Lucie Whitehouse - Critical Incidents

A desk and a bank of filing cabinets were housed in a second, smaller room that led off this one and got its only natural light from the glass panels along the top of the dividing wall. A handful of large leather-leaved plants dotted here and there and that was it, her new place of work.

She took the kettle from its tray on top of the filing cabinets and carried it out to the miniature kitchen shared with the temp agency in the rooms across the landing. With some difficulty, she got it into position under the tap in the tiny sink and filled it.

Back in the office, she brought up the West Midlands Police’s Twitter feed. She’d been checking it every ten or fifteen minutes, skimming over cycle safety and community policing notices to the frequent ones about serious crimes – another stabbing in Handsworth, a fatal hit-and-run in Balsall Heath, a slavery charge brought against two brothers in Lozells. There’d been a run of tweets with photos hashtagged MISSING. ‘ Have you seen Bill Scott? He’s missing from West Bromwich and we’re really concerned for him. Please call 101 with any information. ’ She’d scrolled through them looking – hoping – for Josh; instead, with a jolt, she’d seen Corinna’s face. Murder enquiry launched following Edgbaston fire. Corinna Legge (pictured) sadly passed away yesterday. Heart in her throat, Robin clicked on the link and read the short post on the police site but there was nothing new, still just the barest details of the fire, the search for Josh Legge (pictured), believed to have been at the scene when the blaze broke out.

All the local news sources had the story – the Birmingham Post , the Mail and Midlands Today – but again, none of them had a single new detail. Either the police were keeping information back or they didn’t have anything.

Corinna Legge sadly passed away yesterday. She read the words again. They were ungraspable, completely surreal. Aliens land in the Bull Ring; Elvis spotted at Villa Park; Corinna Legge sadly passed away yesterday .

Yesterday – it was only technically still true. It was one o’clock, already almost thirty-six hours now since the neighbours had sounded the alarm, a day and a half. Rin was falling further and further behind, slipping away.

Robin reached for the notebook and turned to a new page. ‘Assuming arson’, she wrote, and underlined it. Quickly, she put down everything that came into her head, the earliest ideas – botched burglary; extortion attempt; feud with a third party; the road rage she’d mentioned off the cuff to the police – and the ones that, as the hours had started to stretch, she’d begun to have to entertain: someone Josh had crossed in business; something at Corinna’s work; someone obsessed with one of them – a man or woman scorned, a bunny boiler; the partner of that person.

Revenge.

She read the list back. Burglary was still the only thing on it that seemed plausible. Rin and Josh woken in the small hours by a noise downstairs, investigating and confronting whoever it was they found, refusing to stand down. They would have tried to fight back, defend their home – yes, they would.

The rest made no sense. Josh’s factory manufactured metal springs, and it had been going steadily for decades, probably a century at this point. People he did business with became family friends. Once, years ago, she’d been at theirs just before Christmas and he’d brought home six bottles of Scotch, all of them gifts from customers or suppliers. He’d shared another six between his sales manager and tool-maker. He was an old-fashioned manufacturer, making things that people needed and selling them, not some dodgy property developer, kicking tenants out of their homes, stiffing people on contracts.

And for another woman to feel scorned enough, Josh would have to be involved with her, surely. He was kind, a gentleman – what if someone had mistaken his kindness for attraction? If he’d been pursued, caught at a moment of weakness …

No. Robin would stake her worldly goods – the boxes behind the bedroom door and the ones now moved to the garage – on him being faithful.

You moved yesterday?

She remembered the look Thomas had given Patel. They were right, of course – she would have been all over that, too. There were such things as coincidences, but they were suspicious until proven otherwise, every time.

Her stomach turned over. No . She stopped herself. Just think: how else could that be connected?

Could Hinton be involved somehow? Was that possible? He was at large, whereabouts unknown – he could be in Birmingham. And he certainly had contacts here. But she was the person who’d let him go – she’d been fired for it, plastered all over the sodding Mail and the Evening Standard . Even if it hadn’t been crystal to him that day, he’d know now. So – who? The person who had actually killed Farrell? An enemy of his?

No – it was too intricate, too massive a leap. Even if it was Hinton himself, which was unlikely enough, or Farrell’s killer, why would they harm Corinna? And how would they even know she and Rin were friends? No one would find them posing together on social media. Plus, there’d been no threat, no claim afterwards – what would be the point of doing it if she, the target in this scenario, wasn’t even aware? No, this was crazy stuff.

She bent her head, dug her nails into her scalp. What the fuck was going on? How could she find out?

Picking up her phone, she opened Contacts. Last night, she’d rung Di, Corinna’s mother. She’d been ashamed of how relieved she’d felt to get voicemail. She’d left a message saying just that she was heartbroken, and heartbroken for her. ‘If I can do anything, Di, anything at all, please let me know.’ Just words, however much she meant them.

Will’s number was underneath his mother’s. Robin had it from group texts – photos of Peter, details for birthday parties and dinners – but she hadn’t actually called him since the old days, when she and Rin were sixth formers and he’d used to pick them up from parties, sober as a judge in his little Peugeot. Will didn’t drink, never had. ‘Just not my thing,’ he said but Rin told her it was deeper than that. He was afraid that if he started drinking, he’d never stop.

‘Does he think that for a reason? Does he feel like he’s an alcoholic?’

‘No, but it runs in families; alcoholics quite often have alcoholic kids. He says he can’t risk it.’

Will had been an adult since he was twelve, responsible and reliable as bedrock. While they’d been out getting smashed, he’d been studying. He’d done medicine at Edinburgh and he was a consultant neurologist now, at the Alexandra in Redditch. His wife, Lily, was an anaesthetist and they lived with their son and daughter in a snazzy barn conversion near Henley. Not bad for a bloke whose nickname at the boys’ grammar, where irony was king, had been Thrill. But was he ever actually that boring? He was no Sean Harvey, tearing the place up with his delinquent tendencies and come-to-bike-shed eyes, but when you could hear what he was saying, Will was funny, which had become more apparent as, with the advent of Lily, he’d become more confident and thus more audible.

He answered almost immediately. ‘Robin?’

They spoke at the same time. ‘How are you?’

‘I don’t even know,’ he said. ‘Stunned.’

‘How’s your mum?’

‘She’s … not good. She’s with Peter at the hospital, she was there all night.’

‘The police came to talk to me yesterday – you probably know. They said he broke a lot of bones.’

‘Yes, but the real issue’s the lung. They keep calling it a puncture but it was more of a tear – the end of the broken rib tore the lung. They’ve operated, obviously, but now it’s a waiting game. If he gets an infection, it could all just …’ He trailed off into silence.