‘They bumped into one another when they were out one night. They knew each other from way back but they hadn’t seen each other for a while. He told her he had it, she was curious, she went back with him.’

‘How did you get this?’ Robin gestured at the phone.

‘Lucy. She rang about twenty minutes ago. She spoke to him last night, she said, went round to his place. No love lost there – she told him if he didn’t speak to us, she’d go to the police instead.’

Robin frowned. ‘She didn’t mention it at all when I met her.’

‘Yeah, she said. But she mentioned that when you spoke to her, you told her what Valerie said about drugs. Yesterday she spoke to an old school friend who told her Stevo was using. Becca had spent some time with him last summer, Lucy said, so she wondered if two and two made four and went round there to find out.’

‘“Spent some time with”?’

‘They had a thing for a few weeks. Clearly the drugs were his classy way to get into her knickers. Haven’t looked him up yet but I’m willing to bet he wouldn’t have fancied his chances otherwise. It was just sex, though, it sounds like – Lucy said Becca likes her boys bad on that side of things. Apparently Harry’s a bit of a departure.’

‘Did this Stevo say how they took it?’

‘His gran’s stash was pills so they were crushing them then snorting the powder, but they tried injecting later. Just once, he claims, before she kicked him to the kerb. His expression.’

They looked at each other as a new range of possibilities branched around them, cracks in the ice under their feet: had Becca been using, too? Had she overdosed? Was she lying somewhere alone, undiscovered? Or maybe she’d been with someone else and they’d panicked.

‘Little scrote,’ said Maggie. ‘If I was Valerie, I’d cut his fucking balls off.’

Maggie rang Nuttall first. Hard drugs were a significant vulnerability factor for a misper; they’d review Becca’s status now. ‘He’ll raise it at the management meeting this afternoon,’ she said, hanging up. ‘If they change her status, we’ll have to see where that leaves us. In the meantime, on we go.’

‘Is this why she needed the job at The Spot? To pay for it? Stevo’s granny died in June; she started there in September. How much could his gran have stockpiled anyway?’