The photographs captured the spirit of the piece entirely: look at the slobbish, morally bankrupt woman the Met set against this sophisticated criminal mastermind. No wonder she didn’t have the chops to get him – or had she even been under his sway? He was good-looking, charismatic, persuasive; she was an unmarried mother forced to earn her own living, no doubt desperate to be financially supported …

Hinton, said the Mail, was a slippery bad apple, ripe for the picking – actually in police custody – until this un-made-up slattern whose highlights needed redoing wilfully let him go.

Robin looked at Hinton. Of course he was bad but when it came to the murder of Jay Farrell, that wasn’t the issue. However much Freshwater – who seemed to believe that all crims were mentally a crowbar short of the full house-breaking kit – wanted it to be true, Hinton was too switched on by a factor of about fifty.

Her hypothesis – Get me, Patel! – which she hadn’t had time to prove before being kicked out, was that a rival, as yet unidentified, was trying to frame him, picking off Farrell, who wasn’t really in the life, to limit their own exposure to comeback.

Now, with the severely limited resources currently at her disposal, working solo from a hundred miles away, she had to find out who that rival was. It didn’t help that she’d pissed off her guy at Central Task Force at the end of last year, either, killing any hope he’d help. He was a bit of a jobsworth, though, she consoled herself; he probably wouldn’t have anyway, knowing – because who didn’t? – what had happened to her.

She clicked off the Mail piece and went back to the page of hits. They’d been through reams of this stuff before, both her team and, in the first mad days after she’d been booted out, she herself, staring at the screen until three in the morning, barely able to keep her eyes open. But maybe with so much else going on, the tornado in her head, everyone else certain they’d got their man, they’d missed something.

Her phone rang on the bed behind her. She leaned back on the chair and managed to scoop it up without standing. She didn’t know the number but when she picked up, the voice was Australian. ‘Hi, is this Robin?’

‘Yes. Tarryn? Thanks for calling.’

‘No problem. Like I said, I’m so worried. I’ve been away for a few days and no one from work knows anything. Is there any news? Has anyone heard from her?’

‘I’m sorry, no. Not yet.’

‘You said you’re an investigator – are you with the police?’

‘No, I work with a small private agency. We have police contacts if we need them and we’re ex-cops, we’re trained, but we’re not police, no.’

‘Okay.’