The nurse rolled her eyes theatrically, but the hostility in her posture seemed to fade a little. “Honey, Anna isn’t well, not well at all. She has lost babies, but not because any boogie man snatched them from her.” She cast her eyes downward and lowered her voice. “Two babies carried to term, but stillborn. It’s been very hard for her. It would be hard for anyone, but for Anna …” She shrugged one rounded shoulder. “The illness makes it worse, because she doesn’t just suffer the grief, her mind provides all sorts of strange reasons for it. Listen,” she picked up Anna’s half-finished cup of tea and peered into it critically. “It’s best if you go now. Dr Parvez will be trying to calm her, and you’ll not be able to speak to her again today. If you come back to see her again, do me a favor and think of better conversation starters, okay? The food, the local news, the weather. You people love your weather.”
Heather agreed that she would, and left, walking back down the gravel path with the big building looming behind her. Just before she turned the corner that would take her to the main road, she looked back, peering up at the blank windows. She wondered if Anna was watching her leave, or if she was in a sedative induced sleep now, dreaming of giving birth in the woods. But the daylight had turned the windows opaque, and if there was anyone looking out, she couldn’t see them.
The next day was bright and bitterly cold, a blameless blue sky apparently letting the chill of the universe in. Heather stepped out of the cold into a busy central London coffee shop, immediately soothed by the warmth and the gentle chatter of office workers munching through their paninis.
“Hi Diane. How are you?”
It took the older woman a moment to look up from her latte. She did not look much different than when Heather had seen her last—the haircut was a little slicker perhaps, the clothes a little more sober.
“Heather, sit down. I heard about your mother.” Diane turned in her seat and made a complicated gesture at a nearby barista. He nodded and set about making a fresh pair of coffees. “How are you holding up?”
“About how you’d expect, really. Thanks for seeing me. I know that with the way things ended at The Post, well …”
Diane flapped her hands dismissively. They both paused as their coffees were brought over.
“Listen, Diane, I have a story,” Heather looked down at her hands. “I think it’s going to be pretty big.”
Diane raised one perfect eyebrow. “And what? You want to give it to me?”
“Yes. Well, no.” Heather grinned. It was good to see Diane again. Her no-nonsense attitude made everything seem saner than it had ten minutes ago. “I want you to run it, eventually, but I need time. It’s about the Red Wolf.”
“Heather, every paper is dripping with the Red Wolf at the moment, if you’ll forgive the phrase. Do you really have a new angle on it?”
“Would speaking directly to Michael Reave himself count?”
It was satisfying to see the look of surprise that passed over her old editor’s face.
“Let’s say you have my attention. How did this come about?”
Heather dumped a couple of extra sugars into her coffee. “First of all, you have to promise me you’ll wait, okay? I can’t mess up the investigation, or my current … arrangement, so the story needs to wait until I have everything. And I want to write it. All right? This is my piece, Diane. More than anything I’ve ever written, okay?”
Diane raised her eyebrows. “Are you going to tell me what this is all about?’
After a sip of much too sweet coffee to steady herself, Heather told her. About the letters, her mother’s apparently close relationship with a serial murderer, and everything she’d gleaned about the new murders so far: that Fiona Graham had been taken directly from her bedroom, that the police had been going through her personal belongings at the school where she worked, that hearts, or heart shapes, seemed central to the killings. She gave Diane her impressions on Reave himself, and watched as her old editor’s face grew hungry—a look she’d seen whenever a big story was about to break. She left out the note left at her mother’s house, and her own crawling suspicions about her mother’s role in everything; in the story she told, the letters were simply the catalyst that got her access to a murderer. She said nothing about Anna Hobson’s wild claims of stolen babies—she didn’t want to push her luck.
“I’m picturing maybe a series of articles,” Heather said, her voice low. “About Reave, and when they get this new bastard, him, too. From my unique perspective. Do you see? I’m the only person he’s spoken to in any detail.”
“Apart from your mother.” Heather winced at this, but Diane carried on speaking. “You’re right. It’s a unique angle.”
“You have to promise me, Diane, that I get to write it. I’ll come back to you when I have everything I need.”
“Heather, the way things ended before … Well, it leaves me without much space to maneuver. There are people I work with now who wouldn’t be thrilled to see a story from you gracing our paper.”
“Does that really matter? Or, do you think I’ve somehow lost the ability to write in the last few months? Come on, Diane.”
“Tell you what, since I’m fond of you. Send me over a few pages.” Diane sipped at the foam on the top of her coffee. “Give me a solid idea of what you’re going for. It’ll make it easier for me to get it in.”
Heather sighed and leaned back in her chair a little. This was risky, and she knew it, but just seeing Diane again had brought back a lot of memories;
