Ottey called Sutton’s office; it went straight through to voicemail. Cross called Karen. She was at work but picked up.
‘It’s DS Cross,’ he said.
‘Hi, is everything okay?’ she replied.
‘Do you know where Angie is?’
‘I thought you said you got her into rehab,’ said Karen.
‘I did. Do you know where it is?’
‘No.’ She sounded a little puzzled.
‘If she was out, do you know where she’d go?’ asked Cross.
‘No, sorry. I doubt she went back to her old flat. The landlord threw her out. That’s why she was on the streets.’
‘Are you sure, Karen? This is really urgent,’ Cross insisted.
‘I’m sorry. I haven’t got a clue,’ she replied.
Mackenzie had called Billie Williams, who gave her the numbers of other recovery centres she knew Sutton used if she was full.
‘If Diana is going to give her a blood test it has to mean she’s no longer in a recovery centre,’ Cross reasoned.
‘She might actually just be doing a blood test,’ said Ottey, hopefully.
‘Possibly, but it’s more likely to be her last hurrah, because she saw Sutton arrested. She knows the net is drawing in. Let’s go to the office anyway,’ Cross suggested.
*
The office manager let them into Sutton’s suite of offices, which was locked.
‘What are we looking for?’ asked Ottey.
‘Her desk diary. She wrote everything down compulsively. Absolutely everything,’ Cross replied.
It wasn’t on her immaculately tidy desk. Ottey noticed that biros and pencils were all organised according to colour. But the desk diary wasn’t there and the drawers were locked. It was now 3.35. It took them five minutes to force open the drawers. The desk diary was in the left-hand top drawer. Cross leafed through the pages, which were filled to the margins with neat, tidy writing. Deliveries, calls, appointments – everything was written down with additional notes. They came to that day’s date, and there it was at four: Angie’s blood test, together with an address. Cross put the diary back in the desk.
‘We should get a warrant for the diary. We don’t want the defence to claim it was part of an illegal search,’ he said, thinking ahead in his usual methodical way to the court case and the admissibility of crucial evidence.
‘It isn’t an illegal search, don’t be pedantic. We’re here to arrest her.’
He thought for a second then took the diary back out of the desk. ‘You are, of course, correct.’
Then as they were leaving he noticed something about the box files that were neatly organised on the shelves behind her desk. One of them was upside down and protruded further out from the shelf than the others. It was the kind of thing that would annoy him and he knew it was something that Diana Coogan would not be able to tolerate.
‘George, we need to go, now,’ Ottey said with some urgency as he walked over to the bookshelf and carefully took out the upside down box file. He searched behind it with his free hand till he found what he was looking for. Then he carefully brought out an A5 book.
It was Flick’s journal.
*
The address was in Bedminster, not too far away from Hopewell. It was approaching rush hour and navigating the city traffic wasn’t going to be easy. Cross hated it when they used the blues and twos and Ottey drove out of her skin. It was obviously completely necessary when she did, as on this occasion, but it really upset him. He’d tried closing his eyes, but that just made him car sick. So he just stared fixedly out of the windscreen, terrified, as they drove, at times on the wrong side of the road and through red lights.
Ottey was actually a great driver, as she’d taken pains to point out to him on several occasions. She had passed the advanced police driving test with flying colours. This, and the fact that she’d never had an accident while driving in this manner, seemed to be of little comfort to him. He sat there, pale, gripping onto the sides of his seat with white knuckles, barely breathing. But this time it wasn’t so much to do with her driving as the nauseating realisation that he himself had inadvertently put Angie straight into the clutches of the killer.
They arrived at a large terraced house that looked like it had once been offices, and ran in. They knocked on the caretaker’s door, but there was no response. It was now 4.10. Finally a resident opened their door and told them what room the ‘new girl’ was in.
They burst through the door. Angie leaped out of the armchair she was sitting in, absolutely terrified. Diana was sitting opposite her.
‘What the fuck?’ Angie yelled, a tourniquet hanging down from her arm.
‘Has she done anything to you, Angie?’ said Cross.
‘No, she’s a giving me a blood test. What’s going on?’
Diana had sat there motionless, but Cross noticed her dropping something into her handbag. On the table was a needle and a blood-taking kit.
‘Just stay where you are, Angie,’ said Cross.
‘What is going on, Detectives? This is most alarming. I was about to take a blood test,’ said Diana, pointing to the kit on the table.
‘Diana Coogan, I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Felicity Wilson,’ said Ottey, who then proceeded to read Diana her rights.
Cross noticed that Diana was expressionless. He wondered whether she was expecting this. Had she been resigned to it after Sutton’s arrest? But why hadn’t she run?
Ottey cuffed her and told Cross to take her out to the car.
‘My handbag,’ said Diana, as Cross was moving her out of the room.
‘Your handbag is now evidence,’ Cross informed her, and they left.
Ottey now wanted to do something that would never occur to Cross. She wanted to sit down with Angie and explain to her what had just happened. Talk her down. The events had been very dramatic and probably frightening – two police officers suddenly bursting noisily through a closed door in that way. Angie was in a vulnerable state anyway, and Ottey didn’t want this to have an adverse effect on her recovery. She managed to get hold of the duty manager and explain to her what was going on, leaving Angie in her care. Ottey then bagged up Diana’s handbag and the blood-taking kit.
Diana said nothing in the car. She sat there as if in a very secure Uber. Cross was reflecting on how close Angie had come to a probable death.