“Where are we going now?” she asks eventually.
“I’m escorting you off the premises.”
“I’m still going to cover the story.”
“That’s up to you.”
“You think I shouldn’t?”
“Since when do you care what I think?”
She stops and I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m so tired of fighting about everything except the thing that broke us, the thing we should have but never did properly talk about.
“You do believe me, don’t you?” she asks.
The thirty-six-year-old woman standing in front of me morphs into the shy and scared teenager I knew twenty years ago. The quiet girl that my sister and Rachel Hopkins befriended, for reasons I never knew or understood. She was nothing like them. Girls were even more of a mystery to me then than women are to me now.
“You say that you got the call at five A.M. on the dot this morning.”
“Yes.”
“That you didn’t recognize the voice, and that you couldn’t even tell whether the caller was a man or a woman?”
“That’s right. I think they used a voice distorter.”
I can’t stop myself from raising an eyebrow.
“Interesting. So, why do you think that someone would have tipped you off about this murder?” I ask, and she shrugs.
“Because they saw me covering the first one on the news?”
“You’re not worried it might be more personal than that?”
She looks as though she wants to tell me something, but then seems to think better of it. I don’t have time to play games, so I carry on.
We reach the parking lot, and I see that the TV truck has gone. The place is pretty deserted actually, not unlike when I was here last night. I haven’t mentioned that fact to anyone, because just like being at the scene of the crime in the woods on Monday evening, I know it does not look good. The police vehicles, and the rest of the press, are parked at the front of the school, which is where I plan to take Anna now.
“Where is your team?” I ask.
“They didn’t know how long I was going to be detained, so I expect they went to get some breakfast.”
“I’ll walk you to your car then,” I say, clocking the red Mini I can’t stand in the distance.
“Gosh, you really do want me to leave.”
She waits for a response but I don’t give one. We carry on, each step a little heavy, weighed down with our own bespoke awkward silence. She doesn’t appear to see the broken glass until I point it out.
Someone has smashed her car window.
“Well, that’s just perfect,” she says, stepping a little closer, trying to peer inside.
“Don’t touch anything.”
I call Priya and tell her to send someone out, keeping an eye on Anna the whole time.
“Something missing?” I ask, as soon as I’ve hung up.
“Yes, my overnight bag. It was on the backseat.”
“Do you still think this has nothing to do with you? Someone, and my money is on the murderer, called to tip you off about the second victim. Now your car window has been smashed and your bag has been stolen. You knew both of the victims. Do you think it might be some kind of warning?”
“Do you?” she says, looking up at me.
Her face is visibly paler than before and she looks genuinely afraid. I don’t know whether to hug her or hate her. There is something she’s not telling me, I’m sure of it.
“I lied,” she says.
My heart starts to beat so hard inside my chest, I worry she can hear it.
“What do you mean? About what?”
“I am worried that this might have something to do with me, but I swear I’m not involved in any way. You must know that.”
“Okay,” I say.
I’ll tell her whatever she needs to hear, in order for her to tell me what I want to know. It’s a trick we’re both familiar with.
“Last night, I felt like someone was watching me,” she says, and I resist the urge to tell her that I’ve been feeling the same. “And, I know how silly this will sound, but I think someone might have been in my hotel room, moving things around. I thought I was being paranoid because I was tired and…”
I don’t need her to tell me that she’d had a drink. I can guess that much. I think I can smell a little something on her breath, even now.
“Was your cameraman staying at the same hotel?”
“It wasn’t Richard.”
“How do you know?”