Fire Damage: A gripping thriller that will keep you hooked. Kate Medina

in her blind trog to her car.

      Tugging her collar up around her neck, she dipped her head and crossed the tarmac at a jog. Pausing, she scanned the rows of cars ahead, found her Mini a couple further on from where she was standing, half the size of the other cars in the row, the only one that wasn’t black, white or silver. Its sunshine yellow paintwork made her smile.

      She was about to walk towards it when something caught her eye. Movement? Was there something moving by the car a couple down from hers? She stared hard through the darkness, continuing to walk, but slowly, relaxing as she walked. No, she’d been wrong. The car park was silent and deserted. She was alone.

      Reaching her Mini, she fished in her handbag for her car keys. Her fingers fumbled over object after object, none of them the keys. She should have got them out of her handbag inside the building where there was light.

      A sudden noise behind her. Pressing herself against the driver’s door, she twisted around. As before, dark rows of cars. No lights, nothing moving. The only noise, her own breathing, the sound harsh and leathery in the chill evening air. In the distance, she could see the gate and guardhouse. Lights on, but all the guards inside – who could blame them? She couldn’t find her keys – they weren’t in the compartment where she usually put them. Her fingers, numb with cold, filtered through the contents again – lipstick, wallet, hairbrush, a collection of coins for parking clanking around at the bottom of her bag – wishing, not for the first time, that she had a sensible handbag with a compartment for everything, rather than this holdall leather rucksack that her mum had bought her for Christmas two years ago, that she only used out of a sense of duty. Her heart rate was raised and she was angry with herself for it.

      She breathed out slowly; her fingers had closed around the cold, heavy bunch of keys.

      ‘Doctor Flynn.’

      ‘Jesus!’ She spun around.

      He was right behind her. How the hell had he got so close without her realizing? He smiled, his gaze tracking down her body, lingering on her breasts. Not that he was getting much of a look, she figured, small as they were at the best of times, now camouflaged under a shirt, jumper and coat.

      ‘Is there anything that you want, Sergeant Starkey?’

      ‘Lots of things, but perhaps we shouldn’t go there now.’

      ‘If that’s a “no”, I’m leaving. I’ve got someone to see.’

      Clicking the lock, she tugged open the driver’s door. He leant his forearm on its top.

      ‘It will be interesting to see if you can break me. I’ve been Intelligence Corps for twelve years. If there’s a psychological game in town, I know how to play it.’

      ‘I’m not trying to break you.’ She was about to add, I’m trying to help you, but realized that would go down like a lead balloon with someone like Starkey. ‘What do you want?’

      He tilted towards her. ‘I think that the devil offered Jackson a deal and I think he took it,’ he hissed.

      ‘We’re off the record here, Starkey. No tape recorder. No witnesses. I looked into your eyes in that room and I know that you’re entirely sane. Why don’t you drop the act.’

      Starkey’s tongue moved around inside his mouth. ‘You’re a tough lady, Dr Flynn.’

      Jessie didn’t reply. She didn’t trust her voice not to betray her lack of confidence. She looked past him to the guardhouse: the guards still inside, playing poker or swapping dirty jokes.

      ‘Jackson and some other Int. Corps were working with an Afghan government official who runs the water board – don’t know his name,’ Starkey began. ‘Americans gave them a shitload of money to dam the Helmand river so they could manage their water supply, irrigate the land. Farmers not fighters. Make them richer and they’d have the independence to make their own decisions as to whom they supported. And then of course, they’d support the puppet government of Hamid Karzai, not those Taliban scumbags.’ He laughed softly to himself. ‘Problem with all this shit is that money never gets used for what it’s supposed to.’

      ‘What do you mean?’

      He shrugged, grinned. ‘That’s the end of the fairy story, young lady.’

      ‘The truth will set you free, Starkey. Isn’t that what you said?’

      His gaze swung away from hers; she noticed a muscle above his eye twitch.

      ‘You think if I tell you what happened – everything – I’ll be free,’ he continued, suddenly nervous. He tapped a finger to his temple. ‘Free of a mental burden, at least. But I won’t.’

      ‘Explain. I don’t understand.’

      Shoving his hands inside his pockets, he shrugged, refusing to meet her eye. ‘There’s nothing more to tell. I don’t know shit.’ He almost spat out that last word. ‘I didn’t find out shit.’

      Jessie stared back at him. She was freezing cold and tired. She’d had enough of the word games. ‘I think we’re done here, Starkey.’

      Tossing her rucksack into the car, she slid into the driver’s seat, reached to pull the door closed. It wouldn’t budge; he was holding it open with his foot.

      ‘Excuse me,’ she said.

      He didn’t move. Swinging her leg out, she kicked his foot away, slammed the door shut. She was tempted to lock it, but didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing that he’d rattled her. As she started the engine and pulled away, she glanced in the rear-view mirror, and their gazes locked in reflection. He lifted his hand in a slow, regal wave, smiled a faint, knowing smile.

       12

      The light was on in Ahmose’s cottage, and she could see him inside, sitting in his stiff wing-backed chair – the one he favoured because he didn’t have to lower himself too far to get into it – by a roaring log fire, reading the paper.

      Ahmose had obviously spent the day gardening because some of the plants in her tiny front garden, across the low flint wall dividing the properties, were wrapped in what looked like white woollen coats, protecting them from the winter freeze.

      He pulled open the door, a wide smile spreading across his face.

      ‘Perfect timing. I put the kettle on when I heard your engine. It should be boiled.’

      She gave him a kiss on the cheek and stepped into the hallway, immediately felt herself relax as the warmth of the little cottage enveloped her, the woody charcoal smell of the open fire filled her nostrils.

      While Ahmose busied himself filling the china teapot, getting the cups and saucers from the cupboard, arranging them all on the floral tray that had been Alice’s favourite, Jessie found a plate and fanned out the biscuits his sister had sent him from Cairo in a neat semicircle. She spent a moment adjusting them, so that an exact portion of each biscuit showed from under the next.

      Their weekly tea was a ritual that they had developed over the five years they’d been neighbours. Jessie’s heart had sunk the first time Ahmose had appeared on her doorstep the day after she moved in – clutching a miniature indoor rose, full of advice on how to keep it flowering – imagining a nosy old man who’d never give her any peace. The reality, she quickly found, was the opposite. She sought him out more often than he sought her, had learnt to value his calm, sensible views, his clear-headed take on her problems, his stories and his humour. Their weekly tea was now a sacred part of her calendar: civilized, to be savoured, a deeply companionable, uncompetitive couple of hours. Ahmose felt more like family now than her blood relatives, certainly far more than the father she had only seen five times in the past ten years.

      Curling on the sofa, Jessie wrapped both hands around the piping cup. With the open fire the cottage was warm, but she felt chilled