Free Follow Me by Angela Clarke Page A

someone who’d killed Mardling like that – so brutally – do if they knew people were watching? They’d already posted a photo of a dead man. What else would they be capable of? Dread pooled in her gut: ‘You’ve given the murderer an audience.’

Chapter 9
STBY – Sucks To Be You
    02:18
    Sunday 1 November
    1 FOLLOWING 10,554 FOLLOWERS
    Freddie had been sat in the interview room alone for two hours now. Her phone had died. The pale-faced PC had brought her another scalding coffee and something that was supposed to be an egg and bacon bap.
23 Things You Eat That Can Kill You.
    Rocking back on her chair legs, she wondered how long they’d drag this out for. Everyone had jumped up after she’d said about @Apollyon having an audience and she was asked to wait here. Asked or told? She was too tired to be angry. She just wanted to go home.
    The door opened and the burble of noise and movement bled into the room. Nasreen stood in the doorway.
    ‘Follow me, Miss Venton.’ She turned and Freddie jumped up.
    Miss Venton? I thought we were past all that nonsense?
‘So, Nas, bet you never thought we’d meet like this, hey? How you been?’
    Nasreen ignored her and clicked down the hallway. Freddie noted she’d changed out of her flat boots into black high heels. Let her hair down.
    ‘Wait here.’ Nasreen tapped briskly on a door.
    ‘Come!’ said a male voice inside.
    Nasreen smoothed her hair and tugged at her shirt’s hem to straighten it. She wanted to look smart. Correct. Her suit was her armour. Except this situation was a hundred times worse than a job interview. Being summoned to the guv’s office like this was bad news. She knew he’d been informed after the Twitter situation broke, journalists were already inundating the station with calls. DCI Moast was shouting about containment. It was a PR disaster. The guv shouldn’t even be here – he’d come in on his night off to ‘limit the damage’. She’d never been called to see him before. Never. She’d already been hauled over the coals for not outing Freddie immediately by DCI Moast.
Inappropriate conduct. Endangering the investigation.
She hated being told off. Her cheeks burned. She felt guilt and shame and wanted to fix it. She’d been a well-behaved child, only really getting in trouble if she went along with one of Freddie’s more crazy schemes. Finding a pot of paint outside a pub and painting one of the building’s walls pink. Grounded. Going further from home than she was allowed because Freddie had seen a kitten with an injured leg they had to help. No television for a week. It was always Freddie who’d led her astray. And now this? If Nasreen was to be suspended, she wanted to hold it together. She would not cry. No matter how much it hurt. No matter how upset or angry she was. Not in front of her colleagues. She wouldn’t lose their respect as well as everything else.
    Freddie’s story about being a journalist was true, so why on earth was she wasting her time at Espress-oh’s if she worked for
The Post
? That just showed how different they were. Anything they’d had before – any common ground they’d shared in the past – was gone. She probably did it for free paninis. In a few short hours Freddie had seemingly taken a wrecking ball to Nasreen’s life. Her career. Everything she valued. Nasreen felt the wrench of despair as she thought of Freddie confessing to entering the crime scene under false pretences. Why hadn’t she raised the alarm when she’d seen Freddie at Blackbird Road? She was complicit in Freddie’s offence. And now the suspect, the real one on Twitter, had hours on them and it was Nasreen’s fault they’d missed the Golden Hour. The crucial period immediately after a crime when material is readily available to the investigating team. They’d lost it to interviewing Freddie. A false lead. A distraction. A confusion. DCI Moast had talked about creating slow time – trying to regroup, but Nasreen knew her