‘Hi, Ted, this is a welcome call.’ She still couldn’t bring herself to call him Dad, but it was a minor point and one that didn’t seem to bother him. She was genuinely pleased to hear from him, as her day was turning out to be just like the last one: professionally productive but personally precarious. Matt was angling to get inside her head at every opportunity, and she was on the verge of throwing in the towel and sending a junior officer in her place. But actually, even that wasn’t necessary: she could just leave Emma, and keep in touch via iPad. It was mind-boggling that you could solve a crime these days without ever leaving your chair.

‘I’m coming home soon.’

‘That’s great news. Johnny will be pleased, and so am I.’

Always the gentleman, she thought. ‘Did you ever work in London?’

‘That’s where I trained. It’s where I met Mary. She was an Essex girl and I the dashing doctor. We lived off the Edgware Road. I decided on the pathology route after I saw a murder victim’s bite marks develop post-mortem, can you believe. I was hooked.’

‘Normal people get hooked on shopping, or origami.’

‘Quite. I never did take to London, and the employment opportunities were better up north, so I took the Carlisle job and learned my trade. The rest, as they say, is history.’

‘I’m not suited to it either. I don’t know how I lived here for ten years.’

‘The Lakes get into your blood, Kelly, and they’re already in yours. Can’t you do everything via computer these days anyway? I have people call me from Canada asking how to measure contusions they’ve never seen before.’

‘Did the bite mark really develop post-mortem?’

‘It did. I’ve never forgotten it. That’s how he was caught in the end. It was the brother all along. Usually is, isn’t it?’

‘Family? Yes. Not in this case, though.’

‘What have you found?’

Kelly walked along the corridor; she’d excused herself from Matt to take the call. They’d met in the canteen at Ravensword, just like yesterday, to swap some interesting information. She looked around to make sure she was out of earshot.

‘Professional.’

‘Have you thought of drug deals going wrong?’

‘Why do you say that?’ Kelly was taken aback.

‘Because the toxicology results are back. George Murphy was a cocaine and opioid addict.’

‘What?’ Something that the CEO of Ravensword, Philip Tooting, had mentioned earlier in the day came back to her.

‘He had levels in him that a non-addict couldn’t tolerate.’

‘But there was no paraphernalia found at Allerdale House.’

‘Did you use narcotic dogs?’