‘What— What’re you doing awake?’ he asked Abigail, as her head peeked through the gap in the door.

‘I got cold. I couldn’t feel you next to me.’

‘So you woke up?’

‘I didn’t have my snuggle buddy.’

Tomek cringed. ‘I’ll be back in a sec. Just give me a minute.’

‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

‘Writing in my diary.’

It wasn’t a complete lie. But it wasn’t exactly the whole truth, either. Right now, he didn’t want her to know. Not because he didn’t trust her with the information, but because he didn’t want her to panic over the fact Nathan Burrows, a murderer serving a life sentence, knew intimate details about her.

‘Did you have another nightmare?’ She cautiously approached and placed a comforting hand on his back.

‘Yeah.’

‘A bad one?’

‘No,’ he lied. ‘But it was more confusing than the others.’

‘You can tell me about it later. For now, you need to go back to bed. You’ve got an early start in the morning.’

CHAPTER SIX

Tomek failed to stifle the yawn as he left the courtroom. The night’s disjointed and fragmented sleep had left him feeling tired and groggy, like he was a teenager again, wanting to stay in bed until lunchtime. It was his third visit to Southend’s Crown Court in the past three days. He had been attending as a witness in relation to the murder of a man on Two Tree Island, a small salt marshland situated in Leigh-on-Sea. The victim, Reece Cartwright, had been bludgeoned in the back of the head and left for dead by the very eyewitness who’d claimed to have found him. According to his confession, which had come shortly after the team had found the murder weapon discarded in the undergrowth nearby, the victim had stopped the killer in the middle of the path and begun harassing him, drunk, and under the influence of something else. When the victim’s advances hadn’t abated, the cyclist had struck him over the head in an attempt to deter him, but had in fact killed him. A simple act of self-defence had now turned into a murder investigation and what was soon to be imprisonment. The question the jury now faced, however, was whether it was murder or manslaughter. Tomek, in all his years of experience, sensed the man would get manslaughter. Not only was there no evidence to suggest that the two had ever come into contact with one another before that fateful moment, but the nature of the killing suggested it had been an accident in some way, a one-punch hit gone wrong. It was an unfortunate end for a man who, according to his friends and family, was going through some of life’s lowest moments.

The beautiful thing about attending court was that it was only thirty seconds away from the office, so within half a minute, he was back in CID headquarters, making his way to the incident room. When he got there, he headed straight for the kitchen and started to make a cup of coffee. DCI Cleaves, the head of the team, had recently managed to find enough money in the budget to purchase a top-of-the-range automatic coffee machine – equipped with digital interface, twenty-litre coffee bean capacity, and sleek finishes – that required a technician from the company they’d bought it from to clean and service it on a fortnightly basis. It was, in short, one of the greatest things Tomek had ever seen, one step removed from the fancy, over-the-top coffee machines you saw in the likes of Starbucks and Caffè Nero. Except better. There was no need to froth the milk or clean the jets of water after every use – the machine did it all for you. Shortly after its arrival, there had been a clamour, a feverish excitement, and queues of his colleagues had formed, each impatiently waiting to use the machine. On a couple of occasions, Tomek had been forced to intervene and separate some of them, wedging himself between them so that he could break up an altercation before it got ugly, and then at the end of it, skip the queue. Despite it being two weeks old, the team’s fascination with the coffee machine hadn’t subsided, and there was still a queue in front of him when he returned. DC Nadia Chakrabarti, the team’s HOLMES inputter and actioner, responsible for managing everyone’s tasks during the various investigations they had going at any one time, was in the middle of placing the mug under the nozzle, when Tomek asked, ‘Need a hand with that, Nads?’

‘I’m pregnant,’ she snapped. ‘Not a fucking invalid.’

Eight months, to be precise. About to burst. Well overdue her maternity leave. Various members of the team, including HR, had suggested she make the most of the time before the baby came, to relax, to settle a little, but she’d said she didn’t want to be bored, that she didn’t want to stay at home doing nothing all day except wait for the moment to come, not when there was still a mountain of work that needed doing. A mountain of work that, despite her intelligence, now included learning how to use the coffee machine properly; Tomek watched her struggle for a few moments as she placed one hand on her stomach while the other searched for the right button to press.

‘You sure you couldn’t do with a hand? Baby brain again?’

She huffed, looked back, and glowered at him.

‘If you mention baby brain one more time, I’ll smash your head in so you have baby brain.’

‘Halfway there, mate. Think my parents and brothers did most of the job for you already.’

Another huff, another glower. Tomek paid it little heed, then slipped past three members of the civilian support staff, apologising with a polite whisper the way British people did, and stopped beside Nadia. Cries and boos came from behind him.

‘She’s pregnant! I’m just helping someone in need.’

‘You’ll be in need if you carry on,’ she said, then looked back at the buttons.

‘Tough decision,’ he said, ‘going for the same one you always have.’

The look on her face suggested she wanted to smack him, but didn’t have the energy. Instead, she let out a long exhale, and eased the tension in her body. ‘Fine. You do it. Hot chocolate, please.’

‘One hot chocolate and flat white coming up!’ he said to another chorus of groans and cries. He turned to face the crowd. ‘Hey! None of you were willing to help this pregnant woman. It’s only fair I get my just rewards.’

‘You’re such a martyr, Tomek,’ Nadia jibed. ‘It’s a wonder you haven’t been given a knighthood or CBE – or one of the other ones.’

Pointing to the crowd behind him, he said, ‘I do it for my fans. I don’t do it for myself.’

‘Pah! And I’ve got the body of Kim Kardashian.’

Within a few moments, Nadia’s hot chocolate was finished, and as he was about to hand it to her, he placed his mug underneath the nozzle and pressed the button for his own drink. As he turned back to Nadia, he found her looking at him, bewildered, eyes as wide as the rim of her mug. And then he looked down at the floor. She had dropped the drink to the floor, spilling the contents onto the tiles, smashing the mug.

But that wasn’t the only liquid he saw. Her trousers, her thighs, were darkened.

‘Nads…?’

‘I think my waters have just broken.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

Tomek had been less than useless, flapping about like a pigeon on cocaine, shoving team members aside and causing accidents as they bashed into the cabinets and banged their wrists on drawer handles. But the worst of it had been when he’d started screaming. His orders – at least, that’s what they were to him – were nothing other than incoherent wails, the sort you might hear from a beached seal trying to call for help. He was a nightmare, and at one point Nadia had stopped in the middle of the office, grabbed him by the shoulders, slapped him across the cheek, then told him calmly and coherently to “sit down, shut the fuck up, and breathe.”. She was the one who should have been freaking out, losing her mind, not Tomek. It was a terrifying ordeal for him. Give him a serial killer or a high-speed pursuit – either in a car or on foot – any day of the week and he’d be as cool as you like, but this… this had felt like meeting a girl for the first time; he couldn’t speak properly, he couldn’t stop sweating, and he was sure there was a little bit of pee as well.

It had come as a massive surprise then, when Nadia had granted him permission to drive her to the hospital. In a situation like this, she’d said, where she needed to get there as fast as possible, it was the only time she trusted him to do anything regarding her pregnancy (even though it would technically be the last thing he could do, bar delivering the baby; he decided not to mention it). Instead, Tomek had nodded absent-mindedly, uncertain, a dozen thoughts and images and scenarios racing through his head as he’d sat there in the office, listening to her voice and following her breathing exercises. But all that anxiety and doubt disappeared as soon as he’d felt the rigid leather seats of the pool car hug his body.

After he’d switched on the engine, he turned to face her and said, ‘Nadia, it is my honour to drive you in your hour of need.’

Panting, her face scrunched against the pain, she had turned to him, bared her teeth, and screamed in his face, ‘Drive! Or I’m fucking doing it myself!’

For Tomek that wasn’t an option, and so he’d hurtled through the traffic, jumped a couple of red lights (he’d bill her husband for any of fines later) and skidded to a stop outside A&E at Southend Hospital. There, he’d commandeered a wheelchair from a corridor and, feeling like Jack Reacher tearing his way through a city, leaving no prisoners behind, Tomek charged through the corridors and got her seen to as fast as possible.

Nadia’s husband, Sharif, arrived half an hour later. By that point, the baby was well on its way, and Nadia had been sent to one of the rooms along one of the many corridors. The man had been panicked and exasperated, and Tomek had tried his best to allay his fears and calm him down, but when he hadn’t exactly been the hallmark of relaxation himself, there had been no conviction in what he’d told Sharif to do. The last he’d seen of the man, before he’d gone running into the birthing room, was a look of shock and fear on his face, as though the realisation of what was about to happen in the next thirty minutes – and the next thirty years of his life – had suddenly dawned on him.

Tomek had decided to stay. Not because he wanted to see the baby, but because he’d been so overwhelmed with it all that the sudden rush of emotions he’d felt in the office had come back, rooting him to the spot. For some inexplicable reason, he felt impacted by the baby’s birth, and as he waited, he decided that was an avenue of thought he didn’t want to venture down just yet. Or maybe ever.

One was enough, thanks.

A little over an hour later, Sharif returned to the waiting room, charging through the doors. As soon as he saw Tomek, he paused.

‘What are you still doing here?’ Sharif asked before addressing his own family, who had trickled into the waiting room during the birth.

Tomek climbed out of his seat and clasped his hands together. ‘How is she? How’s the baby?’

‘Fine. They’re both fine. Both mum and son are healthy and happy.’

The news was met with a chorus of cheers from Nadia’s and Sharif’s families. Hands were shaken, bodies embraced. It was a pleasant, wonderful experience and a sight to behold that brought a smile to Tomek’s face. Then he realised that he was the odd one out and had no reason to be there.

‘I’ll pass the news on to the team,’ he told Sharif softly as he made to leave.