***
Gladys Lake was not an easy person to protect. She was impetuous, rushing here and there. The instructions from DI Hewitt had been precise. ‘Don’t move without one police constable, don’t allow him or her out of your sight, and lock all your doors.’
Initially, mindful to follow instructions, she had been diligent, but those who had been assigned to keep a watch on her were complaining.
Rory had been warned by the head administrator at St Nicholas that Dr Lake could be a nightmare. ‘Brilliant doctor, but a scatterbrain.’
The man had been right, Rory concluded. He had seen her office with Keith Greenstreet, and it was a mess. Her cottage was better, but not much. In the kitchen, cups and saucers were not in the right place. In the main room, files were on the floor, on the table, even where the cat sat.
Gladys Lake had been asked to speak at a conference in London, and she was going. Rory had advised against it, but she had been adamant.
He knew that down there he could not protect her, and there was no reason to believe that Charlotte Hamilton intended to let her live.
Charlotte Hamilton’s attention to detail and to cleanliness was well documented. It took a logical mind to kill someone and then shower, even hanging the towel up and drying the floor.
If Gladys Lake was still on Charlotte’s hit list, London would represent the best opportunity.
***
Sara Marshall had been forewarned. If Isaac Cook was removed from the case, she was to take over. Her fortunes had been resurrected, and once again she was in her detective superintendent’s good books.
Not that she wanted to take the lead position. She had a young child, and he was at an awkward age. He needed her to be around, but she had a career and a murder case.
Charlotte Hamilton frightened her. It was clear that she was devoid of emotion, and she would have no problems with harming anyone close to those who hurt her.
The team believed the woman to still be in Newcastle, but that was unproven, purely a supposition.
Sara and Sean O’Riordan were back in Twickenham, communicating with the team at Challis Street on a constant basis.
After the attack on Gladys Lake, it had gone quiet. It had only been six days, but it felt like an eternity.
Sara knew that Charlotte was still around somewhere. Instinct told her that, and that she would strike again very soon. Anyone as brazen as she had been in having her photo taken with Isaac Cook does not disappear for long.
The question remained as to where. Was it to be London or Newcastle? Nobody could be sure. Sara believed she would strike again in Newcastle.
***
An isolated farm cottage was not the most secure of locations, and it was fine as long as its occupants stayed there, but occasionally they needed to go out.
Charles and Fiona Hamilton made the trip to the supermarket. They had, at least for the last seven weeks, driven forty miles away to avoid confronting the locals.
This one time, they followed the police advice and drove to the town only two miles away. Charles went to get money out of the cash machine; his wife took a trolley and was filling it up with provisions for four weeks. The two police officers waited in their car, the heater on full blast. The season was changing from cold to even colder. They wondered how Charles Hamilton could walk around in just a shirt. Too many events had clouded his ability to think, to even register the climate.
His wife, Fiona, was slowly withering away; another three months and she would be dead. Charles Hamilton considered his position as he waited for his wife. He was sixty-five and still fit, but without his wife he could not continue, would not want to, and he knew their lives were forfeit.
He returned to the present and entered the supermarket. He found his wife in the second aisle loading up with cereal. She was moving slowly, not looking at what she was buying. He returned some items to where she had found them, and then took another trolley.
‘Cash or credit?’ the lady at the checkout counter asked.
‘Cash,’ Charles Hamilton’s reply.
Together, Charles and Fiona Hamilton wheeled the trolleys out to their car. Charles pressed the key on his remote. The lid of the boot opened. After putting the provisions in the car, they drove out of the car park.
Neither they nor the police had noticed the woman on the other side of the road.
***
Detective Chief Superintendent Richard Goddard did not like press conferences. There were always some attending who felt the need to monopolise proceedings. The investigation was not going well, and it was hard to defend their lack of progress. Against his better judgement, he had been instructed to bring his DCI with him.
The commissioner had been adamant. ‘You’re a wet fish once they stick a camera in your face. Cook may be a bloody idiot, but he handles himself well. He can deal with the flak when they start asking their stupid questions.’
As usual, Goddard made the official presentation: long on content, short on fact.
At the end of his statement, the hands went up.
‘DCI Cook, what is the situation with you and Charlotte Hamilton. Are you protecting her?’ It was not unexpected. Liz Devon, who typically did not attend police press conferences, was a columnist for one of the gutter press publications. She did not care about the murders, only salacious gossip.
‘Miss Devon, you are aware of the circumstances surrounding that photo,’
