Melissa was oblivious to her grandmother's presence, she had no idea her grandmother was there, despite her name being called repeatedly, until a hand landed on her shoulder. The touch shocked her out of her reverie so violently that she jumped visibly.

"I'm sorry, Melissa," Constance apologised as she sank onto the pew next to her granddaughter. "I didn't mean to make you jump. You didn't seem to know I was here."

"I didn't," Melissa said with an apologetic smile. "I was lost in my own little world. I started off in the café, and the next thing I knew, I was in here."

"It must be serious, whatever it is that's got you thinking so hard, I don't normally see you in here." Constance meant it only as a general comment, but couldn't help sounding faintly accusatory as she looked around the nearly empty church. "I don't see many people in here during the week, and especially on a Monday morning; most folk seem to think they get enough church on a Sunday to last them through the week." As though sensing how embarrassed she was making Melissa, she switched subjects and asked, "So, what is it that has you so troubled that you've come to church to try and figure it out?"

Melissa's eyes strayed from her grandmother to Father Wozniak, who was pottering around, doing his daily housekeeping chores.

Constance grasped her granddaughter's concern without Melissa needing to say anything; the priest was about twenty feet away, but the acoustics were such that when the church was as empty as it was then, a whisper could be heard from anywhere. If that wasn't bad enough, Father Wozniak was a man who loved to gossip, and one who considered anything said outside of the confessional to be fair game for passing on to anyone who might have an interest in it. He dispensed good advice, but no-one went to him unless they were okay with everyone in the village knowing what they gone to him about within a few hours of them seeking advice.

"Why don't you come back to my place for a nice cup of tea and a slice of cake; you don't have to go to work, do you?"

Melissa shook her head. "No, I don't have to be at the station until later, I'm down for the afternoon shift; though I suppose that could change, with everything that's happened. Still, nobody's called to say they need me in this morning." She got to her feet and took her grandmother's hand to help her up.

*****

It didn't take long to get from the church to Constance's house, and once there Melissa took a seat at the table in the kitchen, while her grandmother bustled about, making tea and setting out a plate of biscuits and cake. Melissa would have helped, even made the tea herself, but she knew better than to offer; despite being almost eighty, her grandmother was a proud and vigorous woman, who insisted on doing everything possible for herself, claiming that it was good for her to keep busy.

Nothing much was said by either woman until the pot had been filled and set in the middle of the table; the cups were ready in front of each of them, and where was nothing else that needed doing right then, other than to let the tea stew for a short while.

"So, what is it that has you so troubled that you're lost in thought in the church first thing on a Monday morning?" Constance asked of her granddaughter. "Something to do with recent events, I take it."

"Yeah." Melissa nodded. "The murders, and the shooting next door last night, and – and everything; at first I didn't think Mr Wild was the killer, he seems too nice, but now I'm not sure, and I think Sergeant Mitchell had something to do with the attack on Mr Wild last night. Oh, I don't mean he was the one doing the shooting or anything like that," she said quickly. "It's just that I think he knows who did it, and he knew it was going to happen before it did, and I think he knew Oliver was going to attack Mr Wild on Saturday." The words tumbled from her mouth with little coherency. "It's all so complicated, and I don't know what to think or do."

Constance allowed Melissa to ramble on, getting her thoughts out in whatever order they occurred to her. Only when her granddaughter had finished did she speak. "I can see why you're so confused," she said as she took the cosy off the pot so she could pour them both a cup. "Why don't you start at the beginning, maybe if you talk it out one step at a time, things will start to make some sense, and you won't feel so overwhelmed."

"I don't know where to begin: with Mr Wild, or with Sergeant Mitchell, or with the murders, or something else. It's all such a jumble up here." Melissa banged herself on the side of the head, as though doing so would knock her thoughts into some semblance of order and allow her to see things more clearly. When that didn't work, she wrapped her hands around the mug her grandmother had filled with tea and sipped at it miserably.

Constance patted her granddaughter's arm sympathetically for a moment. "You're thinking too much," she said. "Close your eyes. Don't think, just speak – what's the first thing that comes to mind?"

Melissa did as her grandmother said, though she felt more than a little stupid sitting at the table with her eyes closed. "Zack, Mr Wild," she said.

"What is it about Mr Wild you have a problem with?" Constance asked.

"I don't know really," Melissa admitted. "When I first met him, god, was it only a couple of days ago?" She couldn't quite believe that it was Monday, and just two days before, Georgina Ryder's body had been found – so much had happened since then that she was convinced a week or more must have passed. "He seemed so charming, nice and funny, and normal; not at all the sort of guy who'd hurt anyone, let alone kill them. The more I find out about him, though, the more I wonder what to believe." No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't keep the distress she was feeling from her voice. "I've read his personal file from when he was a detective, and I've spoken to him about things, but it's just left me more confused. He's been involved in violent incidents, and he's been accused of attacking girls – he explained them, and the file I read explains them as well, and their either false or understandable, but last night he admitted that he kissed Emily.

"She's only sixteen and he kissed her!" she exploded. "How the hell could he do that? It's sick and it's wrong, and if he's willing to do that, how much more is he willing to do. What if he is the one who killed Georgina and Lucy, and now Emily as well? I know you've heard what's supposed to have been done to the girls before they were killed. What if he kissed them, or tried to, and wouldn't stop once he got started."

Constance had a few things to say on that subject – she was a little surprised and disappointed to find that Melissa was so closed-minded – but she chose not to voice them just then, instead she said, "Put all of that from your mind for the moment, don't let it bother you. What's the next thing that comes to mind?"

"Sergeant Mitchell," Melissa said, and before her grandmother could ask another question she went on. "He seems to be obsessed with Mr Wild, he's absolutely certain Mr Wild is the one responsible for the murders, even though we don't have a scrap of proof against him. We've got a pretty good idea of when yesterday evening Emily was kidnapped, and at the time Mr Wild was on the phone with his daughter, he couldn't possibly have taken her, and if he didn't kidnap Emily, the chances are he didn't kill Georgina or Lucy. Mitchell isn't willing to accept that, though; he thinks we must be wrong about when Emily was kidnapped. I don't think we can be, though." She shook her head. "From the moment he heard that Mr Wild was probably the last person to see Lucy before she was killed, Mitchell's been convinced that he's the killer, and he's not willing to consider the possibility that he's wrong.

"I was told – even when talking with her grandmother she knew to be discreet, and didn't say who had told her what she was about to say – that Kieran Wright could be the killer; he's apparently attacked Lucy in the past. Mitchell didn't want to know when I told him, though. He won't even consider the possibility that someone else could be responsible for the murders. From the start, he's only been interested in proving that it's Mr Wild. And he's gotten really angry both times he's had to release him; the first time he immediately went and let Oliver out and told him that as far as he was concerned, Mr Wild was the killer, not Kieran, and we both know what happened after that."

Constance might have been getting on in years, but she was still in full possession of her mental faculties, and she quickly realised that it must have been Oliver Ryder who told Melissa about Kieran Wright's supposed attack on Lucy Goulding. Briefly, she wondered what could have made Oliver say such a thing; like everyone else in the village who paid attention to what happened in and around Oakhurst, she was aware of the bad feeling that existed between Oliver Ryder and Kieran Wright.

It took Melissa some time to finish unburdening herself of the things that were troubling her, and by the time she was done the pot was empty, the cake was gone, and there were only a few biscuits left on the plate.

"Do you feel any better after getting all of that off your chest?" Constance asked.

Melissa nodded. She couldn't speak just then because she was nibbling her way through another of her gran's home-made cinnamon biscuits. " A little better," she said once she could speak without being in danger of spraying crumbs all over the table. "But it hasn't really changed anything, all of my problems are still there."

"I realise that," Constance said, "but sometimes just telling someone a problem makes it easier to deal with. Now that you've told me what's wrong, I want you to get a pad and pen and write everything down. I want you to write down everything that's happened since the start of all this; put it all down, even if you don't think it's relevant, in the order it happened. By the time you're done, you might just realise that you've got what you need to make a decision about what to do.

"Before you do that, though, I want you to answer one question for me."

Melissa looked at her grandmother curiously. "What's that?" she asked.

"Has your opinion of Mr Wild's innocence changed because he admitted kissing Emily, and you genuinely believe it's wrong for someone his age to kiss a sixteen-year-old girl, or because he admitted kissing someone when you wanted him to kiss you?" The flush that coloured Melissa's cheeks seemed to answer the question but Constance still waited for her granddaughter to speak, it was a few moments before she did.

"I'm not sure," Melissa admitted as her cheeks reddened still further. "I do think it's wrong for someone his age to kiss a teen, it's not right at all – he must be twenty years older than her – but that's just how I feel. Emily's sixteen, that's the age of consent, it isn't wrong, legally, for him to kiss her. If you're asking whether I was jealous that he kissed someone else – she nodded – yes I am; he's attractive and charming, and I wanted him to kiss me. And now I'm even more confused about everything.

"I don't know if I thought he was innocent because there's no evidence against him, or if it was because I think he's attractive and I fancy him. And I don't know if I now think he's guilty because Emily is the same age as Georgina and Lucy, and if he was prepared to kiss Emily, what might he have done, or tried to do, with the other two, or because he kissed someone and I'm jealous it wasn't me." Her head in her hands, she stared miserably at the table.

Constance permitted herself a small smile for the dilemma Melissa had gotten herself into, though it didn't stay on her lips for long. "It's good that you can admit that you're confused, and why," she said. "It's also good that you're willing to accept that just because you believe Mr Wild was wrong to kiss Emily, doesn't mean he actually did something wrong; some people can't do that. Take Lewis for example, in all the time I've known him, I don't think I've ever heard him to admit to being wrong about anything. That's a bad trait in anyone, but especially in a police officer.

"I remember your grandfather used to say 'it's better to say you're wrong, even if you're right, than it is to say you're right, even when you're wrong'."

Melissa had to smile at that; she hadn't known her grandfather all that well, he had died when she was young, but she did remember him coming out with sayings like that.

"I'm not an expert on this kind of thing, and I don't pretend to be," Constance said. "But it seems to me that if you really want to figure out if Mr Wild is the killer, or if it could be young Kieran, you need to acknowledge that you're attracted to Mr Wild, and then forget all about that attraction and concentrate on the facts you have."

Melissa nodded at the wisdom of those words, though she doubted it was going to be as easy as her grandmother made it sound. "What do I do about the attempts on Mr Wild's life, though? If I report what I suspect, and I'm wrong, I could lose my job, or at least end up with a black mark in my file, which will mean I can't go for sergeant next year, like I want to, but if I don't report it, and I'm right, then I could be letting a would-be murderer go free, and letting the sergeant get away with abuse of power, or whatever he could be charged with."

"On that subject, I don't really know what to tell you, except that you should do what you think is right."

Melissa arrived at the station well ahead of the start of her shift, and immediately put the kettle on. She made a cup of tea for Inspector Stevens, who was dealing with paperwork in his office, a coffee for Pritchard, who was at the counter, and a coffee for herself, which she carried into the back office. Once she was seated with her coffee, she found a pad and a pen and got to work on what her grandmother had advised her to do.

Putting together a chronological account of everything that had happened since Georgina Ryder went missing was not as easy as Melissa had thought it would be. The task was made more difficult by the need to make sure that none of what she put down was coloured by her personal opinions or feelings.

She had to stop before she could finish as Sergeant Mitchell arrived at the station; she didn't want him to see what she was doing, in case he disapproved of it, which he almost certainly would.

"What are you doing this afternoon?" Mitchell asked when he found Melissa; he didn't notice the several sheets of paper she whipped out of sight upon seeing him in the doorway.

"Whatever you need me to," Melissa said. She had been expecting to be on the counter for her shift, with a couple of runs around the village during the afternoon and evening to keep an eye out for potential trouble, but the question made her think Mitchell had something in mind for her.

Mitchell nodded. "Good, because I've had a message to say that the post-mortems have been completed, so we need to go into town and speak to the pathologist. We also need to speak to Mr Wild," he said, though he seemed far from pleased by the thought, "to find out what, if anything, he knows about the attempt on his life."

Going to see a pathologist about the results of a post-mortem was one of the last things she would have chosen to do, had she an option, but it beat spending an afternoon at the counter. As horrible and horrific as the events of the last few days had been, she couldn't help thinking that they had shown her how boring her work was usually; it wasn't that she wanted to have to deal with murders and other serious crimes on a daily, or even a regular, basis, it was just that she didn't want to go back to a life where she had little to do beyond breaking up the occasional drunken argument in the pub.