The Woman Inside

Book 4: Detective Dan Riley

by Anna-Lou Weatherley

Genres: Police Procedurals; Crime Fiction; Psychological Thrillers

Synopsis

‘I was on the edge of my seat, completely addicted and hooked… had me gasping for breath and left me with a pounding heart as I furiously flicked the pages… grabs your attention right from the get go, never letting up until the final page.’ Once Upon a Time Book Blog ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Daisey Garrett wakes up in a hospital bed. She remembers her boyfriend has left her for another woman, but she doesn’t remember what happened to her the night she was attacked in her own home. Daisey shouldn’t be alive but against all odds, she’s survived an ordeal most would never recover from. But Daisey’s mind is broken. She’s on edge, drinking too much and, despite the painful breakup, finds herself in bed with her ex, Luke. And while she desperately tries to keep herself together, she can’t shake the feeling that she is being watched. Yet the missing pieces of that fateful summer night are beginning to surface… The lies she told the police. The lies Luke told her. Daisey’s memory is flickering like a faulty light bulb, flashing with images just out of reach. She can’t remember. She mustn’t. An absolutely gripping, addictive page-turner, The Woman Inside takes you within the tangled mess of people’s lives and the dark secrets they hold close. Perfect for fans of Gone Girl, Before I Go to Sleep and The Wife Between Us. Read what everyone is saying about The Woman Inside: ‘ INCREDIBLE. I was gripped right from the start and I literally could not put this down.’ Redheadbookgirl,⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ‘ Loved it, loved it, loved it!…This is one of the best books I have read in ages, I loved it.’ With a Book in our Hands, ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ‘ You do NOT want to miss out on this read… Absolutely, do NOT pass up this book.’ Katie Reads, ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ‘ OMG!… It was just sooo incredibly good!... I loved this book.’ B for Bookreview, ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ‘ Absolutely top-notch! This is a book which you think is going one way and takes you down another road… I thought the story was so intelligently written and kept me absolutely hooked. I strongly recommend this book, a great thriller.’ NetGalley reviewer, ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ‘I loved this book!!… The plot is completely original… it takes you on a rollercoaster of a ride without giving you any clues as to where the story is going… fast paced, addictive and once I started it, it kept me hooked until the very end. The story was thrilling and nerve-wracking, and I read some parts with bated breath in anticipation of what would happen next!’ Stardust Book reviews, ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ‘My new favourite yet… Wow… I have been completely pulled in and devoured this book in just one sitting… This book has literally given me chills.’ Little Miss Book Lover 87 , ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ‘ Loved, loved, loved this book!!!!!…I love this author…I could immerse myself in her books all day long. Let’s begin with her characters. They were fantastically written…I was right there living in their world. I felt so emotionally connected to each one. The plot of the story got me too…It was so fast paced and I couldn’t put it down for the life of me…It was so dark and twisted…I loved every minute of that ending. It was like a roller coaster ride I never wanted to get off of.’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ‘Weatherly took a storyline that has been done before and put such a great spin and twist to it that I am pretty sure I have never read a plot like this one!... boy oh boy, the ride getting to the reveal is SO good.’ Nicole’s Book Cellar, ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ‘ What a phenomenal book… Loved all the characters and how the story evolved.’ Goodreads reviewer,⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Release date: January 13, 2021

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 350

Sample

‘Come on, Daisey, let me buy you a drink, eh? G & T, is it? Or are you more of a Porn Star Martini kinda girl? You look like you could do with a proper drink. Dunno about you, but this fizzy crap is giving me chronic gas.’ He drains the dregs from his glass, pulls his lips over his teeth and belches. ‘Tastes like gnat’s piss.’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ she retorts, pulling a face, but he doesn’t hear her over the din.

‘We need to get this party started… fancy a little livener?’ He tugs at the sleeve of her shirt encouragingly – black and silky with a deep V-cut at the front, more daring than her usual attire – and stares at her cleavage lasciviously. ‘A cheeky line, maybe?’

She feels a flush of self-consciousness prickle her skin; the shirt was a deliberate attempt to attract such attention after all, but now she wishes she hadn’t worn it. The likes of Tommy White’s sartorial approval is hardly a compliment. Less than five minutes ago she’d seen him sloping out of the Ladies loos with some dishevelled, shame-faced, middle-aged woman from Kitchenware shuffling awkwardly behind him.

‘Haven’t you grown out of all that crap by now, Tommy?’ She attempts to squeeze past him, catching a waft of his aftershave – sweet and pungent – the sort that lingers on your bed sheets far longer than the memory of the sex.

‘Aw, c’mon! I didn’t have you down a such a basic bitch, Daisey.’ His tone is playful, though she hears the disappointment in it. She doubts he even knows what ‘basic bitch’ really means – he’s probably heard it used by the young trendies who work at Warwick’s and thinks it sounds cool – he’s so desperate to stay relevant even though, like her, he’s hurtling towards middle age at a rate of knots. She looks out into the crowd in front of her – a hot sea of skin and sparkles, the warm scent of perfume and fake tan and cigarettes mixed with anticipation in the air. ‘That blouse says anything but basic bitch.’ She hates the word ‘blouse’ – it makes her think of schoolteachers.

Warwick’s department store’s annual summer party, the highlight of the season’s social calendar – for some people anyway – free canapés and cava made to look more fancy than they actually are, thanks to the attractive young waiting staff serving them from giant platters and gold-rimmed champagne saucers. She imagines they are probably only being paid minimum wage as well.

An image of Luke suddenly flashes up inside her mind like a warning; he would hate it here tonight. ‘Such vulgar corporate commercialism… so contrived… an exploitation of young, foreign students…’ She imagines the disdain in his eyes; his dark-rimmed glasses matching his well-cultivated beard as he scans the party with barely disguised disgust. He is probably at home now – his new home, with his new (or not-so-new as it had turned out) ‘partner’ Charlotte with her make-up-free flawless face, eating home-cooked vegan shepherd’s pie between careful sips of organic wine. Maybe they’re having an important discussion on the works of Dostoevsky, or debating some politically sensitive humanitarian case she was working on. Or maybe they’re fucking each other senseless on the deep seaweed-green velvet sofa that they had purchased together, her sofa that they had chosen – and one he had taken with him when he’d left. She doubts it though; ‘Cho’ – as Luke likes to affectionately call her – is so painfully politically correct that she probably thinks having sex is against her feminist values or something. She wonders if he’s mentioned to ‘Cho’ about the sex they’d had over the kitchen table yesterday morning when he’d called her and made an excuse to come over and collect the last of his things? Somehow she doubts that more.

Screw it.

‘Oh, go on then, Tommy, why not?’ she acquiesces. ‘I will have that drink. Just a quick one though. Ros and the others are waiting for me…’

Tommy winks at her, a gesture that makes her inwardly cringe.

He hands her the cocktail and she gulps it back in one hit.

‘Easy, tiger.’ He shoots her a look that falls somewhere between impressed and shocked. ‘I didn’t mean to offend. It’s just that I heard…’

‘What did you hear, Tommy?’ She doesn’t want to have this conversation with him – or anyone – she just wants to walk away, go and rejoin the girls back at the table, but now part of her is invested in knowing what’s been said and who by.

‘Just that you and your bloke broke up… that’s all… and judging by that blouse you’re wearing tonight I’d say the rumour is true.’

She drains the dregs of the cocktail glass. It tastes strong and instantly she wants another.

‘Ran off with another other bird, so I heard…’

Well, didn’t good news travel fast!

‘Can’t believe anyone would dump you though. I mean, he must be mad! I wouldn’t kick you out of bed!’ His eyes wander back down to her cleavage. ‘Weren’t you engaged as well, the pair of you, just about to get hitched?’

‘Cheers for the drink, Tommy.’ She hands him her empty glass and pushes through the clock of sticky bodies jostling for space at the bar.

‘Hey! Wait a sec… hold on… Daisey! Jesus, I was only having a laugh… let me buy you anoth…’

‘You OK?’ Ros mouths the words to her as she rejoins the others at the table. They both recognise the question as a rhetorical one.

‘Daaaaiseeeeey!’ Manjeet is already drunk. Then again she is – by her own admission – a shocking lightweight. She waves her arms above her head and then outwards as though to embrace her. ‘C’m sit with meeee…’

Daisey laughs a little as she is pulled onto her colleague’s lap. She really needs to get drunker, like Manjeet. She snatches a glass from a passing waiter, gulps it back and takes another, and one for Manjeet too. Ros starts chatting, animated, to Bex and a flamboyantly dressed guy with a purple quiff who she thinks might work in Leather Goods; anyway, he’s newish and she doesn’t know his name. She hovers next to them, hoping she doesn’t look as wretched as she feels. It was a bad idea to come to the party tonight. She wasn’t ready for it, but Ros had insisted, said it would do her ‘the power of good’.

‘I remember her… lovely she was, always smiling… gives me the bloody willies when I think about it, I mean, twenty-eight – it’s no age, is it? And to go like that… her poor family…’ Bex shakes her head and takes a sip of her drink almost simultaneously.

‘My God, that’s awwwful…’ Purple Quiff’s mouth has formed an exaggerated ‘O’ shape. ‘When did they find her?’

‘A few weeks ago – didn’t you read about it in the papers? Found in her own bed apparently… throat slashed open, sick bastard…’

‘What are you talking about?’ Daisey interjects. She’s not really invested in the conversation, not really taking any of it in. Right now, all she can think about is Luke and Cho who are maybe or maybe not having sex on her green velvet sofa.

‘Fern.’ Bex brings her back into the present.

‘Fern?’

‘Yeah, Fern Lever, she worked at Warwick’s, a few years back in Junior Fashion before she moved away. I knew her… well, not knew her knew her, but we’d spoken a few times, sat together in the cafeteria once or twice. Terrible,’ she says again with more gravitas.

‘So they haven’t caught him then.’ Purple Quiff’s face is animated in horror. ‘The killer?’

Bex shakes her head. ‘Nope, not yet. It’s horrible to think he’s still out there… on the loose…’

‘Stooop, you’re scaring me.’ Purple Quiff is shrieking again. ‘You don’t reckon he was stalking her, do you? God, you don’t think… I mean, do you think he knew her? Bloody Mary Mother of God, maybe he works at Warwick’s!’ His eyes dart around the crowded room in exaggerated panic.

‘Yeah, in the Leather Goods department.’ Bex giggles and Ros starts laughing too.

‘Shut uuuuup! Oh my God! You’re winding me up!’

Bex pushes him playfully. ‘We shouldn’t joke; it’s not funny. Anyway, it was years ago when she worked here, so I doubt it, but well, you never know, do you?’

Purple Quiff clutches his chest dramatically. ‘Well, if he’s still out there, this nutter, I think it would be prudent if none of us goes home alone tonight – just in case.’

‘With a bit of luck I wasn’t planning to.’ Bex eyes up a passing – and very attractive-looking – waiter and flashes Purple Quiff a conspiratorial eyebrow raise. They all start laughing. Daisey tries to join in but she hears how false and stilted she sounds and thinks the others probably can too.

‘I’m going for a cigarette.’ Daisey turns to Ros and squeezes back the tears that have formed in the outer corners of her eyes. She can’t seem to shake off her maudlin thoughts, even with a bellyful of booze inside her. ‘You coming?’

‘I’ll follow you out, love. Just got to use the little girls’ room first.’

It feels better outside, away from the music and the merriment that she feels so detached from. Propping herself up against the corner of a wall away from the main exit of the venue, she takes a cigarette from the packet inside her bag and searches for a lighter. She has one somewhere, in among all the gubbins. A little unsteady on her heels – higher than she generally wears – she places a foot against the wall to steady herself and is slightly startled by the hiss of a bus as it suddenly passes by. The warm night air reminds her she’s a little drunk, though not a lot drunk, not Manjeet drunk – at least not yet. Where’s that bloody lighter…

‘You looking for one of these?’

The click of a flame comes into her peripheral vision.

‘Thanks,’ she says, glancing at him briefly, leaning forward and placing her fingertips lightly on his as she steadies her hand and lights her cigarette. She notices something… something different, something odd about his… He quickly snatches his hand away, shoves the lighter back inside his pocket and keeps his hands in them even though it’s a warm evening. She doesn’t recognise him, though assumes he’s just another Warwick’s employee. Why would he be here otherwise?

‘You don’t look like a smoker,’ he comments. His voice is soft, almost a whisper.

She blows blue smoke high into the air.

‘No? And what exactly does a smoker look like?’

He pauses briefly, thoughtfully.

‘I don’t know. Just not like you, I suppose.’

She pulls on her cigarette. She’s really not in the mood for small talk.

‘Him over there, for example.’ He nods in the direction of two men standing a few feet away from them, to the left. They’re chatting and laughing; one of them looks like he’s telling the other a funny story. They’re drunk and happy and animated and she wishes she were too. ‘Now he’s definitely a smoker.’

‘Yes, well, he’s smoking a cigarette so that’s pretty much a given.’

‘You’re missing the point…’

She looks at him properly then, although everything is a little fuzzy round the edges, like she’s looking through a smeared windowpane. Perhaps she’s drunker than she realises – anyway, he’s smaller than her, and even in these heels she’s only about five feet five inches. At six foot one, Luke had towered above her, but she’d kind of liked that, and so had he, once. We’re all the same height lying down! She’d always laughed whenever he’d said that but now she thinks it is exactly the kind of thing Tommy White would say, followed by a sharp elbow and a cheeky wink. She’d been so blind. Luke had been no better than a womaniser, like Tommy only much cleverer at disguising it.

‘Yes, well, the point is I couldn’t give a fuck if I’m missing the point.’ She’s being rude but can’t help it. She feels like being rude. She’s never bloody rude. She’s not rude enough. ‘You need to step out of your comfort zone sometimes, Daisey. You’re always so… safe, so eager to please everyone.’ Luke’s voice rings loud like tinnitus in her ears. Yeah, well, she hadn’t been ‘safe’ yesterday when he’d made some pathetic excuse to come over to get his ‘things’, had she? Self-loathing and shame burn inside her solar plexus as she thinks of their encounter on the kitchen table – she’ll probably have to go and get the bloody morning-after pill now too.

‘You see,’ the stranger continues, unperturbed, ‘even if that guy over there wasn’t smoking, I’d guess he was a smoker, because he just looks like one. He’s got that undefinable smoker’s look about him.’

Her rudeness appears to have passed him by unnoticed, or certainly without offence. She’s almost disappointed.

‘Fascinating,’ she replies, throwing her fag to the pavement and crushing it underfoot. ‘Thanks for the light.’

He nods, makes brief eye contact with her and suddenly she’s gripped by a strange sensation: fear? No. Not fear. Something like it, though, an odd feeling that causes her to fold her arms and grip herself tightly as though she’s just been caught by a gust of icy wind.

‘Enjoy the party, Daisey – make sure you get home safe,’ he calls out to her but she doesn’t turn back to look at him.

Cava. Lots more cava, two more cigarettes and dancing badly to Justin Bieber with Ros and Bex. She checks her phone to see if Luke’s left a message. Has he got nothing to say about yesterday? She bets bloody Cho isn’t the type to drop her drawers and bend over the kitchen table – even an artisan bespoke one. For a brief moment she almost feels smug that she can give him something Cho can’t – or won’t – and instinctively pulls her phone out of her handbag and starts compiling a text message:

I liked the way we said goodbye. Let’s say goodbye again soon. XOXO

She reads it back through blurred vision.

Let’s say goodbye again soon?

No, that sounds pathetic… like she’s desperate. God, what on earth is she doing? She’s drunk and not thinking straight. She makes to delete the text but accidentally presses send instead.

FUCK! A wave of hopelessness mixed with nausea washes over her. She wants to go home, slink off unnoticed and avoid all those inevitable protracted goodbyes. This way she can pick up a bottle of wine on her way and drink and smoke and be as miserable as she likes without anyone asking her if she’s all right, or worse, telling her to ‘cheer up’.

‘Daisey!’ She hears someone calling her name. ‘Hey! Daisey! You’re not leaving already? It’s only 11.30! The place hasn’t even got going yet!’ Shit. She’d collected her jacket from the cloakroom and was almost through the exit as well.

Tommy stares at her as though she is about to commit a mortal sin.

‘Yes, Tommy, I’m going home.’ Her voice is a little slurred maybe, she can’t quite tell.

‘Well, at least let me take you? You can’t go home on your own in that state. I wouldn’t be any kind of gent if I let you…’

They’re in a cab together. She thinks she’s given the driver the right address. ‘Hounslow… other side of the river… yeah, you need a passport to get to it…’ She thinks she must’ve fallen asleep as when Tommy gently shakes her awake, she’s already outside her apartment – the apartment they bought together and one she now can’t afford to live in, at least not alone.

‘You can’t come in,’ she says as he helps her out of the cab. He’s already paying the driver before she can object.

‘It’s OK… OK… I’m not going to ask to come up… though I could do with a piss.’

Charming! She’s swaying on her aching feet and takes her shoes off. She doesn’t know how these models do it, must have feet like a ship’s rudder, all of them.

‘I just want to make sure you get through the door safely yeah…? Did you see in the news about that girl who got killed – some lunatic broke into her flat and cut her throat? She worked at Warwick’s, you know… few years back…’

‘Yeah… so I heard…’

She’s scrabbling around for her key. Why does everything fall into one great big clump at the bottom of her handbag? It’s so irritating. She feels the heat of her frustration reach her earlobes. She can’t wait to get her PJs on.

‘Got it!’ She opens the door, turns to look at him, his eyes wide and expectant like a puppy that’s just peed on the carpet and doesn’t want to be told off. She sighs heavily.

‘Literally, you can use the bathroom then you’ve got to go, OK? I’m really tired, Tommy. I just want to go to bed.’

He holds his palms up.

‘Just a quick shake of the snake and I’ll be gone, promise.’

God, he is so uncouth. She drops her handbag and shoes as she steps inside and they clatter in a heap against the wooden floor. Padding barefoot, a touch unsteady, into the kitchen, she opens the fridge.

‘Blimey, nice gaff.’ He gives a little whistle. ‘Bit posh, ain’t it?’

Yes, she thinks miserably. It is; it was their dream apartment, their ‘forever home, until we have lots of babies’, as he’d once put it, only now the dream had become a nightmare.

‘Warwick’s must be paying you a shitload more than they’re paying me, is all I can say!’

‘Bingo!’ She spies a bottle of opened Prosecco next to the milk – and there’s more than half left – result. She’ll polish it off once Tommy’s gone. She hears the flush of the toilet from down the hallway and wills him out of the front door.

‘Thanks for seeing me home, Tommy. Goodnight!’ she calls out to him but he’s already behind her and she jumps as she turns to see him standing there.

‘What, not even a nightcap; a little one for the road? I’ve got to go all the way back to South London, you know.’

‘I’ll call you an Uber,’ she says flatly. He looks crestfallen and suddenly she feels guilty. He has come all this way she supposes but… no! She hadn’t asked him to and really she honestly just wants to be alone to wallow in her own misery and drink more wine.

‘I’m sorry, Tommy. I really don’t feel great tonight… Look’ – she moves in a little closer towards him – ‘maybe we can meet for drinks to make up for it. This Saturday, if you’re free?’

‘You asking me out?’ He grins at her, eyes glassy in the light of her kitchen. She shrugs. He can call it what he likes as long as he just leaves.

‘If you want, drinks… dinner even. But I need you to go now…’

He looks placated and she’s relieved.

‘I’m going to hold you to that,’ he says, making his way towards the front door, finally. ‘I know where you live now, remember? I’ll book us somewhere nice… you like Japanese food?’

‘Love it,’ she says, practically pushing him out of the door. ‘I’ll see you at work. We’ll go out afterwards, on Saturday, this Saturday.’

‘I’ll look forward to it. Night, babes,’ he says, lurching forward and kissing her just shy of her mouth.

‘Goodnight, Tommy,’ she says, snapping the door shut behind him and wiping his residue from her skin with the back of her wrist. He is nothing if not persistent, she’ll give him that. She laughs gently to herself. Maybe dinner and a few drinks won’t really be so bad…

She slinks back into the kitchen, takes the wine from the fridge and pours the entire contents into a large glass before gulping back a few mouthfuls. Turning the speaker on, she plugs her phone in and searches through her playlists. Something upbeat. No, some Adele, more fitting of her current mood. ‘Rolling in the Deep’ rings out through her apartment and she begins to sing along to it badly through swigs of Prosecco. Her mind runs back through the night’s events: Tommy and his clichéd one-liners, her conversation with Ros and that bloody text message she’d accidentally sent to Luke – one he hadn’t even replied to – and that strange little man who’d given her a light, the one with the…

That unsettling feeling she’d experienced earlier returns. ‘Enjoy the party, Daisey – get home safe…’ An odd thought suddenly strikes her. How had he known her name? She doesn’t remember telling him though clearly she must’ve done.

The sound of the front door buzzing pops her thoughts like a bubble. She rolls her eyes. It buzzes again in succession, persistent.

‘Jesus, Tommy, don’t you take no for an answer…’ He’s pushing his bloody luck now. She’s going to tell him to piss off.

‘Don’t tell me,’ she says as she pulls the door open, ‘you forgot something – oh!’ she says, taking an unsteady step back in surprised confusion. ‘It’s… it’s you?’

‘Hello, Rosie,’ he says smiling, his head cocked to one side.

Rosie? He means Daisey, surely? Or perhaps she’s just heard him wrong. What on earth is he doing here? And how the hell does he know where she lives and…?

As she opens her mouth to speak she notices that he’s holding something in his hand. It looks like… what is that? Oh God, is that… is that a hammer? Adrenalin spikes spitefully through her system but before she can react, everything is black.

A bolt of adrenalin mainlines straight through to my aorta like a shot of amphetamine. I can physically feel it, palpable, painful, personal, as I enter the bedroom. I’m overcome by a diabolical sense of déjà vu as dread drops down around me like a black curtain falling at the end of a theatre performance. It’s him. I know it instantly as my eyes process the horror, the same horror they’ve witnessed twice before in the past two months – he’s getting more prolific, less time passing between each murder. Instinctively I rub them; they’re gritty and sore through lack of sleep, thanks in part to Juno – or Pip as I call her – my eight-month-old daughter – who seems to have her days and nights back to front – but mostly due to the monster responsible for the scene in front of me – and the two others that have preceded it.

The MO is exactly the same: she’s youngish, like Jasmin Godden and Fern Lever were – late twenties early thirties, though I’m notoriously rubbish at guessing any woman’s age, living or otherwise – and, like them, she’s naked on the bed. Her throat looks like it’s been slashed and I’d bet a good night’s sleep – the rarest form of currency in my life right now – that she’s suffered a blow or blows plural to the head first. Her body has been positioned identical to the other victims’: arms folded across her chest, like he’s laid her to rest, and chillingly he’s left his calling card on her body – a single pink rose, fresh and fragrant with a few of the petals scattered loosely around the bed.

Only there’s something different about this scene from the other two. Something, I don’t know what yet, but I feel it instinctively like fear, and it grips me in the same way that fear does, stifling and choking, blocking out all the other senses.

‘There’s something different.’ My thoughts make themselves public to my trusted colleague, DS Lucy Davis, who is standing just a little way behind me. ‘Something’s not right…’

I look around and see the blood juxtaposed against the neat femininity of the woman’s bedroom. Her lightly patterned floral bedspread is splattered a dark crimson; there’s a window to the left, the white wooden blind covering it is closed but the floor lamp, one of those trendy arch-shaped ones, is switched on, giving the room an unnatural orange glow. A few items of clothing have been neatly folded in a pile on the wooden floor, the same way in which Jasmin’s and Fern’s had been left. He’s undressed her and put them there. Why does he do that? It doesn’t make sense. Then again, none of it does.

Davis says nothing as she gets on the phone. Doesn’t need to. For some moments there are no words – moments like this one. I take a step closer to the bed.

‘Get SOCO here,’ I say without taking my eyes off the body. ‘I want video and photos of everything. And call Vic Leyton. I want her on this one, Davis.’ Vic is the best pathologist out there.

The young PC who discovered her is saying something about the woman who made the call. ‘Her name’s Daisey Garrett, thirty-three, works at Warwick’s department store on Bond Street. A colleague, Rosalind O’Donnell, came to pick her up in the morning and give her a lift to work like usual but got no response. They’d been to a work do the previous evening, and she got a bit worried, said she’d recently broken up with her fiancé and was feeling a bit depressed… so she let herself in – she has a key – and found her. As soon as I walked in I knew that it was…’ His head drops slightly. ‘I checked for a pulse, but nothing…’

I’m only half hearing him through the thumping bassline of my heart inside my head; it’s pulsing so loudly in my ears I can barely make him out.

‘Warwick’s…?’ Voices mushroom cloud in my mind, fracturing and splintering off in all directions like high impact on glass.

I hear Jasmin Godden’s father’s voice: ‘Not another one, Riley… you couldn’t save my girl but you could’ve saved this one.’

Fern Lever’s mum too: ‘She was just the most beautiful, precious girl, Detective Riley; please say you’ll find out who did this to my princess.’

The reporters: ‘Why do you think he leaves them a rose, Detective Riley? Will you get him before he kills again?’

I hear my new boss, Gwendoline Archer, Woods’s better-looking replacement – not that this would’ve been too difficult – and visualise her almost standing over me, looking down at me in thinly veiled disappointment.

During the first few months of Juno’s life I was a stay-at-home dad while Fi embarked upon a well-earned new position as senior news reporter on The National Post. She’s avidly covering the Rose Petal Ripper’s case – as the press has daubed him – and keeps badgering me for insider information, which she knows I can’t give her even if I had any to give, which I don’t. Depressingly, the press know as much as we do, and even with their help, even by releasing as much information as we already have to them, nothing has come of it, except spreading more fear and panic among the community and a waning confidence in the police, i.e. me.

Adding to the intense pressure I have put on myself to solve this case is the fact I was brought in especially for it.

‘We need you on this one, Dan,’ Archer said sagely in a tense telephone conversation while I was still on paternity leave. ‘We need this bastard caught. The media are having a field day, people are scared, women are frightened in their own homes and they’re not helping with all this sensationalism. We need the best we’ve got on this… so when can you come back?’

As if on cue, Juno, who was over . . .