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as a tall, fair man in a brown jacket raised his hand.
    â€˜Ladies and gents – thanks for coming, I know how busy you all are and what a difficult time this is, so this won’t take long.’ He paused and smiled. ‘By the way, I’m DCI Adam Bradberry, senior investigating officer. You’re probably going to see me around quite a lot in the days to come – sorry about that!’
    Sam pressed her mouth to Cora’s ear. ‘He’s hot !’ she hissed.
    â€˜Shhh!’ Cora elbowed her friend in the ribs. Sam was right though. He really was quite attractive. Actually, if she was being perfectly honest, he was rather gorgeous. Not that she was remotely interested in men at the moment, of course.
    The policeman was still talking, ‘… so, if you could all just take a look at this. This man was seen loitering outside the building for quite some considerable time yesterday morning, and for no obvious reason. There may be a perfectly innocent explanation of course, but we need to be sure. We’ll be releasing it to the news channels later today, but if anyone here knows who he is it would save us a lot of time.’
    He pressed a button on the remote control in his hand and the big screen flickered into life. It was a shot of the front of TV Centre. The police officer pointed to a figure in a hooded coat leaning against the front wall, a metre or so away from the big revolving main door.
    â€˜That’s him, there. We have several hours of footage of him – he first shows up around 4 a.m., which is unusual in itself if he’s not staff. Comes and goes a bit, then vanishes for good after eight, and we’re really not sure what he’s doing there. A few times he looks like he’s about to come into the building, then seems to change his mind. Then he disappears for a bit – see here? – goes round the corner out of CCTV range, then he comes back. We can’t rule out the possibility he might have entered the building through another entrance at some point, and he’s not in his position at the front there at the time your boss was murdered, so we need to find him so we can eliminate him – or not. As I said, probably completely innocent, but we need to make sure. I know you can’t see his face in this footage, because of the hood on his coat. And I say “his”, but actually, I suppose it could be a woman. Anybody recognise him – or her?’
    Cora stared at the screen. All around her, her colleagues were shaking their heads, faces blank. But there was something … something familiar about the individual on the screen. The coat. The way the figure moved. Then, as the images continued, a hand came up and the person on the CCTV pictures rubbed his or her nose. Cora’s stomach rolled. She knew that gesture. And yes, she knew that coat too. No, she thought. Please, no. But suddenly, there wasn’t any doubt in her mind. Yes, it was most definitely a man. A man she knew very well indeed. A man who’d recently hurt her very badly.
    The person the police were trying to identify was Justin.

7
    Friday 22 nd December
    â€˜Soho, please – the A-Bar.’
    Cora slammed the door of the black cab behind her and settled back in her seat as the driver pulled away from the kerb. Normally on a Friday night after a week in the studio she would have checked out of her London hotel and rushed straight back to Gloucestershire and Justin, but tonight there was nothing to go home for. She fished in the little chocolate leather Ted Baker bag on her lap for her lip gloss and smoothed on a final layer, lurching slightly as the cab left the hotel forecourt and joined the evening traffic.
    It was eight o’clock, and snowing lightly. Cora’s breath steamed up the cold window and she huddled a little deeper into her faux fur jacket. Outside, tightly wrapped people laden with festive shopping bags scurried along the rapidly whitening