girl, often fond of being the centre of attention, to withdrawn and quiet over the last couple of months. There’d been a break-up: a boyfriend, William Taylor, sixteen, also at Romeland High. Everyone put it down to the usual ups and downs of teen love. She’d never been prescribed antidepressants, or been diagnosed with any mental health issues. Nasreen frowned. Someone had missed something: didn’t the teachers notice that something was awry? Or her parents? Mrs Strofton was a solicitor and Mr Strofton was a GP. They were good people, who had been through a lot over the years – Mrs Strofton had been ill, not to mention everything that had happened with Gemma. There could be more illness, trouble at work, financial worries, countless things that might mean you didn’t spot the warning signs in your own daughter. And they would regret that for the rest of their lives. Losing a child was one of the worst things she’d seen people go through in this job.
She read over the note again, mouthing the words. There was something odd in the rhythm of it. Stilted. Was that a reflection of the girl’s troubled mind? She’d used her full name to sign off. Typed. Like Lottie had. She flicked her eyes between the two notes. And then she saw it. Her heartbeat slowed. The sounds of the office peeled away like falling petals. Everything was crisp and clear. The letters sharp, elevated from the printouts. The first letter of each line of Chloe’s note, and the first letter of each word in Lottie’s note, spelt the same word: Apollyon. The destroyer. The name of a serial killer who’d tweeted clues to his next victim. Nicknamed the Hashtag Murderer, Apollyon had been caught by Nasreen and her old school friend Freddie. Her blood ran cold. Chloe Strofton: younger sister of Gemma Strofton – Nasreen and Freddie’s best friend at school. Lottie Burgone, the younger sister of Nasreen’s boss. Nasreen looked up as Chips pinned a photo of Chloe Strofton on the incident board, alongside that of Lottie Burgone. Nasreen was the link. The empty chair of DCI Burgone, askew, flung backwards, a flag of his desperation. His sister was missing. Taken. And it was her fault.
11:00
‘And how does that make you feel?’ Amanda, tight grey curls hugging her face, tipped her head to the side.
Freddie Venton stopped looking at the framed counselling qualifications on the boxy magnolia walls and stared at the woman. ‘Are you taking the piss?’
‘What makes you ask that, Freddie?’ Amanda’s hands rested on her notes like primed mousetraps.
‘Bit of a shrink cliché.’ It smelt of patchouli in here. Or what she imagined patchouli smelt like. There was a loaded box of tissues on the low pine table between them, and Freddie couldn’t get comfortable on her inoffensive cream chair. Amanda continued to gaze at her. Great. They were going to play this game again. Amanda – call me Mandy – was one of those counsellors who liked to give their clients time to talk. Freddie had had counselling before – who hadn’t? – but she preferred the proactive CBT approach. She didn’t want to talk about her relationship with her hamster as a child, or whatever. She just wanted to be able to sleep at nights. Or during the day. She wasn’t fussy. The scar on her head, still spiky with stitches the doctors kept promising would dissolve, throbbed. ‘Look, I don’t want to waste your time or anything.’ God knows the NHS had better things to spend their money on than paying this woman for a staring contest for fifty minutes once a fortnight.
‘I’m not a shrink, as you call it, Freddie,’ said Mandy.
‘Head doctor then. Psychiatrist. Quack.’ This room was like her first-year halls at uni. Pine bookshelves stood to attention, proudly displaying Amanda’s only redeeming factor: she had some Naomi Wolf books. Feminist icon. It’d lured her into a false sense of security. She should have clocked there were no windows in here and left straight away. Was that a counsellor thing? Nothing to distract you from your emotional trauma? Or nothing for you to jump from? She’d only ticked the box saying she felt suicidal at the GP so they’d hurry up and give her her meds back.
‘I’m a counsellor, Freddie. As you know. Do you not want to talk about how you’re feeling?’
‘Not really.’
‘Why are you here, Freddie?’
‘You know why I’m here.’ Everyone knew. She’d made the front page of every national newspaper: Social Media Murder Mayhem! Newsnight had done a special on it.
‘I know that you were nearly killed. That you had emergency brain surgery. That since then you’ve been recovering at your parents’ home. And that you haven’t been back to London since,’ said Amanda. The trump card.
Freddie started counting the books, noting the colour of the spines: one blue, two white, three white, four red …
‘Did you think any more about contacting your old friend, Gemma?’ said Amanda.
Freddie rolled her eyes. She knew it’d been a dumb idea. Why would Gemma want to speak to her after everything that happened? Five yellow, six white … Did publishers get a cheap deal on white covers or something?
‘You did ask to attend counselling, Freddie. There must be a part of you that wants to talk about what happened?’
‘I’m only here because my doctor won’t sign off on meds unless I show up.’
‘I see.’ Amanda looked sad. Disappointed.
Freddie sighed. ‘Look, I’m not trying to be difficult, I’m sure you’re a very good therapist. It’s just that I don’t need to talk. I just need to be able to sleep.’ Something caught the corner of her eye, a dark shadow flashing across the edge of the room. She turned, but there was nothing there. It was just her and Amanda and a box of Kleenex. She casually let go of the cushion she’d clutched in mild panic.
Amanda frowned. ‘Does the thought of not having your sleeping pills frighten you?’
Well, duh. Without them, any sleep she got was full of the face she feared. ‘It’s like I said to the GP: if you found a drug that let you sleep, which let you get up, live, eat, do normal things, then you wouldn’t want to stop taking it, would you?’
‘And what did he say?’
‘She,’ Freddie said.
‘What did she say?’ pressed Amanda.
The ballsy girl who’d worked in Espress-oh’s coffee shop, the one who was a promising journalist and walked round Dalston like she owned it, had vanished. A heavy, dusty curtain had been dropped across her life. And she was too frightened to pull it back, in case there was nothing left on the other side. ‘The doctor said I had to come here to see you, Mandy.’
‘And how did that make you feel?’
10:45
T – 22 hrs 45 mins
‘Thanks.’ Nasreen hung up the phone. That decided it then. She didn’t have a choice. She was going to have to take a gamble. For that’s what it was: a roll of the dice. It could go well, or it could go badly. Very badly.
Saunders had his back turned, speaking on the phone, writing notes in his barely legible scrawl. He didn’t trust her. Better to try Chips.
He was sitting at his desk. ‘Sir, can I have a word?’ she asked quietly, the printouts tucked under her arm.