I’m back at the station and Ken Woods collars me for an update. He’s looking pensive as I sit opposite him; it’s a familiar look yet it still unsettles me. He’s getting pressure from the top, I can tell. It’s a domino effect in this game: his boss leans on him for results, he leans on me, and I lean on the team. Tic-tac-toe.

‘We’ve got a serial killer on our hands, Dan,’ he says, like I haven’t deduced this very fact for myself already. ‘The same MO by all accounts… Verralis is doing his nut. Says we can’t afford any bad press and that he wants this tied up fast.’ Verralis is the boss’s boss. The Chief Commander. A man so beholden to the hard work of others to maintain his good reputation that he’s forgotten what it’s like on the ground.

‘Any news on this missing Joanne Harper?’ Ken shuffles some papers on his desk and looks at me over the rim of his glasses.

‘It’s Rebecca Harper, Sir,’ I correct him, ‘and no positive ID yet. The security guard who found Karen, he’s provided us with CCTV footage, so we’ll go through it and then put an APB out on her, bring her in. I suspect she’s not gone far. The estate agent says she told him she was putting some stuff into storage while she was away on business.’

‘Good, well, find the lock-up place and see what that turns up. Bloody hell – if this is our woman she could be sunning herself in the Costa del Sol by now.’

I shake my head. ‘My intuition tells me she isn’t.’

Woods snorts. ‘It’s not that I don’t trust your hunches, Dan, it’s just that… well, we can’t afford not to cover our backsides.’

I feel annoyed. Deflated. Clearly this isn’t about the victims; it’s about not looking bad in the press; it’s about how we’re perceived in the eyes of those who matter, or who Woods’ believes matter.

He sighs. ‘Anyway, your intuition—’

‘Yes, Sir. My intuition tells me she hasn’t finished yet.’

‘Finished? Finished what, murdering people? Yeah, well it’s our job to make sure she has, that she bloody well does finish.’

‘She hasn’t completed the story yet.’

Woods looks at me like I’ve just fallen from the sky, an expression that shouldn’t but does give me a tiny slither of pleasure.

‘Care to elaborate, Riley?’

‘Goldilocks,’ I explain. ‘Goldilocks and the three bears: Baxter was Daddy Bear, Karen Walker was Mummy Bear and so—’

‘Jesus Christ, Riley.’ Woods is staring at me with a grave expression that might make me want to laugh were the situation not so dire. For such a serious man he has a rather comic face, rubbery like a Spitting Image puppet, almost a caricature. He gets up from his chair, an indication of the seriousness of the matter. Woods’ desk is like a shield to him; away from it he appears far less threatening and important, something I think even he is aware of.

‘The press will go berserk.’

I tip my head sideways. No doubt. ‘Once the results of the post-mortem and forensics come back, I’ll release the news to the public – and Rebecca’s photo once we get it. It’s in our benefit. Someone will know where she is or will have seen her. Someone will come forward. And if she’s nothing to hide she’ll come forward herself.’

‘We need to act quickly, Riley.’

‘The team have alerted local schools and nurseries – it’s the best we can do right now.’

Woods rubs his forehead. ‘You think she’s acting out the fantasy of a nursery rhyme?’

‘Technically it’s a fairy tale,’ I correct him.

‘Nursery rhyme, fairy tale, it’s all the bloody same Riley,’ he barks. It’s worse than his bite though.

‘Goldilocks and the three bears… Daddy Bear, Mummy Bear and—’

‘Yes… yes… I know how the story goes,’ he snaps, ‘it’s the ending I’m worried about.’

‘She runs off into the woods, Sir,’ I say, facetiously, ‘the bears chase her away.’

He affords me a humoured look. He’s alright really. Woods pretends he wants an easy life. But he chose the wrong profession for that and he knows it. He thrives off the drama, the pressure, without it he wouldn’t feel alive. He’s misrepresenting himself. That said, Woods feels like he’s done his time on the ground – and to be fair, he has – and now he just wants to see out the rest of his career on a high, on the back of the hard work of others. He’s earned that right really, just as I may do one day. But try as I might, I cannot imagine myself as a Woods character; part of an all-boys club, back-slapping each other over rounds of golf, even if I’ve earned the stripes. In that respect he’s a TV cliché. And I promised myself, and Rach, that I’d never become one of those.

‘So, is that it, Sir?’ I’m keen to get on. Work to do.

‘No, no it isn’t,’ he replies, but his tone is slightly softer which intrigues me. ‘Sit down will you, Dan?’

I do as he says, sensing I have little option.

Wood inhales deeply. ‘There’s been a complaint.’

I blink at him. ‘A complaint?’

‘Yes… about you.’

‘Me?’

‘I’ve had Craig Mathers’ father on the phone. Says you’ve been harassing his wife.’

I visibly recoil. ‘That’s a lie, Sir. I’ve… I’ve not been anywhere near Mathers’ mother.’

He’s silent for a moment. ‘I didn’t say Mathers’ mother, I said his wife.’

I don’t follow.

‘You were seen Dan, parked outside their address. They wrote down your bloody reg number for God’s sake. Mathers’ parents divorced while he was inside. He’s remarried and the new wife saw you watching the house while she was out walking the dog, put the willies up her.’

I inwardly smile. The Mathers’ marriage broke down. I’m glad. I hope the whole thing destroyed their lives like it has done mine, and of course, Rachel’s.

‘I see.’

‘Why were you there, Dan?’

He meets my eyes again but stays silent. He’s using my own trick on me to get me to talk.

‘I need closure, Sir. I need to look him in the eyes.’

Woods raises his eyebrows. ‘And you think that’ll give you closure do you? Wasn’t the trial enough?’

‘I wanted, I want, to be straight with you, Sir. I need to see him.’

I see Ken Woods almost change before my eyes then, his expression visibly softens. ‘Dan, do you really think it’s a good idea? Turning up on Mathers’ doorstep? You know it could be classed as harassment or intimidation.’

‘I don’t intend to harass him Sir. I just want to talk to him.’

‘And what if he doesn’t? Want to talk to you I mean? What then?’

‘I’m under no illusion, Sir. If he won’t see me he won’t see me. There’s nothing I can do about that.’

Woods shakes his head.

‘I know you Dan Riley, you’re not the type of man who takes no for an answer, which is why you’re one of the best bloody coppers I’ve got.’

This is the closest thing to a compliment I’ve ever heard from Woods and it blindsides me momentarily.

‘I appreciate that Sir, really. But this is something I have to do.’

‘Dan’, he uses my Christian name again, ‘it’s common knowledge, as clear as the credit-card bill my wife runs up each month, that you loved that girl and you’ve suffered greatly since her passing. People see it; they sense it, they feel it, it’s, it’s…’

‘It’s what?’ I ask. I thought I had done a good job of hiding my pain and I feel a bit put out. Have people been pitying me, whispering behind my back. ‘Look, there’s the one who lost his girlfriend in the motorbike accident and can’t get over it, poor bastard’? I’ve maintained my professionalism; I stayed in the job; I returned to work just three weeks after Rachel’s death, and I’ve got results since. They’ve fuck all to complain about.

‘It’s inked on you like a tattoo,’ Woods says, somewhat expressively, for him anyway. ‘Not a day goes by when you don’t talk about her to someone… the very fact that you’ve managed to get the results you have, the very fact you’ve delivered, it’s the only reason I haven’t signed you off because whatever therapy you’ve been having hasn’t worked.’

I sit there, stunned. I let his words hang above us, try to absorb them. Pretend he’s not saying them and they’re not right. Is he right? I think of my dad and what he would undoubtedly say. Does it matter if he is son, unrepentant, remember?

‘So I’ve gotten the results and my pain can be overlooked,’ I say, ‘as a fair trade-off. I guess if I hadn’t had the results then my pain would count for fuck all and I’d be on leave, Sir?’

Woods has the grace to wince. ‘You should know by now I don’t make the rules.’

‘And what if you did, Sir?’ I attempt to keep the sneer from my voice but fail.

Woods gets up again. He comes round to my side of the desk and places his hands on it, in front of me. ‘Then I would say you’re the best copper I’ve got, maybe have ever had, on my team, and that I understand your pain, or want to, like it’s my own because whatever you might think of me, Daniel Riley, I’m nobody’s fool, and I haven’t got to where I have just to play fucking golf with a bunch of old conservative, smug, self-satisfied bastards.’

Bloody hell, he can add mind reader to his list of skills then.

He’s in my face now, and I imagine him as a younger DI, like me, and how intimidating yet paradoxically human he might’ve come across in interview. I see his absolute brilliance in that brief moment, possibly for the first time.

‘Don’t go there again, Dan. Stay away. It won’t bring her back.’

I go to speak.

‘I’m arranging for you to have more therapy, at the Met’s expense, of course, this guy’s supposed to be the best, he’ll help you, specialises in grief apparently.’

I bite my tongue.

‘We’ll get you on a programme as soon as this case is dealt with… but you find this Goldilocks first. We’ve got a serial killer at large acting out some fairy-tale nightmare and we both know how bad that is for business.’

Bad for business. Yeah, and pretty shit for the families too.

‘Go and have breakfast,’ he says, already looking down at his paperwork, the emotion all but disappeared from his voice.

‘Yes Sir,’ I say, the facetiousness evident in my voice. ‘Can I bring you up some porridge?’