Free A Tapping at My Door: A Gripping Serial Killer Thriller (The DS Nathan Cody Series) by David Jackson Page A

score. They know how much Blunt is asking of their colleague. Some of them will feel resentment or anger towards her because of it.
    Cody recognises it for what it is. A challenge. This is his boss saying to him, You tell me you’re fine? You tell me you want to be treated exactly like everyone else? Then here’s your chance to prove it.
    Cody knows he can refuse. A simple no. A shake of the head. A sentence beginning something like, ‘Well, actually, if you don’t mind . . .’ Anything less than a total positive will be enough. She will seize on that. She won’t pursue it, won’t press him to take the job. She will simply pass it to somebody else. But then it will be too late. The damage will have been done. Forever after in her eyes he will be less than the detective he wants people to see.
    ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he says, and he says it with assuredness.
    Blunt’s mouth twitches. An approximation of a smile. And then, finally, she moves on.

10
    Small world, thinks Webley.
    You start a new job. You think everything is fresh and different and exciting. So much to learn, to experience, to discover. New faces, voices. Different jokes and opinions.
    But it doesn’t last. Not even a day before the ghosts jump out at you.
    Terri Latham, for one. Webley can picture her face precisely. Can see the mole on her cheek, the sharp arch of her eyebrows, the tongue touching her upper lip when she was concentrating.
    Gone. All gone. As if she was never there at all.
    What are the odds? Yes, this is a murder squad and, yes, that means encountering lots of dead bodies, but it’s not every day the victim is someone you once knew. Someone you remember laughing and dancing and drinking and swearing, as if it were only yesterday.
    She tries telling herself that it can only get easier now. She can’t be unlucky enough to go through this again. All the future corpses in her professional life will be complete strangers to her. She can cope with that. She won’t go to pieces again like she did in front of Cody. Christ, what a way to start a new job. Cody must already be thinking she’s in the wrong line of work.
    And there’s the other ghost. Cody. Again, what are the chances? It never once entered her head that she might find him here at MIT. Why would it? His top priority was undercover work. It was his life. Becoming a murder squad detective was never an option for him when they were going out. Perhaps if it had been . . .
    But no, she thinks. Let’s not go there. Things change, people change. Cody’s life is none of my concern now.
    Could be awkward, though, couldn’t it? I mean, this is the man I once loved – the man I once believed I might spend the rest of my life with. And now I’ve got to treat him as just another guy at work. I’ve got to sit next to him, share cars with him, discuss cases with him, interview people with him, drink coffee with him, socialise with him, listen to his problems, rely on him, confide in him . . . and try not to let the past get in the way of any of that.
    Is that even possible? Am I crazy for even thinking of staying on this squad?
    But she’s not walking away, oh no. Despite all her misgivings, Megan Webley is not breaking the golden rule that she has lived by since she was just a kid.
    She remembers exactly how it started.
    The woman lived on the same narrow street in Walton as the Webley family. Just a few doors down, in fact, although Webley never got to know her name. Still doesn’t know it to this day. It occurs to her sometimes to do a little digging to find out more about the woman, but something always stops her. She prefers to remember her simply as the Sad Woman, as though discovering her name would somehow diminish that state of perfect sorrow.
    She could never predict when she’d see the woman. Webley would be on her way to school or the newsagent or the chippy, and there she’d be: coming out of her house, or tending to her tiny patch of garden. Even before she