“Now, now.” Her dad leaned forward and unravelled the cotton before it could turn her finger white. “That’s absolutely not the spirit, Jem.”

“I know. I can’t help it.” She rarely talked about this with him. She knew how much it upset him. “I just—it’s easier not to get my hopes up.”

“Balderdash,” he said, scratching his thin growth of whiskers. “So, we have two winsome ladies in contention, eh? If I were a betting man, my fiver would be on the enigmatic Ms. Rosie.”

She slapped his foot, glad to play along. “Sod off.”

“Sylvie doesn’t make your ears blush.”

Jem spun round and chucked her cushion at him. “I’ve never even met her. She might be The One, for all I know.”

“She might well be,” he said, his tone implying the opposite. “We are fickle fools in the face of this thing called love.”

She puzzled that one out for a moment. “Shakespeare?”

“Fortune cookie. We had Chinese the other night.” He guffawed and held up his empty mug. “Come on, let’s find those posh biccies your mum bought and hid away somewhere.”

“You really don’t know where she stores all the loot?” Jem asked. She had found her mum’s stash six months after moving in, and assumed everyone else had figured it out as well.

“No, I do not.” He gaped at her, and then his eyes narrowed with cunning. “Name your price.”

They stood slipper to slipper in front of the fire, her efforts to outstare him thwarted by her inferior height. “No teasing me about Rosie, and you don’t mention her to Mum,” she said.

“Done.” They shook on it. “Spill the beans.”

“Spill the bran flakes, more like. You didn’t hear this from me, but check out the box,” she told him. “There’s never been any cereal in it. She just knows you bloody hate those things.”

Chapter Seven

A flick of a switch changed the circle around Rosie’s body cam from luminous green to red. It was a simple visual, designed to remind even the drunkest or stupidest perp that their actions were being recorded for posterity, and yet it outwitted them in their thousands.

“Search of thirteen Battersby Walk,” she stated. “Starting in the bedroom of the deceased, Kyle Parker.”

From her position just across the threshold, she turned to capture an establishing shot of the tiny room. A bare bulb swung from a central ceiling fixture, its sallow glow illuminating a grubby Manchester City quilt thrown over a threadbare mattress, and three drawers wedged at angles in a chipboard chest. A desk was shoehorned under the window, its surface strewn with DVDs, computer games, and takeaway cartons.

“Do you want me to take the desk?” Kash asked, peering round her shoulder. He had slept better than she had, and his enthusiasm was getting on her wick.