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as a birthday greeting or a Christmas card. Nothing to acknowledge what they had been to each other. Just silence. A silence more profound than she’d ever known in the Balkans. ‘There’s nothing silent here,’ he’d once said to her. ‘Everything speaks, if you only know how to listen.’ Well, this silence wasn’t speaking, that was for sure. And there was no valid reason now for Maggie to hold her tongue. Even if she decided not to publish, there would be a satisfaction in setting things down. A chance to revisit her history and perhaps find a different angle, a new truth.
    Even if she didn’t know how the story ended.

6
     
    K aren drove slowly down the late-night back street, not wanting to disturb the neighbours. The houses here were homes to the kind of families that didn’t have wild weekend parties. Steady, middle-class lives behind solid respectable facades. More often than not, there was barely a light showing if she came home after eleven. Her job had made her sceptical about what really went on behind those smartly painted front doors, but as far as she was aware, none of their neighbours had so much as an outstanding parking ticket. It was entirely different from the rackety street where she’d grown up, with its loud evenings and shouting matches on the pavement, the drunken midnight fights and singing. Loving Phil Parhatka had altered her life in more ways than she could have imagined.
    For years they’d worked together in the former Cold Case Unit in Fife, adapting to new technologies, learning how to read between the lines of old case reports, winkling the truth out of its defensive shell. She’d always been one step above him on the ladder of rank, but they’d never let that stand in the way of being mates. They had each other’s back, and there had been times when she’d felt he was the only one on her side. They’d been a team and their success rate proved the value of that.
    For her part, she’d known early on she was fighting against feelings that ran much deeper than friendship. She fancied him, she fantasised about him and she hated herself for risking their working relationship with her schoolgirl longings. When he was kind, she told herself he’d treat the Mint – or even a pet dog – with the same consideration.
    And then it had all changed. Right in the thick of their toughest case, she’d discovered he felt the same way. Within weeks she’d moved out of her identikit box on a soulless modern development and into Phil’s late Victorian villa, a house that had been restored to within an inch of its life by his sister-in-law, an ardent architectural historian who had watched too many TV makeover shows. Karen still couldn’t quite believe she’d escaped into so much respectability.
    Sometimes she was tempted not to turn into the gravel drive between the voluptuous herbaceous borders, to keep on driving to the end of the street and beyond, back to where she wouldn’t be found out for the fraud she feared she might be.
    But not tonight. Tonight, she led the way into the stone-built semi like a woman who belonged. The house was silent and dark, save for a dim glow from the rear. ‘Phil home?’ River asked, her boot heels clattering on the encaustic Victorian tiling. ‘Or is it just cop instinct always to leave a light on?’
    ‘He’s away on a course this weekend. Something about developing collateral offences.’ Karen switched on lights as they went through to the kitchen at the back of the house. It was the only room where Phil had managed to stem the tide of his sister-in-law’s fantasy. When Karen had moved in, it had been a seventies relic. Now it was all stainless steel and wood, surfaces littered with appliances and general clutter; a proper kitchen where meals were made and people sat around talking to each other.
    ‘What does that mean?’ River collapsed into a kitchen chair, looking grateful for the break. Her dark hair was uncharacteristically loose and