Through Gorton and out the other side, she hopped on the ring road for a junction, arriving at Darnton with ten minutes to spare. She made a quick brew and breakfast and had only eaten half her cereal when Caitlin came into the crew room.

“Hey. How did you get on?” Jem asked. The previous night had been Caitlin’s first shift on the RRV, and she’d looked scared to death when Jem gave her the keys at handover. Jem might not have liked her, but she knew how nerve-wracking it was to work solo, and Caitlin barely had a year’s experience as a paramedic.

“It was fine.” The flatness of Caitlin’s answer made it clear that was all she had to say on the subject. “Darren wants to see you in the office.”

Jem pushed her cornflakes away. “Now?”

“Yes. Now.”

Rather than leave her pots for someone else, Jem washed and dried her dish and mug first. Then she knocked on the office door at dead on six, ensuring any possible bollocking would at least be on the clock. She entered the room to find Baxter and Caitlin both seated and waiting for her.

“Is there a problem?” she asked, genuinely perplexed. She’d assumed the summons would pertain to Kyle Parker, but Caitlin was an unexpected spanner in the works.

In lieu of an answer, Baxter tossed the controlled drugs book for the RRV onto the desk. Every ambulance carried an identical book, locked away in a safe with the boxes of morphine and diazepam. It was the paramedic’s responsibility to complete a check each shift to confirm that the numbers recorded tallied with the physical stock. Jem picked the book up, still unsure what the issue was. The count had been correct at the start and end of her shift, and she had handed the safe key directly to Caitlin.

“Caitlin contacted me to report a discrepancy with the morphine at the start of her shift last night,” Baxter said. “There are three missing, and no one witnessed either of your entries.”

“The car hadn’t been manned when I took it over yesterday morning, and there was no one else on station,” Jem said, staring at the damning red ink, all-caps scrawl occupying the three lines below her signature. She had logged eighteen vials, Caitlin only fifteen, and Baxter had confirmed Caitlin’s count. She shook her head. “This can’t be right. I remember putting them all away.” She faltered, her protest losing conviction almost immediately as she began to doubt herself. She had finished late and checked the drugs whilst waiting on scene for a doctor to return her call. By the time she got back to station, she’d been fuming and exhausted, and she hadn’t thought to ask Caitlin to countersign the book.