‘Hold on,’ Sadie interrupted. ‘If I wanted to get away, why wouldn’t I have gone to the Lakes with Joel?’

Stone waved her objection aside. ‘Maybe you didn’t want to spend time with Joel. Maybe things haven’t been too good between you lately. I don’t know, maybe you just fancied some shopping in Oxford Street. But the point is that when you leave, you haven’t heard anything about the death of Peter Royston. You come to Kellston and —’

Sadie stopped him again. ‘So what about the Gissings? They kidnapped me, for God’s sake. They locked me in a cellar. They beat me up.’

‘Do you really want to go there with the law? You shot Wayne, remember. Even if it was in self-defence, they’re still going to question why you were carrying a gun. It’s against the law, in case you hadn’t heard.’

‘So they just get away with it?’

‘He’s got a hole in his leg. I wouldn’t say he’s got away with anything.’ Stone rubbed his fingers over his chin again. ‘Anyway, you ever heard that phrase: What goes around comes around? I’m sure the Gissings will get what they deserve.’

‘And what does that mean exactly?’

‘It means you’ve got more important things to worry about at the moment.’

Sadie knew that he was right. If she wanted to get off the hook, she’d have to do some clever wriggling. ‘Okay, but if I came to Kellston on Sunday, where have I been staying for the past few days? And why do I look like I’ve gone ten rounds with Henry Cooper?’

‘Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that. How does this sound? You turn up at Oaklands, bump into Velma and she offers you a place to stay – somewhere cheaper than the guesthouse, somewhere more private. She works for Terry and he owns a lot of properties round here. She keeps a check on the flats that are empty and she offered to let you stay in one. That way she’d be making a few quid and you’d be saving money too.’

Sadie gave a nod. ‘All right, but what about the bruises? How am I going to explain why I look like this?’

‘You were mugged,’ he said, echoing what she’d suggested earlier to Petra Gissing. ‘A group of girls, five or six. It was dark, you were on your way back to the flat and they tried to grab your bag, but you held on to it. Something disturbed them and they ran off.’

‘I don’t have my bag – or my coat, come to that. The Gissings took them.’

‘You will have,’ he said. ‘You’ll have them by the morning.’

Sadie didn’t ask him how. She didn’t want to know. ‘Why didn’t I report it to the police?’

‘Because you’d had enough of the cops, enough of all their questions about Eddie – and as you didn’t think there was much chance of the girls getting caught, you decided to let it drop.’

Sadie’s head was starting to spin. Panic rose into her chest, squeezing the breath out of her lungs. ‘I can’t remember all this, I can’t! I’ll make a mistake. I’ll get something wrong.’

‘You won’t.’

‘I will!’

Stone reached across the table, put his hand over hers and looked into her eyes. ‘Do you trust me, Sadie?’

She stared back at him, feeling confused, afraid and defensive – and something else too, although she didn’t want to admit it. Grateful, perhaps. Relieved. Glad that he was here. ‘Why should I?’

He moved his hand away, sat back and grinned. ‘Do you know what I like about you?’

‘I shouldn’t think it’s a long list.’

‘You’re right,’ he said.

She waited but he didn’t elaborate. ‘Well?’

But Stone just shook his head. He folded his arms across his chest, his face suddenly taking on a different, more matter-of-fact expression. ‘Let’s go back to the beginning. Let’s start with when you first met Mona Farrell…’

They went over the story again and again, adding and taking away, moulding and shaping until Stone was finally satisfied with her version of events. By the time they’d finished it was after three and Sadie was exhausted.

‘So what now?’ she asked wearily.

‘Now you go to bed and get some sleep.’

‘Where’s Velma? You said she was coming back.’

‘She is, but not until the morning. I thought we needed time to sort things out.’

‘And tomorrow?’

‘She’ll take you down to Cowan Road and you’ll tell your tall tale to the police.’

‘And you think they’ll believe it?’

‘Not all of it,’ he said, ‘but it should be enough to keep you out of jail.’

Sadie traced a finger across the surface of the table. She thought about it, looked up and gave a small nod. It might not be perfect, might not be ideal, but at least there was hope. At the moment she was prepared to settle for that.

Epilogue

It was five days now since Sadie had turned down the invitation to have Christmas dinner with the Hunters and had gone instead to her mother’s house. There had been nothing very festive about the occasion. They had sat across the table from each other, picking at the turkey and making small talk while they tried to skirt around any subject that might cause an argument. As this was pretty much everything – politics, religion, the state of Sadie’s relationship with Joel – there had been a generous amount of dull, heavy silences. When the day had finally come to an end, they had parted with obvious relief on both sides.

Sadie paused in her packing, her hand resting on the clothes piled into the suitcase. Sometimes, out of nowhere, she would feel that sick dread pressing against her chest again. It came in the dead of night, waking her from bad dreams, and in broad daylight too. A shudder of what might have been ran down her spine.

The memories of her time in the cellar, her escape, Mona’s death and the long exchange with Nathan Stone were always with her. Some of it was blurred at the edges, other parts so sharp and focused she could feel them cutting like a blade through her mind. Her thoughts drifted back to the morning she had faced the police.

Sadie had woken, washed, put on the dressing gown and walked down the stairs to the room with the sofas and the magazines. Velma had been waiting for her. There was no sign of Stone, but her coat and bag were lying on the coffee table. Beside them was the holdall that she’d left behind in Oaklands after Eddie’s funeral.

‘How are you, hon?’ Velma had asked. ‘Did you get any sleep?’

‘I think so, thanks.’

Velma had brought a set of clothes – a pair of jeans, a T-shirt and a pale yellow sweater – everything slightly too big but gloriously clean. There was brand new underwear too. After breakfast, she had got dressed and they had strolled the short distance to a ground-floor flat just round the corner in Meckle Street.

‘Walk around, take a good look. This is where you’ve been staying for the past few days.’

And Sadie had wandered through the sparsely furnished rooms, trying to commit it all to memory: the magnolia walls, the tiny galley kitchen, the bathroom with its cracked bath and rust marks running from the taps. There were sheets and blankets, pillows and a gold-coloured eiderdown on the double bed.

They had left the holdall in the flat along with toiletries, more clothes and a Sunday newspaper dating from the day she’d allegedly arrived. Milk was placed in the fridge along with eggs, butter and a packet of ham. Teabags and bread were put in the cupboard.

‘Do you think the police will check?’ Sadie had asked.

‘There’s no way of knowing, hon.’ Velma had placed the key in her hand. ‘Best to be on the safe side, huh?’

There had been a tall Christmas tree in the foyer of Cowan Road Police Station, awash with tinsel, the fairy lights blinking. While she and Velma had waited, sitting on hard plastic chairs, Sadie had found her eyes drawn continuously towards it. It had seemed out of place, incongruous, in the otherwise cold and clinical surroundings.