Critical Incidents
Who can you trust when your world goes up in flames?A gripping, sensational new crime drama, from the bestselling author of Before We Met.Detective Inspector Robin Lyons is going home.Dismissed for misconduct from the Met’s Homicide Command after refusing to follow orders, unable to pay her bills (or hold down a relationship), she has no choice but to take her teenage daughter Lennie and move back in with her parents in the city she thought she’d escaped forever at 18.In Birmingham, sharing a bunkbed with Lennie and navigating the stormy relationship with her mother, Robin works as a benefit-fraud investigator – to the delight of those wanting to see her cut down to size.Only Corinna, her best friend of 20 years seems happy to have Robin back. But when Corinna’s family is engulfed by violence and her missing husband becomes a murder suspect, Robin can’t bear to stand idly by as the police investigate. Can she trust them to find the truth of what happened? And why does it bother her so much that the officer in charge is her ex-boyfriend – the love of her teenage life?As Robin launches her own unofficial investigation and realises there may be a link to the disappearance of a young woman, she starts to wonder how well we can really know the people we love – and how far any of us will go to protect our own.
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4th Estate
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This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2019
Copyright © Lucie Whitehouse 2019
Lucie Whitehouse asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Cover photography Face: © Plainpicture / Cristopher Civitillo; Match: Shutterstocl
Epigraph taken from The Less Deceived by Philip Larkin, by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins
Source ISBN: 9780008268992
Ebook Edition © February 2018 ISBN: 9780008269012
Version: 2019-01-09
For Bridget
I leant far out, and squinnied for a sign
That this was still the town that had been ‘mine’
So long, but found I wasn’t even clear
Which side was which.
Philip Larkin
Contents
Robin surveyed the table with its heap of crumpled napkins and burger boxes, stray fries and onion rings, the pile of bleeding ketchup packets. Aftermath of the cholesterol bomb. They’d had breakfast back in London, too, but as the road signs had started to portend BIRMINGHAM, her stomach started churning, and by the time they’d reached Warwick Services, it had felt completely empty or at least gnawing in some other way that made eating fifteen quid’s worth of Burger King seem like a good idea. Whoppers, milkshakes, the works – no section of the menu overlooked. Now she had stomach ache and she felt sick.
Across the table, Lennie’s stomach was a toddler-style pot under her Blondie T-shirt. She put her hands on it and grimaced. ‘Ugh. I feel like I’ve swallowed a sofa cushion. Full of grease.’
‘It was a two-seater. I got the fluff and loose change from down the back, too.’
Lennie laughed and for a moment, everything seemed brighter. There was still a chance this would all be irrelevant in the grand scheme, wasn’t there? A blip. Once, on one of the long nights when Lennie was a baby, she’d whispered in her ear that together, they could do anything. She would do anything for her, of course; but also, because of her, she, Robin, could do anything. Right, said a snide voice.
She stood quickly and began piling their rubbish onto the trays, crushing her burger box with a savagery that startled Lennie from her texting. ‘Once more unto the breach?’
A thump, hard but fleshy, as if a large bird – a pheasant, even a swan – had dropped from the sky and landed deadweight on the roof. They both jumped but a second later a smirking face loomed at the passenger-side window. For the love of god. Robin took a long breath then pressed the button to lower the glass.
‘Luke.’
Her own eyes looked back from a face that was her own, too, but pale and more defined, the jaw made square by pads of muscle. ‘Shocked you, did I? What are you doing sitting back here? There’s a parking spot outside.’
‘Someone must have just gone.’
Her brother made the yeah, right expression he’d been giving her since he was six. ‘How are you, Lennie? Can’t be many people who’ve staked out their own grandparents. Old habits dying hard, Rob?’
She flung the door open and moved to get out, remembering at the last second that she’d undone her jeans. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Same as you – come to spend time with the rentals. Though just the afternoon in our case.’ He smirked again.
Robin came round to the pavement and stooped to look at the roof. She couldn’t see a dent, but still. ‘Why would you hit my car, you … fuckwit?’ she hissed.
‘Afraid it’ll affect the resale value? What?’ The injured innocence he did so well. ‘You’re going to have to sell it, aren’t you, if you’re as broke as Mum says? Can’t drive an Audi if you’re begging. Even if it was second-hand.’
‘We’re not begging.’ She glanced at Lennie, just getting out, then glared at him: Watch it.
‘Would you be back here if you weren’t?’
‘Hiya, Lennie. Robin.’ Natalie, Luke’s wife, lunged at them. She was like a newly hatched bird, Robin thought, all beak, eyes and pushy hunger, thrusting herself into the middle of every situation to ensure she wasn’t overlooked or slighted in some other unguessable way. Her fringe absorbed make-up from her forehead and hung in damp-looking, fresh-from-the-egg strands.
