Hamza reached wearily into his pocket, produced his ID, then all-but shoved it into the couple’s faces. “Did you call it in?” he asked again.

The husband looked down at the phone in his hand. “We, eh, we weren’t sure if you were… We didn’t know what to… Whether to…”

“Forget it.” Hamza sighed and swapped the warrant card for the phone in his pocket. “I’ll do it. You two go inside. Someone will be in to take a statement.”

“A statement?” the wife asked. “About what? Is she alright?” Her eyes went to the door. Fortunately, Hamza had the presence of mind to pull it closed when he’d stepped outside, and her view of the dead girl in the hall was blocked. “She’s alright, isn’t she? She’s not hurt?”

“Just please go inside,” Hamza instructed, already swiping to his contacts. “Someone will be in to talk to you soon.”

Husband and wife both looked to one another for guidance. Both seemed to be egging the other one, urging them to say something, but neither one rose to the challenge.

Hamza waited until they’d gone inside, then entered the house and made the call to base. Uniform and paramedics were promptly dispatched—five minutes for the backup, he was promised, there was a car nearby.

The ambulance would be a little longer, but there was no rush for that. Not now.

With the call made, he took some digital snaps of the white rectangle on the floor, noted its position, then pulled on the gloves. He brushed away the glass that was partially covering the paper, then carefully turned it over.

The photograph had been taken at the hospital, by the looks of things. In it, Jazmin was propped up in bed, a well-wrapped bundle held awkwardly in her arms, a tiny hand grasping at the fabric of her hospital gown.

She looked tired, and sad, and scared, and a churning mass of other emotions even she likely couldn’t have put a name to. There was love there, Hamza thought. Whatever had happened after, there was love there in that photograph.

Pride, maybe. Joy, even. But worry, too. And doubt. And fear. And dread.

It was partly a face he’d seen before. He’d seen it on his wife, and on himself, on the day their daughter had been born. It was a look that spoke of a sudden and overwhelming burden of responsibility. It was a look that said you knew fine well you were going to make a mess of this, that there had been some mistake, that surely no one was actually daft enough to leave you in charge of a tiny human being incapable of fending for itself?

“Aye, joke’s over,” it seemed to say. “When do the grown-ups come and take it back?”