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‘To be honest, I’m just delighted you’re alive.’

It was said with a laugh, but looking up from her laptop, Helen realized that there was real concern in Christopher’s expression.

‘More or less,’ she replied ruefully, trying to focus on the images on the screen, which seemed to dance in front of her. ‘And, look, I’m sorry for running out on you like that. I should have said something, but there wasn’t time. She was in real danger …’

‘I know and I understand,’ he replied, smiling warmly at her. ‘Though I wish you’d taken me with you. I hate to think what could have happened to you if things had turned out differently.’

Helen nodded soberly, painfully aware now of how reckless her intervention had been, but grateful that someone at least believed her version of events.

Christopher accepted her story without question, clearly trusting her, which moved her more than she could say.

Few people seemed to have faith in her, or put any stock in her opinion, anymore.

‘So, what now?’ he asked, sliding her overnight bag across the floor to her.

‘I’ve got your clothes here, your phone’s in the side pocket by the way, but now that I’ve satisfied myself that you’re still in the land of the living, I really ought to be getting back to the office. Unless I can help in any way?’

Nodding her thanks, Helen dropped her eyes back to her screen, on which were numerous images of female faces, all of them decorated with elaborate, lightly inked tattoos.

‘I think the woman I saw last night had tattoos like this …’ Helen replied, turning the screen to face her lover.

‘It says here that they’re called Deq tattoos.

Young mothers mix their own breast milk with dye pigments to signal a change in their status, their hopes for their children, for the future … ’

Christopher pulled a face, surprised by this revelation, but Helen ignored him.

‘It’s common practice amongst traditional Kurdish communities. A kind of rite of passage thing …’

‘So you think the woman you saw has kids, is married perhaps …’

‘Probably, and given what I know about her ethnicity, her name, those tattoos, I’m guessing she’s probably from a Kurdish community in Turkey or Syria. But that’s as much as I’ve got really.’

‘None of the other shopkeepers in the parade had any CCTV footage that can help?’

‘No. That place is pretty rundown, the security basic, plus they wouldn’t give it to me anyway.’

Helen sat back in her chair, a heavy sigh escaping her lips.

‘Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day,’ Christopher responded kindly. ‘If you think she’s Kurdish, that’s a good place to start. If you can find out her full name, perhaps you can begin to work out what’s happened here, where she might be.’

He held out an encouraging hand and Helen squeezed it briefly. Simple acts of intimacy weren’t really her thing, but she was genuinely grateful for his support when the odds seemed so stacked against her.

‘You’re right, I’m not going to let it go. I can’t. ’

Christopher smiled at her indulgently, but Helen meant every word.

Just because she wasn’t a police officer anymore, it didn’t mean that she could sit by in the face of blatant criminality and danger.

The rest of the world might have chosen to believe that no crime had been committed last night, but she was determined to prove otherwise, to do what she could to shed light on Selima’s fate.

She couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t.