Human Remains

and they took Audrey from me and someone I didn’t recognise started asking me questions.
    I said, ‘He’s down there,’ and then I couldn’t say anything else because I was sobbing with it, the retrospective fear. What had I done? What had I even thought I was doing, coming here with him in his car?
    They walked me round through the weeds to the front of the house. There was an ambulance and several police cars and unmarked cars, as well as Colin’s Fiesta, parked outside the door. And, right at the back, Sam’s car.
    As I went towards him I tripped over a loose slab on the pathway and fell forwards on to my hands and knees. Strong arms either side lifted me up as I said, ‘Sorry, sorry,’ as though it was my fault, and my knees were scraped and bleeding. I wiped the grit off my hands on to my cardigan, still damp from the rain earlier. My palms were stinging.
    ‘Are you alright?’ Sam said, when he got to me. He took my hands in his, looked at the palms and blew on them gently.
    ‘I just tripped,’ I said.
    He laughed. ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant… God, I’m just so glad to see you.’
    He put his arm around me and we moved into an awkward hug. He was patting my shoulder. I stepped away, conscious of my grubby clothes, my still-damp cardigan covered in dirt and dust.
    ‘I tried to get here as fast as I could,’ he said. ‘I lost you on the main road. And then I got hold of DI Frost and after that it all happened really quickly.’
    ‘Thanks,’ I said.
    ‘He was having kittens. I’ve never heard him like that. He’d just read your email. When I told him you’d gone off with Friedland it sounded like all hell broke loose.’
    ‘Where is he?’
    ‘He’s on his way. Look, can you please not do anything like this in future? I’ve never been so bloody scared in my whole life.’
    ‘You weren’t the one in the car with him,’ I said. ‘Why the hell were
you
scared?’
    ‘I thought he was going to kill you.’
    I thought about the body on the sofa, wondered how long she had been there. How long Colin had been visiting her.
    ‘There’s another body,’ I said. ‘I think she’s been in there a long time. He called her Maggie.’

Annabel
     
     
    ‘I don’t want to make things difficult for you, Annabel, in the circumstances – but you do realise you put the whole investigation at risk?’
    I looked at Paul Moscrop’s fingers, both of his hands flat on the desk in front of him, spread out as though he were trying some sort of supernatural table-tipping experiment.
    The table didn’t move.
    ‘That wasn’t my intention, sir.’
    ‘Not to mention your own life.’
    ‘Well, I thought you’d have had him under surveillance.’
    He had no reply to that, of course. The teams had, as Jenna Jackson had told me, been deployed to another division.
    ‘Of course, without your analysis we might not have found Audrey Madison in time. But nevertheless, you are not a trained investigator. You’re not even working in Major Crime. You put yourself in a position of grave danger and I can’t even begin to think of what might have happened if you’d got things badly wrong.’
    ‘I know.’
    I looked up briefly at Bill, who was pretending to read the top sheet of the folder open on the desk in front of him. His cheeks were red, whether from embarrassment or the warmth of the room it was difficult to tell. It being early December, the heating in all the police stations across the county was at full blast. It was stifling in here.
    ‘The CPS have been trying to decide whether what you did constitutes entrapment.’
    ‘You can tell them I went temporarily insane if it will help,’ I offered.
    ‘I don’t really want to be here, you know, Annabel,’ he said then. ‘If it were up to me I’d be giving you a medal. What you did was incredibly brave, and very, very stupid.’
    ‘I won’t do it again,’ I said.
    ‘Good.’ He even managed a tiny hint of a smile. ‘I think we should finish there – everyone in agreement?’
    Bill looked relieved and nodded; the woman from HR who had a face that could turn milk gave me a glare but nodded her assent to the DCI. The union rep looked pleased with herself. I was hoping that was a good sign.
    Sam was waiting for me in the café where we’d had our first meeting, which felt like years ago but was only just over two months.
    ‘How did it go?’ he asked, when I put my bag and coat over the chair opposite him.
    ‘It was all over in twenty