It was Jack’s turn to have the car that morning which, as he sat in a tailback on the A3 near Battersea, he was deeply regretting. His work mobile danced on the passenger seat, pinging and vibrating away as message after message came through from the app version of HOLMES. HOLMES was the bible for police case-related information and was normally installed and issued on tablets for use in court or on cases. But the technology was unreliable, so many officers invested in top-of-the-range mobile phones and installed HOLMES on them instead. It was allowed—just about.

As the pinging and vibrating continued, Jack smiled and shook his head as he imagined DCI Ridley’s messages, all perfectly spelled and punctuated instructions for the day. Ridley was in meetings all morning, which was why being a little bit late was no big deal. Jack would make the time up at the end of the day, seeing as Maggie would be on her next night shift and he’d be going home to a cold bed.

Ridley led a divisional team of twelve Serious Crime officers. The case that Jack was currently working on had started out with one young dad, who happened to be an engineer, realizing that the baby monitor in his daughter’s nursery was sending a signal to three devices, rather than the two he expected. The monitor had been hacked and an unknown person or persons were watching his daughter sleep.

Once the police had the geography of the rogue signals pinned down, the legwork had begun. Hundreds of hours tracing, interviewing, ruling in or ruling out every known pedophile and associate in the area. Over several months, they had discovered hundreds of hacked baby monitors, all within the same fifty-mile radius. They visited 756 pedophiles, their friends and their families, and narrowed the field to thirty-two. Then to one, a Donal Sweeney, who shared a cell with a man whose never-convicted pedophile nephew sold baby monitors to high street stores.

It was 8:45 by the time Jack walked down the battleship-gray corridor toward CID’s shared office. There was nothing remotely dynamic about this part of the station. He paused in the canteen doorway, inhaled the coffee-bean air and diverted inside.

Jack slowly worked his way through all of his text messages and emails over an espresso and a croissant dipped in honey. He only drank coffee at work, because Maggie hated the smell and taste of it when he kissed her, and seeing as kissing Maggie was more important than caffeine, he did without coffee when he was at home. But Jack needed caffeine to get him through this bloody case.

The canteen was bustling with uniformed officers. Some ate heavy meals, some light breakfasts, depending on where they were in their shifts. As Jack made himself a to-do list from Ridley’s text messages, he snorted through his croissant, sending a fine spray of loose puff pastry across the table. Ridley had written:

Laura’s post-8 p.m. report overwrites yours, rather than adds to yours from yesterday morning. Please amend in the system. Print in triplicate and leave on my desk.