‘That she keeps him awake at night.’
‘Zoe?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And?’
‘That he was certain her mother murdered her.’
‘She was acquitted,’ Jessie said.
‘Due to lack of evidence.’
‘She was still acquitted.’
Callan frowned. ‘It’s not the same as being found innocent by a jury, as you well know.’
Jessie took the opportunity of the story cycling around again to break eye contact. Marilyn this time, exiting the police station, looking as rough as Jessie felt. His tie was crooked and his black suit – did he have any others, or was there a row of identical suits hanging in his wardrobe? – was crumpled. He raised his hands and the press pack fell silent.
‘You need to tell Marilyn that you know where Zoe’s mother is now living and what she’s calling herself,’ Callan said.
Jessie kept her gaze focused on the screen. ‘I’m sure he already knows,’ she said dismissively, as she heard Marilyn, clear as a bell, asking Carolynn and Roger Reynolds to get in touch with him as a matter of urgency.
Callan raised an eyebrow. Pressing mute on the remote, Jessie cut Marilyn off mid-flow and swung around to face him.
‘He can find her,’ she snapped. ‘He’s a policeman after all, so that’s his job. Doing some work for a change will be good for his liver.’
Callan sighed. ‘It’s bloody hard to find someone who doesn’t want to be found, and he has enough to be getting on with, investigating the murder of a child. The second murder of a second child.’
Jessie held his cool amber gaze unflinching, but she regretted what she’d said about Marilyn, knew it had been unnecessary, nasty. She didn’t even know why she’d said it. Many of the things she said and did nowadays felt as if they were coming, involuntarily, from a new, alien part of herself that even she didn’t like. She hunched her shoulders like a stroppy teenager.
‘There is such a thing as patient confidentiality, Callan.’
‘When can patient confidentiality be breached?’
‘Never.’
‘That’s not true. There are conditions under which patient confidentiality no longer applies. Confidentiality is an important duty, but it’s not absolute.’
‘For me it is absolute.’
Callan’s hands were clenched into fists and one of his legs jittered, a sure sign that he was angry, trying to contain it. ‘You can disclose information if it’s required by law.’
‘Fine. When Marilyn has me in handcuffs, I’ll ’fess up.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Handcuffs. Now there’s something we should try.’ It was a feeble attempt to lighten the moment, another thing she regretted as soon as she’d said it. Neither of them was in the mood for pathetic flippancy.
Dipping his gaze, Callan shook his head wearily. ‘I’m being serious, Jessie.’
‘So am I.’ She bit her lip. ‘If my patients can’t trust me, I’m nothing, I’m worthless to them. They come to me because they’re desperate. I’m often their last port of call before suicide, or crime, usually after they’ve tried burying their issues with alcohol and drugs. Many of them have been let down by society so often that they have no one else to go to and trust no one. I can’t just be another person who fucks with their minds.’
‘This is different. The woman could be a killer. You could be putting yourself in danger meeting with her and you could be putting other people in danger by concealing her whereabouts.’
Jessie gave a snort of laughter. ‘If you had met her, you wouldn’t be saying that. She’s a frightened, timid, traumatized, middle-aged woman who is so thin she could play hide-and-seek behind a broom handle. She’s not a threat to anyone.’
‘She’s a very convincing liar, because she had you fooled.’
‘I’ve been trying to help her out, not catch her out. Find her out.’
‘Marilyn believes that she’s guilty of her daughter’s murder.’
‘She didn’t murder Zoe. I know she didn’t.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘It’s not bullshit.’ She gave another teenaged shrug. ‘I have a good sense of her. An intuition.’ Even though I fell for her lies about her daughter dying in a car accident. But generally, she did have a good sense of people, a sixth sense. It came with the territory of her job.
‘So why is she hiding?’ Callan asked curtly. ‘Why is she lying, even to you? Someone she can trust, with whom all her conversations are confidential?’
Jessie threw up her hands. ‘What reception do you think a woman labelled a child killer would have got? She would have been vilified, taunted, stalked, jeered at, chased down the street, pushed around, spat at. Even her best friends, her own family, her parents, if they’re alive, her husband, for Christ’s sake – even they would have looked at her differently, even they would have wondered.’ She sought out his gaze, usually the colour of warm honey, now cold and cynical. ‘You’d heard about the Zoe Reynolds murder, even before Marilyn told you, hadn’t you?’
It was his turn to give a teenage shrug. ‘I was in Afghanistan two years ago.’
‘And I bet that you still heard. It made the Sun, the Mirror – all those quality papers you boys read when you’re at war.’
He didn’t reply.
‘Callan.’
‘Vaguely,’ he muttered. ‘I remember it vaguely.’
‘So?’
‘So what? The press moves on. People move on.’
‘They don’t though, not in such an emotionally charged and shocking case, and particularly not in one that wasn’t solved. There’s no smoke without fire, after all. And now – now that this second little girl has been found dead? Two years to the day after Zoe’s murder. Can you imagine the press storm? You could see it on the beach last night.’ She waved her hand towards the television screen, where Marilyn was now trying to force open the driver’s door of his dilapidated Z3 against a jam of press bodies and cameras: ‘You can see it now. Newspapers, TV stations – they’re all there.’
Callan drained his coffee and set his cup on the table, rolled his eyes and picked it up again in response to Jessie’s admonishing look. ‘The two cases may not be related. This second girl could
