27

The sound of the front door closing dragged Karen back into the moment. She rubbed her cheeks dry and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. The last thing she wanted was for Daisy to see her vulnerable. She got on well with her sergeant, but not well enough to count her a friend yet. Karen blew her nose and descended the stairs to find Daisy emptying her backpack of all the things that didn’t make it on to the supermarket shopping list that Karen had written. Three large assorted bars of chocolate, two family-sized bags of crisps, a macaroon bar, two packets of scones – one plain, one sultana – and, bizarrely, Flamin’ Hot Wotsits Giants. Karen had always hated Wotsits of any description. She loathed the way the aerated corn snacks stuck to her teeth. No temptation there, then.

‘I left the manuscript in the office. I didn’t see Jason, so I stayed inside the rules,’ Daisy said over her shoulder as she put her treasure trove in the cupboard.

‘After you’d gone, I told him to stay put with Eilidh. He’s not going to be in any fit state to scrutinise a manuscript. They’re putting Sandra on a ventilator.’

Daisy’s eyes widened. ‘Oh no. That’s really scary. How’s he holding up?’

Karen shook her head. ‘Not well. He’s clearly terrified.’ She looked away, staring through the window at the New Town roofs. ‘All he can think about is that Phil – my partner, I expect you know the story – Phil was in intensive care on a ventilator after he was run over, and he didn’t come out the other side. So Jason thinks this is a death sentence for his mum.’

Daisy stopped what she was doing and said, ‘I didn’t know the details about Phil. Poor Jason. And poor you, too. It must bring it all back.’

Karen turned to meet her stricken gaze. ‘It never goes away, Daisy. It never goes away.’ A wan smile. ‘I hope you never have to find out.’

‘Me too.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I’ll just crack on with reading Lara’s deathless prose, then.’ She settled down at the table, a block of chocolate Turkish delight beside her, and frowned at the page. ‘Stein must have chosen her because he thought she was so desperate to be a writer. It couldn’t have been because of the writing.’

‘I’d have thought that was obvious. If she’d had a genuine flair for it, somebody would have picked up on it earlier. Somebody who wasn’t looking for someone to kill.’ She returned to the kitchen and stared into the fridge. ‘I need to do something with those chicken thighs,’ she said, half to herself.

‘Spanish chicken. We’ve got the end of a chorizo and there’s peppers and onions. And I think there’s a sweet potato too,’ Daisy suggested.

‘Good idea.’ Karen grabbed the items and started prepping the vegetables. ‘How are you getting on with Lara?’

‘It’s not what I’d call a fun read. It’s all a bit immature, to be honest. Her protagonist is supposedly in a long-term relationship with a guy who’s suspected of murder, but honestly, it’s about as passionate as sucking a gobstopper. Very teen romance.’

‘There is a market for that, I’m told.’

Daisy pulled a face and groaned. ‘Give me half an hour and I’ll be done. Then I can read you some of the most toe-curling bits.’

Karen quartered onions, sliced peppers and was about to chop the sweet potato into chunks when a cry of, ‘Oh, fuck!’ rang out so loudly she nearly stabbed her hand.

‘What is it?’

‘You’ve got to come and look at this.’ Daisy beckoned her to her laptop screen.

Karen looked over her shoulder and read:

PART THE SECOND

If you’re a student of true crime, you’ve probably already read the official version of the events of the night of May 9th, 2014 in New Orleans, as outlined above. Trust me, the truth is far stranger than the fictions constructed by the powers that be. It had nothing to do with shrewd detection and everything to do with my pal Joey’s natural-born instinct for mayhem.

But what I knew about that night was only one small piece of a jigsaw I only managed to piece together seven years and three deaths later.

‘Is that not in Stein’s notes? Or something like it?’

‘Word for word,’ Daisy confirmed. ‘But look. Here’s the next page.’ She scrolled down and broken lines appeared on the page.

The only way I could make sense of what I’d seen with my own eyes was to throw out everything I thought I knew about Guy. I remembered an e e cummings poem that had stuck in my head for years.

let them go – the

truthful liars and

the false fair friends

and the boths and

neithers – you must let them go they

were born

to go

If I cleared out everything I thought I knew, I could start afresh and come to the truth that way.

‘How could Jake Stein have quoted these exact bits of text unless he’d read Lara’s manuscript?’ Daisy’s tone was incredulous.

Karen took it as a rhetorical question. ‘I suppose he could argue that he was quoting from her to make his story sound more authentic . . . ’ She wasn’t even convincing herself, never mind Daisy.

‘Not quoting so much as stealing. He was thumbing his nose at Lara. It wasn’t enough to kill her, he had to humiliate her, even if he was the only one who knew it.’

Karen stared at the screen, her expression grim. ‘He’d found his victim.’