The Promise: The twisty new thriller from the Sunday Times bestseller, guaranteed to keep you up all night

I had just started working at the service station; I would cycle out there at five in the morning and start my shift behind the counter. They would come in every morning and order the same thing and then go and sit at the same table. The taller one with the big smile would order a full English breakfast and a mug of tea, but the quiet one always just had a bacon sandwich, every day for months. It went on like this until one of them finally spoke to me – about something other than just their food order. It was the taller one, as I suspected it always would be.

Did you ever meet someone and just know that this meeting was the first of many? That from the moment your lives came together there was a story to be told, that you had some kind of cosmic business together, something that needed to play out. I knew from almost the first time I saw them both that my life had changed; I felt something shift inside me. I know that sounds like complete nonsense, but I do believe that I was meant to meet them. I even feel happy saying that. Given all that has happened, it seems strange for me to look upon that time as a good thing, but I swear to you, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

He asked me why I put colours in my hair, told me that the purple streak had been his favourite so far. He asked me my name, and then he just kept talking until the quiet one nudged him and he stopped talking long enough for me to walk back into the kitchen, my boss’s watchful eyes urging me to get back to work. For the rest of that day I had a smile on my face; I remembered his interest in me and I felt special. I had always been a bit on the awkward side, a bit of an outsider. I was never the girl that people paid attention to. I stayed in the background and let everyone else get on with their business. If I was ever noticed, it was always for the wrong reasons. I didn’t really mind my life being that way, at least I didn’t until I met them, but for that one moment I felt special, and suddenly I felt angry about all the people who hadn’t made me feel special in the past.

From then on, I looked forward to going to work. Every day felt like a new adventure. I didn’t know what he was going to ask me next, and that was exciting. I had had crushes before but only on celebrities, never on anyone I knew, and never on anyone who fed my crush, who nurtured and cultivated it until it was a burning fireball of desire. And for all this, I still didn’t know his name. He wore a denim jacket, the kind with white wool inside the collar. There was an embroidered patch on his breast pocket with a rocket on it. The first time I called him Rocket, that beautiful grin spread across his face and I guess the name just stuck. His friend silently at his side for each encounter, looking down whenever I glanced his way.

It only took a few months before I was in love with Rocket.

It was a long time before there was even the remotest possibility that anything might happen between us. I guessed that he was just very friendly; his quiet companion seemed to shrug off his behaviour as though it were completely standard, as though everywhere they went he had to listen to his spiel over and over again. His referred to his friend as JD. Rocket would make statements and then turn to his accomplice for confirmation, and JD would just nod and smile shyly. During those first few months, I’m not sure I even heard JD speak twenty words. Rocket did all the talking.

I remember our first kiss as though it were yesterday. It was romantic, even though from the outside it might not seem that way. To me, though, to me it felt as though my heart was going to explode.

The breakfast rush was over and I was taking the rubbish out to the communal bin area. It was hidden away from the public, but as I pushed the sacks into the giant blue wheelie bin, I heard his voice calling out to me from the staff car park. He must have jumped the barrier and come around there. To find me.

My hair flopped in front of one eye and I couldn’t sweep it away because my hands were covered in some mystery substance from the lid of the bin. I held my hands out by my sides, aware that they were trembling somewhat, and I just stared at him with my one exposed eye. I felt so stupid, but still special at the same time. He walked towards me and took the pink streak that hung across my face, tucking it behind my ear. Just like that, after all this time, he kissed me and I will never forget the look on his face when he pulled away from me. He looked dizzy; it was the first time I had seen his confidence shaken. I made him feel something, I knew I did.

People started to notice the chemistry between us and it wasn’t long before I could see the people I worked with getting excited at watching the romance unfold. There was something so completely inevitable about us. Me and Rocket. Together for ever.

Chapter 6

Imogen was alone, bar a money spider crawling across her forearm. She watched as it climbed down and onto the sofa arm. She was facing the TV but it was off; the only thing to watch was her own reflection in the black mirror.

Two months ago, her boyfriend Dean had said he’d needed some time apart. The schism between them had seemed irreparable but he’d promised he just needed distance and that then they could talk properly. She hadn’t seen him for weeks, but this morning she’d received a text from him saying he wanted to see her again, today, if she was available. He must have known she had the day off. He always seemed to know. Nervous, she’d had a shower and then tried to dress in a way that seemed effortless, natural, not as if she had pained over it for two whole hours. She was angry, angry that he had gone and left her there alone in the first place. In the grand scheme of things though, she supposed she owed him.

During his last stint in prison, she hadn’t visited him. After that, when they were together, she had forced him to talk about his traumatic past during the course of an investigation. She had said things she could never take back, things that had been recorded. She knew that his leaving was about being alone, rather than without her; she knew he loved her still and that made her even angrier. It was a bit presumptuous of him to assume she would still want him after he had been gone so long – she could have moved on, or the chemistry between them might be out of whack now. You couldn’t go back, only forwards. All she hoped was that he didn’t hang onto the hurtful things she had said. The doorbell rang and she caught her breath.

‘Come in!’

She had left the door on the latch; even though he had a key, she knew he wouldn’t use it. She stayed on the sofa, waiting.

When she looked up, he was standing in the doorway. He smiled at her, a wide grin, like the time she had first met him, not the broken man she had said goodbye to all those weeks ago. That smile hit her like a hammer. The chemistry was still there.

‘Hey stranger.’ He smoothed his hair back nervously.

She stood up and walked over to him. Trying to read him was always impossible. He was such a contradiction, so completely open, but full of secrets. She could see up close how nervous he was; he was waiting for her to make the first move and she couldn’t bear to think of him in pain. She leaned up and kissed him on the lips; immediately, he pulled her into him, kissing her as though she were a tonic he needed to stay alive.

‘I missed you.’ She pulled away. ‘How are you?’

‘Better now. I just needed some space. I’m sorry. I know it wasn’t fair of me to disappear like that.’

She waved dismissively, she didn’t want to cry and make him feel bad. She wouldn’t have been crying because she was upset that he’d had left her, it was more the sheer relief of him being back. But she had a problem and she knew it. Essentially nothing had changed; he was still an ex-con and she was still a police officer. This was still completely unworkable. She couldn’t afford to not address that anymore. It really was him or the job.

‘We need to talk, Dean,’ she said.

‘Already? Don’t we even get today?’

‘We’ve had too many days. I just can’t ignore this anymore.’

He moved past her and sat on the sofa. She couldn’t quite believe she was about to do this. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the key to her place and put it on the table.

‘You don’t have to say it. I know.’

‘You can’t not be you, you tried. The truth is I love you for who you are. I don’t think you can change and if you did, I’m not sure I would feel the same,’ Imogen said, hoping he would tell her that she was being silly, that it would all be fine. Even if she knew it wasn’t true, maybe they could pretend.

‘Conditional love?’

‘That’s not it. Do you want me to change?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Well there you go then. One of us has to.’

‘It’s not because of what you know about me now?’

‘What do you mean?’ she said. She had found out a lot of questionable things about him during her last big case, just before he’d left. She’d discovered horrific things about his childhood, growing up in care home after care home, being abused by the owners. He had even admitted to killing someone for her. None of that changed how she felt about him.

Dean took a deep breath before speaking. ‘The sexual abuse.’

‘No! God … no, of course not.’

‘Not everyone wants to deal with someone who’s been broken in that way.’ He looked down.

‘You’re not broken! Don’t say that! Please don’t think that.’ The tears sprang out with as much surprise to her as to him. She hated the thought of him thinking of himself that way.

He patted the sofa next to him and she sat in the hollow. Putting out his arm, he pulled her towards him and they just sat there for a moment. Wondering what happened next. She felt heavy with sadness; knowing that this couldn’t continue was a feeling she was used to, but actually ending it was a different matter – she didn’t think she would have the guts. Part of her had wished he had never come back, so this moment could never happen.

‘What happens now?’ he asked, stroking her hair.

‘We go on with our lives, I suppose.’

‘Just like that?’

‘I kept thinking maybe you were right. Maybe if we had some time apart, then it might work out or at the very least all of this would be easier.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Dean said, his voice strained.

‘For being you?’

‘For not being able to change.’

‘I don’t want you to change. I need you to keep being you, just the way you are. There is something very perfect about you. I’m jealous, if I’m honest. Jealous that you can just be … so sure of who you are.’

Dean caught his breath for a moment before speaking, trying to stay in control of his voice. ‘Don’t be jealous of me.’

She looked up and saw a vulnerability she had never seen in Dean before. He looked so lost, maybe this is how he always looked when no one was watching. She kissed him again before sliding her hand across his chest, igniting the fire in both of them instantly. Almost immediately he pushed her back onto the sofa and climbed up so he was looking down on her. They pulled at each other’s clothes and forgot about thinking for a little while. Maybe they could have today after all.

Chapter 7

‘So, what do we know so far?’ Adrian asked for the third time in as many minutes. His focus was a little off these days.

‘We found no technology whatsoever in her place, but her colleagues told us she had Facebook and Twitter and all the other gubbins online so the chances are whoever was in her place took it for some reason,’ Imogen said.

‘Can we get access to her social media accounts?’ Adrian said.

‘We’re trying. Her sister doesn’t know any of her passwords. We can only see what’s available to see by the public or friends. Her sister let us look from her account.’

‘What about the post-mortem?

‘It’s happening right now, I believe. I could go and check it out.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Adrian said.

Imogen flashed him a look. He knew what she was thinking. She thought he couldn’t handle it. She thought the sight of a dead body would send him careering into an abyss of depression. He could still do his job, even despite what had happened to Lucy.

Lucy.

A journalist who had worked on their last case, a journalist who Adrian had very much fallen for. He hadn’t even been with her for very long, he reasoned, so the idea that his whole world had fallen apart now she was gone was ludicrous. Things had changed for him, there was no denying that. The biggest change was the fact that his ex, Andrea, and his fifteen-year-old son Tom had moved in with him following the death of her partner, Dominic – who had been exposed as corrupt at the end of Adrian’s last case. Adrian had given Andrea the bed and been sleeping on the sofa for the last two months. It was good to have them around. The first few nights after Lucy died were crippling, having other people move in most likely saved him from himself. He worked late most nights and got into work early most mornings. If nothing else, he was scoring some major brownie points with the DCI, if not his own sanity.

Adrian watched as Imogen thumbed through the post-mortem report. She handed the pages to him but he shook his head.

‘Just give me the bullet points.’

‘Looks like she might have been on a date, she had traces of white wine and oysters in her stomach.’

‘Right,’ he said.

‘It’s not clear whether she was sexually assaulted – she definitely had intercourse before she died, and there is some minor tearing, but it seems as though it could have just as easily been vigorous consensual sex. Her genitals were washed with bleach, presumably after death which could mean any number of things. Maybe it was an accident and he was trying to remove any traces of himself, or maybe this is part of a larger ceremony that isn’t accidental at all. I’ve not really dealt with anything like this before.’

‘Right, anything else?’ He didn’t want to verbalise his disgust just yet.

‘She has also got some half-moon marks on her neck from her nails, consistent with her trying to fight back, pulling at whoever’s hands were there. She basically scratched herself.’

‘Oh God, poor thing.’ Adrian shuddered involuntarily. ‘Do you think it was kinky sex gone wrong? Erotic asphyxiation? Breath control or whatever you call it?’

Imogen frowned. ‘I suppose that’s a possibility, but there’s a certain level of calm around the scene. Don’t you think? The way the body was redressed – that’s confirmed now by the way; she was definitely dressed after death. Something a bit ritualistic about the whole thing.’

‘You think it was planned?’

‘It just seems too neat not to be.’

‘Yeah. Maybe.’ Adrian took the sheets of paper from Imogen and glanced through them. ‘Says here that they couldn’t find any DNA on or in the body. The bleaching wouldn’t get rid of fluids, but it would get rid of trace evidence, right?’

‘So, what do we think then? Random or targeted? The underwear she had on suggests that she was on a date, coupled with what she ate.’

‘Let’s find out which restaurants serve oysters then, there can’t be that many places around here. Maybe someone saw her on the night.’

DCI Kapoor came over to Imogen’s desk; Adrian could feel her eyes on him all the time, waiting for him to snap or something. It was getting tiresome.

‘Did you find out anything from Erica’s work colleagues?’

‘She was single, she had a cat, a few crap relationships but all pretty short-term, most of them guys at work.’

‘Where does she work?’ DCI Kapoor said.

‘Recruitment agency in town,’ Imogen said.

‘A lot of traffic then, people in and out. What about clients she’s dealt with?’

‘We have a list.’

‘We’re briefing on this in two hours. Grey, I’d like to see you in my office,’ DCI Kapoor said.

Grey got up and followed the DCI. Adrian wondered if she was being asked to spy on him and then considered that maybe he was being a little egomaniacal about the whole thing and just maybe it was about something else entirely. He would ask Grey later, she wouldn’t keep anything important from him.

Looking through the post-mortem for Erica Lawson made Adrian feel like a traitor. He still had a copy of Lucy’s post-mortem in the bottom of his desk drawer. For the last few weeks whenever he reached into the bottom drawer, he looked only with his fingers, not wanting to see the name on the report. He felt closer to her with it there in his drawer and he hated the idea of it being filed with all the other victims. It was on his mind every day, but he didn’t see how knowing all the details would help him in any way and so he just kept it nearby. He already knew enough.

He shook off the image of Lucy’s lifeless body and put Erica’s post-mortem down, picking up the crime scene report instead. There were no other fingerprints in the bedroom, not even a partial, and no fingerprints other than Erica or those of her sister in the rest of the house. That implied premeditation, he thought, the wherewithal to know from the start not to leave prints. The door handles were not wiped clean because the other prints were there, which suggested that the killer knew from the moment he stepped into the house what he was going to do.

Imogen returned and sat down next to Adrian, interrupting his thoughts.

‘What was all that about?’ he asked her.

‘The DCI has asked me to act up as DI.’

Adrian raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh! Do I have to call you boss now?’ He smiled at her; she deserved this. From the moment they had started working together he had been impressed with her dogged determination and work ethic. She would be a great DI.

‘You don’t mind? You’ve been here longer than me.’

‘If there’s one thing I don’t need right now, it’s more responsibility.’

‘She wants me to go in for the exam. There’s a permanent DI spot opening up.’

‘You should go for it, Grey, you’d be good.’

‘I don’t know if it’s what I want right now.’

‘Well, as long as it’s not because of me. You do what you have to do. I think you’d be great.’ Adrian said. He vaguely remembered a time when he was ambitious, when he’d wanted to climb the ladder and call the shots. None of that seemed to matter anymore though. Maybe it was the grief or maybe it was the fact that he didn’t think he was ready yet. He knew that over the last few cases he had made some questionable decisions. He stood by them though, he probably wouldn’t do anything differently if he were put in the same position again. He had come to realise he struggled to put the law before his own morality. He needed to fix that before he could move forward in the police.

Chapter 8

Connor had a crude map in his hand that his father had drawn for him for his first day of school. He followed the directions set out on the back of a betting slip that hadn’t paid out. The sun was low in the sky, it almost felt as though it were at eye level, burning into his brain as he squinted to check for oncoming traffic before crossing the road.

It didn’t help that Connor had been drinking the night before, probably not the best idea he had ever had before the first day of school. A new school, a chance to make a new impression, a chance to wipe the slate clean and become someone else entirely. Could a person reinvent themselves at sixteen? He had no intentions of being the same Connor he was last year, or even last month. Moving to England would be his new beginning; as much as he hadn’t wanted to be here, he had to try. He would stop listening to that voice in his head that made him believe that he would fail so why bother, that everything he touched turned to crap. His father’s voice. This time he was determined to be different.

School uniform was a new feeling – a cheap polyester blazer and the alien sensation of a tie around his neck. The emblem on the school badge was some kind of bird, like a heron or something, silver and gold. His tie was black with a red stripe through it; he noticed other people with different stripes on theirs, house colours he expected. It was a relief not to have to wear his own clothes – new clothing was way down on the list of Jacob’s priorities and Connor wasn’t exactly overly consumed by labels himself. Nice not to have to think about how much they didn’t have for a change.

He was inside the building now, and he felt claustrophobic already. The size of the school was significantly smaller than the school he had left in America. He tried to make a note of all the exits and remember the layout of the building. He had already been seen by admissions and had some forms to fill out, which he did dutifully. Nowhere to hide. He noticed a few kids looking up from under their fringes, but mostly everyone just got on with it. As they disappeared into their classrooms, he observed that there didn’t seem to be the same cliques and divides as there were in his high school back home. Maybe it could be different this time.

He walked through the empty halls until he found the room he was looking for and headed in. The kids were all getting settled into place, pulling their mathematics books out and whispering. There was one seat left at the front left-hand side of the class, so he pulled the plastic chair out and slumped into it. Connor could tell he’d caught some people’s attention in the way fresh blood always did.

‘I hope you have all finished your half-term assignments because there will be no extensions granted.’ Mr Cross walked into the classroom and perched himself on the edge of his desk. He looked over the class, his eyes settling on Connor.

‘I’m new here, just started today,’ Connor said, aware of how alien his Californian accent sounded, noticing the stir it caused.

‘Ah, yes. Welcome, Mr Lee.’ Mr Cross stood up and wrote Connor’s name on the white board. ‘Class, we have a newcomer – this is Connor Lee, who will be with us for the rest of the year. Let’s all give him a warm welcome.’

The class started to clap. Connor heard whistling from the back and wished he could leave. He turned to look at his classmates and gave a small wave. There was a girl sat diagonally across from him, and already he could see she had that look in her eyes, a familiar look of lust directed straight towards him. Her hair was a silky white blonde pulled up into a bump at the front with a long sheet of dead straight hair beneath. She smiled and looked down, pretending to be coy, but Connor knew her, or at least he knew girls like her. Escaping his past wasn’t going to be that easy if he kept falling in with the same types of people wherever he went.

He turned his attention back to the front and tried to concentrate on the class. Everything about it was different to back home; the tables were arranged in a horseshoe with a block of tables in the centre, unlike the individual desks facing the front that he’d had back in the US. Connor watched as the kids continually ignored the teacher, huddling together in whispers while he spoke. Mr Cross didn’t seem to care much either way, he just got on with the lesson. There was a general air of going through the motions, a let’s-get-through-this-together type of camaraderie. Mr Cross ran through his well-rehearsed lesson plan and then instructed the class to work from their textbooks until the bell rang. Occasionally, Connor heard the row of girls behind him giggling and got the feeling he was the source of their amusement.

After the class had finished and people began to file out of the classroom for break, Connor looked to see where all the smokers were going. He really wanted to go for a cigarette and he knew that there must be somewhere – there was always somewhere.