He turned, hand on doorknob. “Yes.”

“Thank you.”

“Are you all right, love?”

“Yes, why shouldn’t I be?” said Janet Taylor.

“Nothing,” the shopkeeper said, “Only…”

Janet picked up her bottle of gin from the counter, paid him and walked out of the off-license. What was up with him? she wondered. Had she suddenly sprouted an extra head or something? It was Saturday evening, and she had hardly been out since her arrest and release on bail the previous Monday, but she didn’t think she looked that different from the last time she’d been in the shop.

She climbed back up to her flat above the hairdresser’s, and when she turned her key in the lock and walked inside she noticed the smell for the first time. And the mess. You didn’t notice it so much when you were living in the midst of it, she thought, but you certainly did when you went out and came back to it. Dirty clothes lay strewn everywhere, half-full coffee cups grew mold, and the plant on the windowsill had died and wilted. The smell was of stale skin, rotting cabbage, sweat and gin. And some of it, she realized, turning her nose toward her armpit, came from her own body.

Janet looked in the mirror. It didn’t surprise her to see the lank, lifeless hair and the dark bags under her eyes. After all, she had hardly slept since it happened. She didn’t like to close her eyes because when she did, it all seemed to play over and over again inside her mind. The only times she could get any rest at all were when she’d had enough gin and passed out for an hour or two. No dreams came then, only oblivion, but as soon as she started to stir, the memory and the depression kicked in again.

She didn’t really care what happened to her as long as the nightmares – sleeping and waking – went away. Let them kick her off the Job, put her in jail, even. She didn’t care as long as they also wiped out the memory of that morning in the cellar. Didn’t they have machines or drugs that could do that, or was that only something she’d seen in a movie? Still, she was better off than Lucy Payne, she told herself. Paralyzed from the neck down in a wheelchair for life, by the sound of it. But it was no less than she deserved. Janet remembered Lucy lying in the hall, blood pooling around her head wound, remembered her own concern for the abused woman, her anger at Dennis’s male chauvinism. Appearances. Now she’d give anything to have Dennis back and thought even paralysis too slight a punishment for Lucy Payne.

Moving away from the mirror, Janet stripped off her clothes and tossed them on the floor. She would have a bath, she decided. Maybe it would make her feel better. First, she poured herself a large gin and took it into the bathroom with her. She put the plug in and turned on the taps, got the temperature right, poured in a capful of bubble bath. She looked at herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. Her breasts were starting to sag and the lard-colored skin was creasing around her belly. She used to take good care of herself, work out at the police gym at least three times a week, go out for a run. Not for a couple of weeks, though.

Before dipping her toes into the water, she decided to bring the bottle and set it on the edge of the tub. She’d only have to get out and fetch it soon, anyway. Finally, she lay back and let the bubbles tickle her neck. At least she could clean herself. That would be a start. No more off-license clerks asking her if she was all right because she smelled. As for the bags under her eyes, well, they wouldn’t go away overnight, but she would work on them. And on tidying up the flat.

On the other hand, she thought, after a good long sip of gin, there were razor blades in the bathroom cabinet. All she had to do was stand up and reach for them. The water was good and hot. She was certain she would feel no pain. Just a quick slit on each wrist, then put her arms underwater and let the blood seep out. It would be like going to sleep, only there would be no dreams.

As she lay there wrapped in the warmth and softness of the bubble bath, her eyelids started to droop and she couldn’t keep her eyes open. There she was again, in that stinking cellar with Dennis spurting blood all over the place and that maniac Payne coming at her with a machete. What could she have done differently? That seemed to be the question that nobody could, or would, answer for her. What should she have done?

She jerked to consciousness, gasping for breath, and at first the bathtub looked as if it were full of blood. She reached out for the gin, but she was clumsy and she knocked the bottle on the bathroom floor. It shattered on the tiles and spilled its precious contents.

Shit!

That meant she’d have to go out and buy more. She picked up the bath mat and shook it hard to get rid of any glass that might have lodged there, then she hauled herself out of the tub. When she stepped on to the mat, she underestimated her capacity for balance and stumbled a little. Her right foot hit the tiles, and she felt the sting of the glass on her sole. Janet winced with pain. Leaving a thin trail of blood on the bathroom floor, she negotiated her way into the living room without further injury, sat down and pulled out a couple of large slivers of glass, then she put on some old slippers and went back for peroxide and bandages. First she sat on the toilet seat and poured the peroxide as best she could over the sole of her foot. She almost screamed out in pain, but soon the waves abated and her foot just started to throb, then turn numb. She swathed it in bandages, then went to her bedroom and got dressed, putting on clean clothes and extra-thick socks.

She had to get out of the flat, she decided, and not just for as long as it took to go to the off-license. A good drive would help keep her awake, the windows wide open, breeze blowing in her hair, rock music and chatter on the radio. Maybe she’d drop in on Annie Cabbot, the only decent copper among them. Or perhaps she’d drive out into the country and find a B amp;B where nobody knew who she was or what she had done, and stay a night or two. Anything to get away from this filthy, smelly place. She could pick up another bottle on the way. At least now she was clean, and no stuffy off-license clerk was going to turn his nose up at her.

Janet hesitated a moment before she picked up her car keys, then pocketed them anyway. What more could they do to her? Add insult to injury and charge her with drink driving? Fuck the lot of them, Janet thought, laughing to herself as she limped down the stairs.

That same evening, three days since Lucy Payne had jumped out of Maggie Forrest’s bedroom window, Banks was at home listening to Thaïs in his cozy living room with the melted-Brie ceiling and the blue walls. It was his first escape from the paperwork since he had visited Maggie Forrest in hospital on Thursday, and he was enjoying it immensely. Still uncertain about his future, he had decided that before making any major career decisions, he would first take a holiday and think things over. He had plenty of leave due and had already talked to Red Ron and picked up a few travel brochures. Now it was a matter of deciding where to go.

He had also spent quite a lot of time over the past couple of days standing at his office window looking down on the market square and thinking about Maggie Forrest, thinking about her conviction and her compassion, and now he was still thinking about her at home. Lucy Payne had tied Maggie to the bed and was about to strangle her with a belt when the police broke in. Yet Maggie still saw Lucy as the victim, and could shed tears for her. Was she a saint or a fool? Banks didn’t know.

When he thought about the girls Lucy and Terry Payne had violated, terrorized and murdered – of Kelly Matthews, Samantha Foster, Melissa Horrocks, Kimberley Myers and Katya Pavelic – paralysis wasn’t sufficient; it didn’t hurt enough. But when he thought of Lucy’s violent and abusive childhood at Alderthorpe, then a quick, clean death or a lifetime of solitary confinement seemed a more apt punishment.