When Will There Be Good News?

Louise is thinking about buying flowers. She also thinks about her new husband, Patrick, an orthopedic surgeon. They met at a horrible car accident two years ago. Now Louise’s 16-year-old son, Archie, wants driving lessons, and Louise wishes she could find a way to interfere with his getting a license—“being police was just the obverse of being criminal, after all.”

Patrick is Irish, wise, amiable, and poetic. His previous wife, Samantha, was killed in a car crash 10 years ago. Louise likes his sense of authority and his confidence, as a surgeon, that things can be fixed. Louise is sure that flaws like hers can never be fixed—“sooner or later the crack would show.” In marrying Patrick, she relinquished control for the first time in her life, and now she feels off balance. Louise has a fancy dinner planned for Patrick’s sister and brother-in-law, but she’s exhausted.

A couple of years ago, when Archie’s behavior was worrying, Louise had gone for therapy and been coached to put her negative thoughts aside—visualizing them being locked inside a chest at the bottom of the sea. Once she’d mastered this, she felt that she had no positive thoughts left over. Not long after, she married Patrick. Archie goes to a fancy prep school now and has happily found a geek crowd. Louise hates the privileged school atmosphere but “the greater good wasn’t an argument she was going to deploy when it came to her own flesh and blood.”

Patrick has been reminding her that it’s not too late to have a baby, but the thought terrifies Louise; Archie is already “wrapped around her heart.” She’s perplexed enough to find herself at 40 with an expensive flat, two cars, and a big engagement ring. It feels as though she took a wrong turn at some point.

Louise is on her way back from a meeting and stops by the station. Her cheerful young Detective Constable, Marcus McLellen, has a forensics report for her. She’s taken Marcus under her wing in a maternal way. He tells her that an arcade fire they’ve been investigating was the result of arson. It turns out that the arcade owner is Neil Hunter, Joanna Hunter’s husband. According to Joanna, Neil does “this and that”—which seems to include amusement arcades, seedy health clubs, private-hire vehicles, and dodgy beauty salons.

Louise looks at some pictures of Neil Hunter having drinks with Michael Anderson, a suspected drug dealer in Glasgow. Hunter is clean so far, but the fraud officers suspect that Anderson is looking for ways to launder his money in Edinburgh. In her conversation with Joanna yesterday, Joanna explained that she met Neil in the ER after he’d “been set upon by some thugs.” She can’t imagine why Joanna agreed to go out with him.

Louise and Marcus can’t find a conclusive link between Neil Hunter and the Glasgow drug dealers. Marcus suspects that Hunter is about to go under and is trying to keep himself afloat by going into business with Anderson. Louise offers to go and talk to him. It’s below her pay grade, but she lives nearby. Privately, too, she’s obsessed with Joanna Hunter. (“She’s the other side of me, the woman I never became—the good survivor, the good wife, the good mother”). She tells Marcus to get a warrant for Hunter’s documentation.

Louise’s pregnant coworker, Karen, drops some files on Louise’s desk and, noticing the Hunter files, references the old Mason murders. Young Marcus isn’t familiar with the case, so Louise and Karen fill him in about the random killing of Joanna’s mother and siblings in rural Devon 30 years ago. The convicted man, Andrew Decker, is getting out. That’s why Louise went to the Hunters’ yesterday—to warn Joanna before the news hit the press.

Louise finally leaves the station and starts driving home. Her phone rings, and her “police sixth sense” warns her that if she answers, the evening’s plans will be ruined. She can’t resist, though. She picks up.