Kind of Cruel by Sophie Hannah

the speed with which she turned back to Waterhouse and Gibbs made it clear that she regarded the Snowman as by far the least important person in the room. In spite of himself, Gibbs was starting to like her.
    He could still see her as a killer, though. That hadn’t changed.
    ‘I haven’t told you the strangest part.’ Amber looked worried. ‘While I was talking to Sergeant Zailer, outside Ginny’s house, I had this weird sense of . . .’ She broke off, frustrated. ‘It’s hard to describe.’
    ‘Try,’ Waterhouse urged.
    ‘Like a split in my mind, as if I had two minds, both seeming to know contradictory things.’
    Proust let out a sigh that lingered in the room long after it had ceased to be audible.
    ‘Part of me knew I’d seen those words in Sergeant Zailer’s notebook. I had . I remembered seeing them. Another part of me could see this really clear image of . . .’
    ‘What? Image of what?’
    ‘She can’t answer the perishing question while you’re still asking it, Waterhouse.’
    ‘Of a page torn off that notepad.’ Amber pointed at the photographs. ‘An A4 sheet, with blue lines and a pink line separating the margin – like that. With “Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel” written on it, exactly like that imprint, like a list. Same capitalisation, even: all the “K”s and “C”s upper case. Except it wasn’t an imprint, it was the words themselves, in black ink. I could see it in my mind, clearly. And I knew it couldn’t be Sergeant Zailer’s notebook, because that was much smaller than A4, but I also knew I’d seen the words in her notebook.’ She stopped. ‘I realise there are contradictions in what I’m saying, but I can’t help that. There were, and are, contradictions in my head. Part of me still thinks Ginny Saxon put the words in my mouth.’
    Gibbs and Waterhouse exchanged a look.
    ‘I’ve never been inside any of the flats in the Corn Exchange building. I didn’t know Katharine Allen.’ Amber looked up at Waterhouse. ‘What does “Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel” mean? Do you know?’
    ‘No idea,’ Waterhouse said through gritted teeth. Gibbs knew he saw it as an admission of his own failure, that after a month he still didn’t know.
    ‘Not “Cruel to be Kind”,’ said Amber.
    ‘What do you mean?’ Gibbs asked.
    ‘That’s the obvious phrase that the words “kind” and “cruel” bring to mind. Cruel to be kind means something, but “Kind of Cruel”? What’s that?’
    ‘I think we’ve established that none of us knows what it means,’ said Proust. ‘Before we delve any further into the dark art of hypnosis or the splitting of minds, shall we cover the basics? Where were you on Tuesday 2 November, between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.?’
    Even unsettled as she now was, Amber was quick. She was already flicking through her diary. ‘I can’t remember, but I’ll have been at work if it was a Tuesday. I’ll be able to tell you in a— Oh.’ She slammed the diary shut, as if she’d seen something unpleasant in it.
    ‘What?’ Waterhouse heard her surprise and pounced on it.
    ‘I was going to say I’ll be able to tell you in a minute what meetings I had, if any, but it turns out I wasn’t at work.’ She sighed. ‘I was on one of those driver awareness courses you lot seem to like so much. You know – someone goes two miles an hour over the speed limit at night when no one’s around, and next thing they know they have to waste a day of their life listening to a boring windbag setting stupid puzzles: if Driver A falls asleep and stalls on the motorway, and Driver B behind him crashes into him and dies, who is responsible for Driver B’s death?’
    ‘You didn’t have to go on the course,’ said Proust. ‘You could have taken a fine and points on your licence instead. What you can’t do is break the law and get away with it. I’m sorry if that annoys you. Gibbs, give her something to write on and with. Write down where the course was, please. Will someone be