Free Lasting Damage by Sophie Hannah Page B

self-important, knowing that he’d turned the focus from her and Simon to himself and his scruples; he wished he’d taken the damn thing. Ought he to tell her Simon got married yesterday, that he was on his honeymoon? Did it make it worse that it had happened only yesterday? Sam didn’t think it should make a difference, but felt that it did, somehow.
    He opened his mouth to try and explain why he didn’t think it was a good idea for him to act as go-between, but Alice talked over him, smiling to show she wasn’t offended. ‘What did you want to ask me about Connie? Is she okay?’
    ‘When did you last speak to her?’
    ‘I see her once a fortnight. The last time was . . . Hang on, I can tell you exactly.’ She pulled a small pink diary out of her miniature fisherman’s net. ‘Last Monday, four o’clock.’
    ‘As in the one just gone? Monday 12 July?’
    Alice nodded.
    ‘Since then, have you spoken to her on the phone? Emailed or texted her?’
    ‘No. Nothing.’
    ‘And she didn’t ring you in the early hours of this morning?’
    Alice looked worried. She leaned forward. ‘No. Why? Has something happened?’
    ‘She’s fine, as far as I can tell,’ said Sam. He wasn’t prepared to say more than that.
    ‘Why the early hours of this morning?’ Alice persisted. ‘Why did you ask that?’
    Because that was when a dead woman appeared on her computer screen, and then disappeared. And she told me you’d recommended she contact Simon Waterhouse, who would believe the unbelievable, if it were true. Except that you couldn’t have recommended him at two this morning, because Alice didn’t ring you then. She hasn’t spoken to you since seeing the woman’s body. Unless she lied about when she saw it.
    ‘Did you advise Connie to speak to Simon?’ Sam asked.
    ‘I can’t really discuss what I say to my patients or what they say to me. Sorry.’
    ‘I’m not asking you to tell me anything Connie hasn’t told me herself. She said you recommended Simon as being unlike any other detective, willing to believe what most people would find implausible.’
    Alice nodded. ‘That’s right. That’s what I said, almost word for word.’
    ‘Would I be right in thinking, then – and I’m not asking for details – that Connie was in some kind of . . . situation, or had a problem, and was worried that no one would believe her?’
    ‘I really can’t go into the specifics, but . . . Connie came to see me initially because she’d had a shock – she didn’t want to believe that something was the case, and yet she feared it was.’
    ‘When was this?’ Sam asked.
    ‘January, so . . . six months ago.’
    ‘And you told her to go to Simon? Was there a criminal angle, then?’
    Alice frowned as she considered it. ‘There was no evidence of anything illegal, but . . . Connie thought there might have been a crime involved, yes. But at the same time, she feared she was mad for thinking it.’
    ‘What did you think?’
    ‘I honestly had no idea. All I knew was that being psychologically and emotionally split in two was doing her no good whatsoever. I thought that if she spoke to Simon, he could find out for her one way or the other.’
    ‘Whether a crime had been committed?’
    Alice smiled. ‘I realise there’s no great master list headed “All the crimes that have been committed ever”, but this particular crime would have been documented. Simon could have tracked down the evidence of it in a way that Connie couldn’t.’
    ‘Do you remember when you first mentioned his name to her?’ Sam asked.
    ‘Oh, not straight away. About a month ago, six weeks maybe. I tried to help her myself first, obviously, as I do with all my patients, but nothing I said or did seemed to work with Connie. If anything, she started to feel worse as time went on. That was when I realised she might need more than Anacardium or Medorrhinum. Sorry, they’re homeopathic remedies – I forget sometimes that not everyone’s as familiar