Page 101 of The Twenty (Major Crimes)

He nods. “Thank you.” She goes back into the house to fetch it and passes it to him: an innocuous piece of metal in his palm. He leans forward and they kiss, long and gentle, a promise of more to come.

“I’ll call you,” he says, and he walks out to his car.

* * *

He knows where the surgery is—everyone does. It’s entrenched in local folklore, the place people point at when they drive past. From the outside, it looks normal. A boarded-up, anonymous frontage, a nail bar on one side and a charity shop on the other. Car parking spaces line up outside, and Adam pulls into one, then sits, looking at the door.

He’s officially off the case; he shouldn’t be here. But maybe, just maybe, if he finds something useful in all this mess, then he could be redeemed slightly in Marsh’s eyes.

He gets out of the car, glances around, then puts the key in the lock. It resists at first, then turns. He pushes it open.

He’s greeted by a rush of cold air. A gust of wind picks up dust from the floor and swirls it around, highlighted by the unwelcome daylight. Adam steps in and closes the door behind him.

It’s dim inside, the only light coming from the gaps around the boards over the windows. He walks through to the reception area—a few metal chairs stacked in one corner, a large, high wooden barrier marking off where receptionists would have checked in patients. A few old posters about the flu jab flutter on a notice board. It’s indistinguishable from any other GP’s waiting room in England.

Adam walks through into a corridor. Doors line either side. He opens one, and it’s a consultation room, empty except for a rusted examination couch. The next is the same. He doubles back and opens the one marked “Private”: it’s the main office, and he lets out a relieved sigh. Stacked high in the middle are filing boxes. Confidentiality ignored, here are the records for all of Cole’s patients. He opens the lid of the closest and pulls one out: a tan envelope, top open, scribbled handwritten cards inside. If they want to know if Cole had been doing a Shipman, here are the answers.

He’s preparing to make a call, to sort arrangements for these to be transported to somewhere safe, when he hears a noise. A banging, repetitive and loud.

He frowns and makes his way toward it. Down the long corridor, wind whistling through, air moving where previously everything had been still.

“Hello?” he calls. No one else should be here. Someone homeless maybe, taking refuge from the cold.

He walks further. And then he sees it, the back door swinging on its hinges. Blown by the wind, it slams, then opens again, hitting the wall on the opposite side. He frowns, and pulls it shut. The lock is broken, so it won’t stay that way for long.

He stops, listens again. Everything is quiet. Had this been open all along, waiting for someone to close it, or is somebody here?

And then he hears it. A shuffle of footsteps, a sniff. He’s definitely not alone. He fingers his phone in his pocket. He should call it in. Get a few uniforms to back him up. But he’s being ridiculous. It’s nothing. He’s a grown man, a DCI. How much fun would Response and Patrol have, mocking him for being too scared to check it out himself.

He hears the noise again. And, mind made up, he walks decisively toward the intruder.

CHAPTER

57

EVEN AS THE front door clicks closed, Romilly can tell some of the old Adam has returned. A slowness to smile, a hesitation when he kissed her goodbye: the bricks being pushed back into place.

She goes to work, tries to ignore all thoughts of Adam. She buries herself in clinic, following up on results, procedures, patients. Updates from her junior doctors. But still, she thinks of him. His laughter, his wide smile. Memories of what they did last night, this morning, that make her cheeks flush and her body ache to do them all over again. She loved Phil, but he’s never had this effect on her. Adam changes her at a cellular level, as if her body and brain react before she’s had time to think.

She knows she needs to sort things out with Phil—Adam, or no Adam—and messages him quickly. We need to talk. She hasn’t even put her phone down before it starts to ring. She steels herself and answers it.

“So talk.” His tone is snippy and distant.

“Phil, I—”

“You’re back with Adam.”

“This isn’t about Adam.” She feels herself go on the defensive and tries to calm down. “But you and I … I’m sorry.”

There’s a long pause. “Yeah. So am I,” he says bitterly. “I’ll come by and collect my stuff when I have a moment.” Phil pauses. Romilly hears him breathe loudly down the phone. Then he talks again, a hard edge to his voice: “He’s welcome to you,” he growls. “Fucking crazy woman.”

He hangs up, leaving Rom blinking in surprise. Maybe I am, she thinks, staring at the phone, but at least I’m not an arsehole.

At lunchtime, she goes down to the hospital canteen. As she waits in the queue, she pulls up the message she sent earlier to Adam. Bland and dull: Thinking of you x

But she hasn’t received a reply.

She looks at it and realizes he hasn’t even read it: there are no small blue ticks next to the message. She frowns, then calls him.

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