She found Baxter in the office, playing on a phone he quickly shoved into a drawer. He looked even younger by daylight, the over-keen central heating giving his cheeks a rosy apple gleam.

“Morning.” She stayed by the door, anxious to start things off on the right foot. “You wanted to see me?”

He stared at her for a couple of seconds as if trying to place her face, and then hid his discomfiture in a flurry of paper straightening and file opening.

“Yes,” he said, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Yes, I need to go through a clinical debrief for the Abbey Vale job. There’s been a lot of media interest, and it’s likely to go to Coroner’s, so I want to make sure we’ve crossed all our t’s.”

This was new. Jem was no stranger to Coroner’s Court, but she’d never had any official preparation beside a copy of her Patient Report Form and Kev tagging along for moral support. Baxter was also new to his role, though, so she supposed she couldn’t fault him for being thorough.

“Do you want a brew?” she asked. Once the meeting finished, she was unlikely to hit station again before midday, and there was no way she was raking over the details of that night without a mug of tea in her hand.

“No, thank you.”

Pre-empting any dissent on his part, she went to the kitchen and made her drink, collecting a packet of shortbread from her locker on her way back. He’d covered the desk in case-related paperwork during her absence; she could see copies of her police statement, her Patient Report Form, and the forms Harriet had completed after terminating the resus.

“Talk me through the job, step by step.” He clicked his pen three times to get its recalcitrant nib out and turned to a fresh page in his notepad. “I’ll stop you when I have a question.”

She sipped her tea and pulled her PRF toward her. She had completed it in retrospect, recording her actions in clinical terms and abbreviations—BLS commenced immediately, IV access gained, left external jugular, Airway secured, 7.0 ETT—and she fell back on that same tactic now, distancing herself from the emotions she’d felt, and not mentioning how close the physical strain had come to overwhelming her. Baxter filled his pad with an illegible scrawl as she spoke, and she paused in expectation when he rattled his pen against his thumb. She had just described the moment that Kyle had stopped breathing, and her mouth was so dry she had difficulty swallowing her tea.

“Why didn’t you call for backup?” he asked. “When Parker went into cardiac arrest, why didn’t you request immediate assistance?”