only one car parked outside the huge sprawl of Philip and Marcie Sedgewick’s house.

Reid had readied himself for no one to be home. For Anna not to be here and for the backup squad car he’d requested to be as pointless as his visit.

He’d had some hope, though. He’d managed to put through an urgent authorisation to access Philip Sedgewick’s phone location at the start of the journey and the last ping had been here, at his home, only two hours ago.

Yet the Jaguar that Philip usually drove, according to Kav’s careful research, was not here.

He climbed out of the Uber and looked over the house itself. The red-brick building had strangely shoved-together sections that must have been built at very different times, and every one of them looked empty. There was no sign of movement at any of the windows.

But the place was vast. Multiple people could be hidden away inside.

The driver left as he was walking towards the door, and Reid hoped he wouldn’t have to wait long for the squad car, for a number of reasons.

He was out in leafy Great Shelford now, on the ultra-expensive side of Cambridge where cottages and ordinary houses vied with a few massive piles.

Philip and Marcie lived on what seemed to be the most expensive and manor-house-heavy road of them all.

And all of it paid for by Marcie , Reid thought, darkly. While Philip fools around with students.

He rang the bell and was relieved when a figure appeared behind the slightly crazed glass. It was Marcie’s tall, slim form, he realised. He recognised her from the photographs he’d been sent during the drive here.

Ryan’s phone had proved to have exactly what he’d suspected: a mine of images from the ball last year, including several that showed a very significant interaction between Esther and Philip.

Marcie looked, Reid thought, almost as glamorous in her lightweight fitted top and trousers as she had in the ballgown she’d worn in some of Ryan’s other photos. Though her hair had been longer a year ago. Her face perhaps a little rounder.

Reid readied a professional smile for her. She looked unflustered as she opened the door, perhaps expecting to see a neighbour. But something changed the moment she saw his swollen jaw. The bruising.

‘Oh, are you…? Are you all right?’

‘I’m DI Reid Murray,’ he said. ‘I was hoping to speak to Philip. Your husband, I think?’

‘Yes. Oh. Sorry.’ She shook her head, glancing behind him at the driveway. ‘He’s whizzed out. Had to pick our son up.’ She looked over his jaw again, her forehead knitting. ‘That looks recent. I’ve got ice. It’d probably still help.’

‘That’s very kind,’ Reid said, remembering that Marcie was a senior medic. ‘Sorry, am I interrupting? You must be working.’

‘I’m on paperwork for now,’ she said with a faint smile. ‘I can spare a little while.’

She turned and led him down the hallway.

‘Do you think he’ll be long?’ Reid asked.

Marcie glanced at her watch, a delicate, silver thing with diamonds set into it. ‘I’d guess a quarter of an hour or so?’

On the inside, the house was expansive and beautiful.

Marcie led him into a huge room that must have consisted of at least four original rooms knocked together.

It was now an enormous open-plan sitting room that became a vast kitchen, with floor-to-ceiling windows at the back showing off a sweeping lawn.

They stood open, and through them came an intoxicating smell of jasmine.

These people had serious, serious money.

‘Can I help?’ Marcie asked, settling herself into one of the sitting-room chairs.

‘You might be able to,’ Reid said, thoughtfully. He took a perch opposite her and tried not to sag too obviously into the cushions of the sofa. ‘I’m investigating a missing person. She vanished from Trinity May Ball.’

Marcie looked startled and Reid felt a moment of pity for her. It was clear that Philip had kept her out of all of this, just as he’d kept his affair from her. He wondered what else Marcie didn’t know about her husband. And how much more there was to know.

That had its downsides for Reid: Marcie may well not know enough to help him. But there was also an upside. If he could seed doubts in Marcie now, he might get her talking to him and giving away more than was good for her husband.

‘Her name is Aria,’ he began.

‘Aria Lauder?’ Marcie asked. She sounded both alert and anxious. ‘She’s missing ?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ Reid said. ‘Though of course that isn’t her real name, as your husband has no doubt told you by now.’

Marcie’s large, dark eyes stared at him with a troubled, soulful, desperate look. She looked so much like James. ‘I don’t… He must have…’

‘Philip has kept a lot from you over the years, hasn’t he?’ he said, gently but relentlessly. ‘Did you realise? That there were things everyone knew about except you?’

She turned away from him and he realised that she was trying not to cry.

Some part of her guessed , he thought.

Reid saw a box of tissues on a bookshelf and rose to get them. They were placed artfully in front of a display of photographs. Multiple prints were laid out in each frame.

Several of the photographs featured a man he didn’t immediately recognise, but Reid found his gaze lingering on him.

He was brown-haired and had the same large, dark eyes as Marcie and James.

But unlike them, his hair was cropped close.

In two of them he had an arm slung round a younger James.

And in one of the photos he was wearing military uniform and being presented with a medal.

She’d said she had a brother in the forces, hadn’t she? She’d told Anna about him.

Reid was slow turning to hand Marcie the box of tissues. And slower still to sit in the armchair again. God, his headache needed to go. He needed to work out what was bothering him about the photos.

Marcie took a tissue with a terse ‘Thank you’. And he realised that she had pride, as well as a softer side. He could use her pride.

‘I’m surprised he didn’t tell you about Aria,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t it have been useful to know that she was really an undercover journalist? I mean, Roland Frankland, Marcus Jaffett and Clarisse Thomas all know. Everyone else.’

He saw Marcie’s expression harden slightly. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Aria was never a student, though she does a good job of playing the part,’ Reid said with a half-smile.

‘She’s a very good journalist. And she’s also the kind of person who doesn’t let go once she’s realised an injustice has happened.

’ He broke off for a moment, suddenly sure he heard a sound somewhere else in the house.

She’s here , he thought. And he got to his feet and started to move towards the doorway to the hall, drawn irresistibly towards the possibility of Anna being here. Of her being alive.

‘Where are you going?’ Marcie asked.

Reid paused at the doorway, listening, and then turned to her. She’d followed him and was now standing in the big kitchen, her feet in sunlight but her face shadowed. Hollow.

‘Have they asked you to help them?’ he asked Marcie, quietly. ‘Did they explain why?’

Marcie’s jaw tightened. ‘I honestly don’t know why you think it’s all right to come in here and throw out… spite. ’

‘That necklace of Holly’s you found,’ he said, deliberately. ‘Did you ever realise that it wasn’t Holly who’d been wearing it?’

Marcie’s face changed completely now. It lost all its colour and half its structure. But Reid couldn’t stop to feel guilty.

‘Is she here?’ he asked. ‘Did they ask you to help hold her? Or did they lie to you about that, too?’

‘Hold who?’ Marcie asked, her voice full of a startling, extraordinary rage this time. ‘That– whore ? Why would I let her through my door?’

Reid blinked at her, stunned. There was another sound behind him, but he couldn’t even spare a thought for it because the woman he was seeing was so wholly different to the one he’d walked into the house to talk to.

‘Anna is a journalist,’ he said. ‘She’s never been a whore.’

You thought she was a whore, too , a tiny voice told him, and with it came profound shame. Here was his absolution, the moment where he proved that he’d been wrong.

‘She came to Cambridge to find out what had happened to Holly Moore,’ he said.

‘Maybe she did,’ Marcie spat, as though struggling to hold firm.

‘But it was just an excuse. I knew. All the signs were there. The calls, the overnight stays, the lies…’ Her mouth twisted.

‘It was her. She was all over him from that first night, and I could tell it had been going on for months. A perfect set-up with her godfather’s friend.

I could see it all, so I followed her. And I saw her– I saw her– at the Caledonian Club with him.

I tried to warn her off but that fucking bitch just smiled at me and went right on.

’ She took a long, shaky breath. ‘I wanted the truth from her. I wanted the truth, this time. I missed my chance with Holly, and I regretted it. I wanted her to tell me how she did it. How she tempted him away.’

Marcie was standing in front of him, shaking with fury and a pain so apparent that it made him wince.

It was then that Reid understood that Esther had been totally wrong.

James had never convinced his mother that he and Holly had been using their bedroom; he’d told her the necklace was Holly’s, and Marcie had assumed that Holly had been in there with Philip.

Marcie had known Philip was cheating with someone; she’d just been waiting to find out the other woman’s identity.

She killed Holly for it , he thought, numbly. And she believed Anna was the same . Marcie thought she was sleeping with Philip.

‘That isn’t…’ he said, and then, in a hoarse voice, he asked, ‘What did you do to her?’

Marcie’s eyes slid past him and, maybe on another day, he might have been quick enough to turn and pull out the baton he carried. Though perhaps not. Ned had trained for years and was not likely to be troubled by an out-of-practice DI with a stick.

In a blur of agonising movement he found himself spun round and shoved against the kitchen wall by his neck. In an enraging, horrible echo of the night before, his head banged straight into the wall.

Reid thought he might pass out. He closed his eyes and tried to breathe, almost relieved at the painfully tight hold on his arm. It gave him something to focus on.

Ned , he thought. It’s Ned. Why didn’t you ask where he was?

At that point he realised what had bothered him about the photographs: Marcie had an ex-special forces brother, and James’s bodyguard had come from the special forces. Something he should have put together before.

‘This has all gone wrong,’ Marcie said, her voice high and tight. ‘He knows about Holly.’

Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

Reid had one free hand. His only available weapons were a phone and a baton, in two different pockets of his jacket.

But even as he had the thought Ned reached into each side of his jacket, finding first the phone then the baton and flinging them both away.

Great , Reid thought. That’s… great.

‘You have to get rid of him, Eddie,’ Marcie said, her voice all but hysterical. ‘He’s– it’s all going to come crumbling down. Please, Eddie. Please. You can’t let this happen to James.’

‘That’s… that’s madness, Marce. You know it’s madness.’ Ned’s voice was not quite calm. ‘We don’t even know what the journalist has told people.’

‘Then we deal with her, too! What else can we do?’ Marcie asked, her voice sharp, and Reid opened his eyes, trying to turn enough to see something. He could only see half of Eddie’s arm. Ned’s arm. Whatever his real name was.

Reid tried to speak but the hold on his neck made it strangely hard, totally aside from the wicked pain still flooding his head.

‘There’s– squad car– coming,’ he said.

There was a pause and then Marcie said, ‘That’s a bluff. He was totally wrong about everything. He doesn’t have any evidence…’

Reid wanted to swear. She was almost entirely right, except for the squad car not being a bluff. Assuming they actually turned up at some point. He just needed to keep everyone talking until then.

‘Lots of– evidence,’ he said. ‘Email from– Anna. Sent on to– lots– people.’

‘ Anna didn’t have a clue,’ Marcie said. What had happened to the kind, caring woman he’d thought he’d met? The one Anna had written about? ‘She walked straight into that ball and let me stick a bloody needle full of scopolamine into her. She thought she had nothing to worry about.’

Reid felt a tearing sensation inside him. He couldn’t believe it. Wouldn’t believe it. That she’d done to Anna what she’d done to Holly.

There was rage in him, but, above all, despair. He’d let her die. He’d let it happen.

‘Marce,’ Ned was saying, and Reid could feel his grip slackening ever so slightly. ‘We can’t do this.’

‘I am not going to let my son suffer,’ Marcie said, her voice shaking. ‘And if you can’t do what you need to– what James needs you to– then please, please just hold him. Hold him while I do it. I will fix this.’

Ned’s grip on him tightened to the point where it was hard to breathe. Reid didn’t need to look round to know that Marcie had gone to get a medical kit. It was how she operated, wasn’t it? The swift needle to the arm. Clinical. Professional. Quiet.

And Reid wondered how he’d ever thought anyone else responsible.

‘Eddie,’ he said, his voice still half choked. ‘Ned. This isn’t– going to help.’

There was absolute silence from Marcie’s brother, and his grip remained wickedly tight. Even through Reid’s frantic, panicked thoughts, he understood that Ned would do anything for his family, and that his sister knew how to use that fact in her favour.

There were footsteps, and then Marcie’s voice again.

‘Hold his arm out. Please.’

Ned hesitated, and Reid used the moment to kick back as hard as he could in the direction of Ned’s shins. Some remnants of his training were still there, and he twisted just afterwards, seeking to break Ned’s hold.

But Ned wasn’t the kind of amateur Reid had been trained to fight off. He never even loosened his grip. He just kicked Reid on the side of the leg so hard that it collapsed under him, leaving most of his weight hanging agonisingly off his neck and arm.

He felt his twisted arm being straightened and pulled outwards and scrambled to get his other hand against the wall. To get his feet under him. Anything.

And then he heard another voice, one he’d genuinely believed he would never hear again.