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‘Can’t keep away, eh?’

PC Drayton’s self-satisfied taunt was the last thing Helen needed, but right now she had no choice but to suck it up. He was the gatekeeper to Southampton Central, so she would have to deal with him, whether she liked it or not.

‘Don’t tell me you’ve been involved in another crime?’

Helen eye-balled him, trying to swallow down her fury.

‘Or perhaps you’ve changed your mind and decided to come back to us? Mind you, I wouldn’t expect a warm welcome, given the stitch-up job you did on us—’

‘I need to talk to someone in CID,’ Helen interrupted brusquely.

‘Can I ask what it’s regarding?’ the custody sergeant enquired coldly.

‘I’ll discuss that with them. Is DI Brooks in?’

It still felt strange for Helen to say that, even though she didn’t begrudge Charlie her promotion. It just landed oddly, as if each time she said it another piece of her own identity was erased.

‘Well, she wasn’t, but …’

Following his gaze, Helen turned to see Charlie push through the doors. She was in a hurry, barely noticing Helen or Drayton, and seemed highly agitated. More alarming still, she held a wodge of bloodied cotton wool to her nose.

‘Jesus, Charlie! Is everything alright?’ Helen enquired, hurrying across to her.

Charlie stopped in her tracks, bewildered to see Helen in the atrium, before eventually muttering:

‘Not really, but I can’t talk about it right now …’

She tried to move past, but Helen took her arm, stopping her.

‘Have you had that checked out? I mean I don’t want to state the obvious, but it looks like your nose might be—’

‘Broken, yes, I know,’ Charlie fired back. ‘And no, I haven’t, there’ll be time for that later.’

She tried to move away, but once more Helen resisted.

‘Charlie, you can’t possibly be thinking of carrying on working. You need to see a doctor, you need to be in A&E.’

Now Charlie paused, shooting a pained look at Helen, before diverting her gaze to PC Mark Drayton.

The custody sergeant was leaning on the desk, his eyes glued to the two women.

Gesturing to the corner of the lobby, Charlie ushered her former colleague out of earshot, the pair retreating behind a potted plant.

‘What are you doing here, Helen?’ she demanded.

Now Helen paused. She could sense her friend’s anger, but also her distress, her eyes glassy and uncertain. Suddenly Helen felt foolish to have come here, as if she were a child who’d stepped into a grown-up’s world.

‘I … I’ve got some more information about that assault I was telling you about.’

She was talking quickly, keen to get the information out before she was dismissed out of hand.

‘I’ve got the details of the van that Selima was abducted in. In fact, I chased it for several miles around the A33, before I got pulled over. Can you believe that?’

It was an attempt to lighten the atmosphere, but it cut no ice with her former colleague. Clearly Charlie could well believe it.

‘Anyhow, I’ve got the registration number, plus a link to a money transfer outlet, which the illegal workers visited. I think that could be a useful place to start.’

Charlie was looking at Helen as if she was speaking a foreign language, so she pressed on:

‘I also made brief contact with one of the workers. She’s Kurdish too, I think, with similar Deq tattoos. She seemed in real distress, pressed this into my hand as she left …’

Helen unfurled the scrunched-up note, the words ‘HELP ME’ crystal clear in dark black biro, before offering it to Charlie. But her former colleague simply stared at the piece of paper, dumbfounded, as if Helen had conjured up this prop to underscore her wild fantasy.

‘Seriously, Helen, you want me to launch an investigation based on this ?’

Helen was aware how foolish she looked, how pitiful her ‘evidence’ seemed in the cold light of day, but there was no question of giving up yet.

‘Of course not, but listen to what I’m saying to you, Charlie,’ she countered forcefully. ‘I found the van. I saw the workers. There were at least a dozen other women, who are being held against their will, forced to do God knows wha—’

‘And the woman you helped, Saskia, she was—’

‘Selima.’

‘Selima. She was with these women?’

‘No, but it’s the same gang, the same operation. I’m sure of it.’

‘What do you want from me, Helen?’

Charlie’s question was offered wearily, but her words were laced with quiet fury. So much so that Helen was at a loss as to how to respond, allowing Charlie to press home her attack.

‘You walk out on your team, throw us all under the bus, yet somehow you think you can still walk in here and call the shots?’

‘Absolutely not,’ Helen insisted. ‘I’m asking for your help. I know I have no right to do so, that I don’t have any sway here—’

‘Are you? Are you really ? Because it seems to me that you feel you can waltz back in here whenever you want.’

Charlie was struggling to contain her emotion now, Helen clocking the tears that pricked her eyes.

‘Well, let me tell you something. You don’t get to decide what happens here anymore. That’s my job, my responsibility and, quite frankly, you turning up here is not helping me.’

Helen stared at her old friend, momentarily speechless.

Charlie had never been so curt, so aggressive with her before, and it shook her to the core.

She was tempted to push back, to remind Charlie of all the services she’d rendered her over the years, but the sight of other officers passing by, clearly intrigued by their discussion, stilled her tongue.

‘So, please, if you have any lingering appreciation of our friendship,’ Charlie continued, her voice shaking with emotion. ‘Any semblance of respect for me, any sensitivity for my position, please … just leave me alone, OK?’

And with that, she was gone, hurrying away from her old sparring partner and buzzing herself through the staff door, leaving Helen stunned.

She could barely believe what she’d just witnessed, Charlie’s fervent emotion and outright hostility shocking her to the core.

Was Charlie really calling time on their longstanding friendship? Was this the end of the line?

Hurrying away, she ignored the smirking PC Drayton, as furious with him as she was with herself.

Following her desperate pursuit this morning, she had come here with high hopes, but was leaving empty-handed.

Staring down at the accusing piece of paper in her hand, Helen suddenly felt utterly at a loss.

She had sacrificed a friendship, achieving absolutely nothing in the process.

What was her next move? How on earth could she find the missing woman now?

And what would be her fate if she couldn’t?