Rachel drove herself straight home in the pool car. She would return it to Tinworth Street and switch it for her own car on Monday morning. For now, she needed a hot scented bath to wash the odour of death from her clothes and her hair. But still, lying in the fragrant steam, the sight of Carly Wethers’ dead face kept coming back to her. She poured herself a glass of wine, put on some Ibiza chill-out music and sat down with the Harper file.

Were they looking in the wrong direction by scrutinising Michelle, and in doing so, were they mistakenly ruling out Gavin Harper? He might now be in prison, but could he have harmed Lola Jade accidentally in a bungled attempt at removing her from the wife he despised so much? She re-read the papers she had copied in the offices of Hepburn, Willis & Bell. Coming at them afresh, the commissioning of the psychiatrist’s damning report seemed calculated, spiteful even. Who wouldn’t come up short if our personalities were put under that sort of scrutiny? So much bitterness and resentment leapt off the pages. Each parent so determined that the other did not deserve to keep their daughter, with little Lola Jade herself getting completely lost in the process. Her photo gazed out from every news website in the world, and yet she was a victim without an identity or a voice. A pawn.

She looked at the copy of Oliver’s non-committal death certificate again, and something occurred to her. She had already recruited the best help available, but hadn’t yet got round to using it.

She phoned her soon-to-be-ex-husband.

Stuart didn’t pick up straight away, but called her back after a few minutes.

‘That thing I was going to send you, can I do it now?’

‘Sure, if you’re quick. We’re going away to Aviemore for the weekend, but not for another hour or so.’

He gave Rachel his email address and she sent him the post-mortem findings and the police report on Oliver Harper.

‘I take it you suspect infanticide?’ he said when he phoned her fifteen minutes later. ‘I can’t think of any other reason you’d be asking me about this.’

‘Correct.’

Stuart sighed. ‘Okay, to start with, there are a couple of things that make me think it was asphyxia rather than an intercurrent infection that killed this child.’

Rachel took a mouthful of wine. ‘Which are?’

‘The presence of petechial haemorrhaging just below the eyes. Tiny rash-like red dots, from burst blood vessels. And internally, there was bloodstained frothy fluid in the back of the throat and oedema to the lungs. These are strong indicators of smothering, both when it happens by accident and when it’s the result of a deliberate act.’

‘So you can’t be sure it wasn’t accidental?’

There was the slightest pause at the other end of the line. ‘Here’s the thing: homicidal smothering is very difficult to detect in a small infant. Accidental smothering by bedclothes is usually the culprit in infants under four and a half to five months, at which point they become strong enough to roll themselves over. Before that, they can end up with their faces covered if they change position. And this child – Oliver – was less than four months. So the petechiae and fluid in the lungs are not in themselves proof of foul play. To know what happened in this case, I think you have to refer back to the police report.’

‘Go on.’

‘A child can be smothered if the weight of the bedclothes is above them, over their nose and mouth, or if they’re face down with their face buried in a pillow, mattress or even a soft toy. But this was July. I checked the weather for that day in 2008, and sure enough there was a heatwave in the South East. The temperature that morning would already have been around twenty-five degrees. The police report describes Oliver as having been put to sleep on his back in a sleeveless onesie, with just a light woven cotton blanket covering his legs. Yes, potentially he could have wriggled sufficiently to get the blanket tangled round his face. But the mother’s testimony is of being able to see his face when she came into the room, because at first she claims she thought he was still sleeping.’

‘Which is inconsistent with accidental smothering…’

‘… because his nose and mouth were free of obstruction. Precisely.’ There was a voice in the background, and Stuart said, ‘Listen I have to go. I hope that was helpful though.’

‘Yes,’ said Rachel. ‘Very. Thank you.’ She hung up and sank back in her chair. If Stuart was right, then Michelle smothered her own baby. It bore out Gavin’s story about only wanting a girl. That still didn’t mean she could, or would, do the same to her daughter. But was this what Gavin Harper wanted them to think when he’d instructed her to ask about their son: that his ex-wife was a killer? Was he just doing it in order to deflect attention away from himself? Rachel felt as though her mind was being flipped repeatedly through one hundred and eighty degrees and back again.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the dissonant squawk of the intercom.

‘It’s me.’

Brickall.

‘Where the fuck have you been all day?’ she said to him as he came in carrying a pizza box and a bottle of wine. Then she saw his expression.

‘Fucking bitch had already done it,’ he said, pulling off his overcoat and flinging himself uninvited onto the sofa.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Amber. I went to see Patten first thing, as per your advice. To – you know – fess up. Get him on side. Only Amber had already spoken to him. Made a formal complaint about my conduct.’

‘Oh shit.’ At a loss to offer comfort, Rachel cut a slice of pizza and put it on a plate for him, finding a bottle of chilli sauce in the cupboard and handing that to him too, along with a glass of wine.

‘She’s basically really embellished the story, made me look like a full-on psycho rather than just, you know…’

‘An opportunist? A Jack-the-lad?’

‘Yeah, exactly.’

‘Well look.’ Rachel sat down next to him and gave his shoulder a tentative squeeze. ‘So you happened to bump into her near where she lived. That could just be chance.’

‘They’ll cross-check my PNC log-in though, and see I looked up her address. And I took her mobile number from the Bogdhani case file.’

Brickall hung his head. She’d never seen him so wretched, and with good reason. Breaching data protection rules and accessing personal data for non-policing purposes was not only a sackable offence, in some cases it led to prosecution and could mean up to six years in prison.

‘Look, Mark…’

He gave her a rueful grin. ‘I know things are down the shitter when you call me Mark.’

‘I’ll speak to Patten. See if I can get him to go easy on you.’

‘Fucking bitch,’ said Brickall morosely. ‘Not you: her. Amber Crowley.’ He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his trouser pocket and lit one.

‘You don’t smoke.’

‘I do now.’

Rachel went into the kitchen and fetched a saucer to act as an ashtray, placing it silently in front of him. She didn’t know what else to do.

---

Brickall stayed until nearly 2 a.m., and when Rachel finally woke on Saturday morning she decided that instead of exercise, what she needed most was strong coffee and the weekend papers. Until, that was, she saw one of the headlines in her local newsagent.

LOLA JADE COPS IN MURDER PROBE.

There beneath the headline was a blurry photo of herself and Leila Rajavi on the steps of Carly Wethers’ house, as a white-suited SOCO knelt beside them examining the front door.

‘Shit!’

Rachel grabbed the offending tabloid, along with her usual paper, flung down the money and ran back to her flat. Twenty minutes later she managed to get through to the publication’s on-duty lawyer and, by raising her voice and threatening sanctions against the editor, persuaded him to have that page pulled from later editions. A Pyrrhic victory: the damage had already been done.

---

Sure enough, first thing on Monday morning, she was summoned to Patten’s office to listen to him huffing and blustering about Saturday’s press leak.

‘Put a call through to the PCC and let them know in no uncertain terms that I want to speak to them. Then tell your team at Surrey Police to put out a denial that there’s any link between this woman’s death and Lola Jade Harper. Take control of the story, as soon as possible.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Rachel sighed and looked down at her feet, knowing only too well what was coming next. ‘And send Mark Brickall in, will you. Straight away.’

‘Suspended from duty, pending an enquiry,’ he said glumly as he came back to his desk to clear out his things. ‘It’s with full pay, at least,’

‘You’ll still be able to buy me a Christmas present then.’ Rachel gave him a playful thump on the arm, determined to try and keep things light, even though she was inwardly horrified at the prospect of losing her sidekick. ‘How about the Christmas party? Are you going to come?’

The MCIS Christmas party was taking place that night: traditionally a rowdy affair, with a sit-down festive dinner followed by drinking, dancing and ill-advised fraternising at a local club.

Brickall shrugged. ‘Can’t say I’m feeling exactly festive.’

‘Oh go on! It’ll be fun.’

‘Don’t be fucking daft: work parties are never fun.’

But he showed up that evening, and Nigel Patten raised an eyebrow then turned a blind eye. The whole department – civilian support staff and analysts, uniformed officers and detectives – made themselves look foolish in paper hats while they ate dry turkey breast with lumpy gravy and khaki sprouts, then a core group went on to Shapes nightclub, in a basement near Smithfield Market.

Brickall cheered up, especially when he saw Patten take to the floor and execute a strange blend of skipping steps and flailing arms to Kool & the Gang’s ‘Celebration’.

‘Patten’s reached peak dad-dancing,’ he observed.

‘Well, he is a dad, so I suppose it fits.’

Rachel hovered on the sidelines, nursing a shot of tequila and watching, until an assistant crime analyst called Tim Marshall dragged her onto the dance floor. He was very drunk, and determined to wind his arms round her waist, despite her attempts to keep some space between them. She sent ‘Help me!’ looks to Brickall, but he ignored her, grinning to himself.

Out of the corner of her eye she spotted Patten leaving the dance floor and huddling in the corner to take a call on his mobile, the index finger of his left hand stuck in his ear. When he had hung up, he scanned the room until he located Rachel. He beckoned to her to follow him out into the foyer that housed the cloakroom, where the noise level was marginally lower.

‘Sorry,’ Rachel mouthed to Tim, grateful for the chance to escape.

‘That was Nick Furnish in Intelligence,’ Patten announced.

A wave of relief washed over Rachel: she had been afraid that the news was something to do with Mark Brickall.

‘Apparently there’s been a potential development in relation to the hunt for Lola Jade Harper.’