“Well, that’s disgusting,” Rosie said. “You must teach me how to do it.” The taxi in front of them dawdled up to a traffic light and sped through at the last second, leaving her to slam her brakes on for the red. “Arse,” she muttered, tempering her road rage in deference to Jem.

“I’d have blasted the stupid sod,” Jem said, apparently not as mild-mannered as Rosie had assumed. Her stomach rumbled, and she clapped a hand atop it. “God, sorry. I get proper nowty when I’m hungry.”

Rosie thought of the leftovers her mam had packed and the promise she’d made to the doctor. The light changed, and she accelerated smoothly through it.

“If you can hang on for another ten minutes,” she said, “I’ve got just the thing.”

Chapter Five

The forensics tech dropped the bloodied swab into a plastic bag and sealed the bag’s edge. “Sorry about that,” he said, handing Jem a piece of gauze to dab against the scratch. The wounds were superficial, already crusted and closed, but he’d seen a speck of something in the corner of one and dug in deeply, aggravating it enough to make it bleed.

“Have you finished?” Rosie asked him. Her arms were full of paper evidence sacks, and although she’d waited on the sidelines while he meticulously dated and annotated multiple swabs, her patience was clearly running thin.

“Yes, I’ve finished,” he said. “I’ll come back for your uniforms in half an hour.”

“Great.” Rosie all but shoved him out of the locker room and bolted the door behind him. She stopped a metre away from Jem and rearranged the sacks in an arbitrary order, as a faint flush began to colour her throat. “Right. I’ll, um…I’ll close my eyes if you want.”

Despite an almost overwhelming urge to agree, Jem shook her head. They were both professionals and in circumstances beyond their control, so they didn’t need to feel awkward about this extremely awkward situation where they were going to have to get half-naked in front of each other. Besides which, it could have been worse: she could have been stripping off in front of the tech. Aware that standing around in wet clothing wasn’t doing either of them any favours, she squared her shoulders and bit the bullet.

“I have to warn you,” she said, “my knickers and bra don’t match.”

“Disgraceful!” Rosie opened the first bag. “I’m shocked and appalled in equal measure.”

“Sod off.” Jem began to unfasten her trousers, sliding her belt and radio clip free and emptying her pockets. “I bet yours don’t either.”

Rosie peeked beneath her own shirt and popped the button on her trousers. She made a show of deliberating before cocking her head to one side to deliver the verdict. “If by ‘match’ you mean ‘clash in spectacular fashion,’ then yes, they match.”