was ever going to go anywhere. It was turning into more of a Spy On Your Neighbour or Moan About Your Neighbour campaign anyway.’
‘Well, that’s more the British way of doing things, I suppose.’
There was a short silence.
‘Are they going to check their computers?’
I looked at him. He was crossing a line.
‘Oh, go on,’ he said. ‘It’s a very general question. I thought maybe they’d all been accessing suicide chatrooms or something. Might be a link between them?’
‘I’d be surprised if they all had computers. Some of them were quite elderly, don’t forget.’
‘You’re including the elderly ones?’
‘Well, I am. It’s up to the Senior Investigating Officer if he takes any notice of what I have to say.’
He looked into his empty coffee mug. Mine was still half-full, but I had no desire to finish it. It was like drinking dirty water.
‘I don’t think they killed themselves,’ I said. ‘At least, not in the way we usually think of suicides. It wasn’t a deliberate act. It was more of a… as if they just gave up.’
‘Is that even possible?’
‘It must be.’
‘But surely your body would override that decision, wouldn’t it? Surely hunger – thirst – aren’t they primal forces? You would have to have a completely iron will to just sit down and starve yourself to death.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Because of the phone call we can be reasonably sure now that someone or something is behind all this – I’m thinking that all these people had something done to them to force them to do this, something that has overridden their human instincts in some way.’
He sat forward in his chair. ‘Now that,’ he said, ‘is very interesting.’
‘Is it?’
‘What could do that? What could override the basic human instinct?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Scary, though, isn’t it?’ he said.
I nodded, not entirely sure what he meant.
‘Scary that someone out there could do this,’ he went on. ‘I mean, we could all be victims, couldn’t we?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, although there wasn’t anything obvious linking them, that doesn’t mean that they don’t have things in common. They all lived on their own, for a start. None of them had jobs, for one reason or another.’
‘You’re still talking about a very considerable slice of the population,’ said Sam.
‘You want to go out and warn everyone who lives on their own and doesn’t have a job?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you’d send them all into a panic.’
We were both picturing a hysterical mass of single people, and it raised a smile.
‘The demographics are interesting,’ he said, changing the subject neatly back to the bodies.
‘Because they’re so varied?’
‘Exactly. I mean, if someone’s getting some sort of kick out of this? I don’t know, it’s just so weird. What does he have to gain from it? Did they leave wills, or anything like that?’
‘I don’t have access to that sort of data,’ I said. ‘Maybe the investigation will get to that quite quickly.’
‘I can’t imagine it’s something that simple.’
‘No. I think – ’ I stopped myself.
‘What?’
I looked away for a minute, then down at the table. ‘I think I should go. I have so much that I need to do.’
‘That wasn’t what you were going to say,’ he said.
My cheeks were flushing and to cover up my discomfort I stood up. ‘Thanks for the coffee.’
‘It was awful, wasn’t it? I’ll buy you a decent cup next time.’ I wasn’t going to agree to another meeting, no matter what excuse he came up with.
‘I’ll walk back to the car park with you,’ he said, not giving me any sort of opportunity to refuse.
I walked as quickly as I could, hoping to leave him behind. But my fast walk was a similar pace to a normal person’s stroll and he kept up with me easily. ‘My car’s over here,’ I said at last, breathless, ‘See you another time.’
‘Annabel,’ he said, ‘you know I’d like to help if I can. I remember what it was like when I lost my mum. There’s so much to do, you miss things. Let me know if I can help – alright?’
‘You’re very kind.’
‘Have you still got my number?’
‘Yes,’ I said, but I’d hesitated for a fraction of a second before saying it and he’d whipped a business card out of his pocket and handed it over to me. ‘I’ll see you soon, then,’ he said. ‘Ring me. Yes?’
He was walking backwards through the car park, which was a stupid idea – someone hooted at him and he jumped out of