"Damn! Damn! Damn!" Mitchell swore, punctuating each profanity by slamming his clenched fist down on the counter.

Melissa could see that he was furious at having been forced to release Zack Wild – she was not prepared to say so, but she could understand the position taken by Wild's solicitor; there was no evidence, so he had to be released without charge – and wanted to get out of the way before that anger was turned on her. Unfortunately, a quick exit was not possible, there was still things to be done, the end of day chores, and the matter of Oliver Ryder, who was still in his cell.

She doubted that Mitchell was going to get around to sorting out Oliver's situation before morning, which meant an officer was going to have to stay at the station overnight to watch him. She didn't imagine that that officer was going to be the sergeant.

"Do you want me to stay and keep an eye on Ollie?" she asked. It was not a job she wanted, it would afford her little opportunity to sleep, but she felt it was better to volunteer than to have the job put on her.

Mitchell thought about that briefly before shaking his head. "No, you head on home, it's been a long day, I'll sort Oliver out," he said once he had his fit of temper under control.

Melissa was relieved that she was not going to be getting the annoying, if easy, job of babysitting Oliver Ryder through the night, but could not help wondering what Mitchell meant by 'sort Oliver out'. There was something vaguely ominous about the phrase, something that made her think he had a meaning other than that he would be the one to spend the night at the station. She dawdled over her closing up chores, delaying so she could try and find out what the sergeant was going to do.

Mitchell headed down the passage to his office, where he fell into his chair, before reaching for the phone on his desk. As angry as he was with how the situation had turned out, he disliked what he had to do next, tell his superior that he had been forced to release Zack Wild, even more.

Like him, Inspector Stevens had been hoping that the arrest of the author meant the investigation was going to be resolved speedily, and before Sir Virgil Foulds could hear that anything had happened to his beloved great-niece. They could not avoid Sir Virgil finding out that Lucy had been killed, but Mitchell, along with Stevens, had been hoping that by having her murderer in custody before he knew what was happening they could show they had done everything possible.

He had his hand on the receiver, and was about to lift it to his ear, when a thought occurred to him, making him froze. He turned his idea over in mind a couple of times, while he looked for anything wrong with it; there wasn't, as far as he could see, so he took his hand from the phone and got to his feet. The phone call to the inspector could wait.

Oliver Ryder paid no attention to the footsteps that approached his cell, he had been checked on several times since he was put in there, and was sure the steps merely preceded another check. His eyes flew open, however, when he heard the rattle of keys and the door swung open.

"What d'you want?" he asked sharply of Mitchell. "Isn't it way past time an office monkey like you was home? You don't normally work this late."

"I'll be on my way home soon, Oliver," Mitchell said. "I thought you'd want to get out of here first, though."

Oliver looked at the sergeant in surprise, not sure he had heard him right. "What're you talking about?" he wanted to know. "You don't normally release me 'til you have to."

"If you want to stay here you can," Mitchel told him. "I thought I'd save someone the job of keeping an eye on you, though. I can't see the point in putting anyone out for the sake of a pain in the ass like you." He made to shut the door and lock Oliver in again, but the young man was on his feet in an instant.

"If you think I'm staying here any longer than I have to, you're a bigger idiot than I thought," Oliver said, slipping quickly through the door before Mitchell could change his mind. The moment he was out of the cell, he stopped; he wanted to head straight for the nearest door, so he could get out of the station and find something to eat and drink, especially something to drink. He also wanted to find Kieran Wright, so he could finish what he had started before being dragged away by the sergeant. Before he could leave, however, he had to get the things that had been taken from him.

Mitchell saw the eagerness in the teen and moved to curtail it. "There is a condition to me letting you go tonight," he said. "Under no circumstances are you to go near Kieran Wright. I'll be speaking to him in the morning, and I'm sure I can convince him not to press charges against you; if you go anywhere near him again, though, I'll have no choice but to charge you with assault, attempted murder, and anything else that occurs to me. I don't think you'd like that; if you added up all the sentences you've had previously, I don't think they'd come close to what you'd get for attempted murder." He was not sure how long a person could expect to get for attempted murder, but he had seen someone in the news recently who got ten years for it.

"That bastard deserves whatever happens to him, and if I have to be the one to give him what he deserves, so be it," Oliver said, heedless of the possibility that he could end up right back in the cell he had just left. "If you'd do your job, I wouldn't have to deal with the sick bastard. Why the hell haven't you arrested that murdering rapist?"

"Because Kieran Wright isn't a murderer," Mitchell said. "Nor, as far as I know, is he a rapist."

"Didn't Mel tell you what I told her earlier, about what that bastard did to Lucy?" Oliver demanded.

Mitchell nodded. "She told me, but as I explained to her, even if Kieran did attack Lucy and try to rape her, there's nothing we can do because it happened a while ago, and the report hasn't come from Lucy herself. Since we can't establish that the incident took place, we've got no reason to question to him over what has happened to Georgina and Lucy, especially when we already have another suspect."

"Who?" Oliver had no sooner asked that question when he realised what else the sergeant had said. "What's happened to Lucy? What's happened to Lucy?" He repeated the question without giving Mitchell, whom he grabbed by the front of his shirt, a chance to answer the first time.

Mitchell freed himself from Oliver's grasp, at the cost of a button, and straightened his shirt as best he could. "The same thing happened to Lucy as happened to Georgina," he said. "Inspector Stevens and the search team found her body in the woods while examining the area around Georgina's body; as far as we know right now, they were killed by the same person. And before you go off on one about Kieran, we believe that both of them were killed by Zack Wild."

"Who?"

"He's the guy that moved into the old Henshaw Cottage."

"How d'you know it's him?" Oliver wanted to know, his whole body trembled as he fought the urge to race from the station in search of Zack Wild.

"I can't go into the evidence I have," Mitchell said pompously, as though he actually had evidence, rather than just a belief that Zack Wild was guilty of the murders. "But trust me, Wild's the one who killed Georgina and Lucy, not Kieran, so stay away from him, and you'll stay out of trouble."

"If you're so certain he killed them, why the hell haven't you arrested him?"

"I did, but he's got some expensive solicitor who forced me to let him go. Believe me, I'm no happier about it than you are, but until I can find enough evidence to charge him, he's a free man."

Down the corridor in the small locker room, Melissa listened to the conversation taking place between Mitchell and Oliver Ryder in disbelief. It was not the fact that Oliver was being released without charge that she had a problem with, she could understand that, even if she did not wholly agree with it; what she had a problem with was Oliver being told that Zack Wild was their one and only suspect in the murder of his cousin and his girlfriend when he had already been arrested for attacking the person he believed responsible.

Her first thought was to confront Mitchell and demand to know what he was doing; she quickly realised what a mistake it would be for her to do that, though. Confronting her superior would only get her in trouble, and she didn't want that, especially when she couldn't say that he had done anything wrong. Her mind raced as she considered her options, but she came up with no answers; she needed advice, and could think of only one person to get it from – her gran.

Not wanting to give Mitchell reason to think that she had been listening to his conversation, even though that was what she had been doing, Melissa grabbed her things and headed for the door.