Lennie had fallen asleep with her but she was on her own now. ‘Len?’ No answer. She reached up to press the bottom of the mattress through the slats and felt it lift too easily. 8.22 said the desk clock.

She came out onto the landing with the tentative step of someone assessing the damage after a blast. She had the surreal feeling that while everything looked the same, it was fundamentally undermined and would crumble at a touch. But no: the floor stayed solid, the railing round the top of the stairs supported her weight. Her dad had been last in the shower and the air on the landing was humid with Old Spice. Down in the kitchen, someone was buttering a slice of well-done toast.

She showered and dressed quickly, not bothering to dry her hair. It felt essential to be out and ready, to get ahead of things. She checked her phone again as she came downstairs but of course Samir wouldn’t leave any kind of message, nothing that could be used as evidence that he knew.

‘Morning, love.’ Christine looked up from pouring a cup of tea.

‘Hi. It’s late – why didn’t you wake me?’

‘’Cause you’ve basically slept ten hours total since we’ve been here?’ said Lennie, mouth full of bran flakes.

Robin took her wallet from the counter, put it in her jacket.

‘Aren’t you going to have any breakfast?’

‘I said I’d be at the office at nine. I’ll get something on the way.’ She rounded the table and squeezed her daughter from behind the chair, kissing the top of her head, breathing her in. ‘Love you. See you later on.’

‘Have you heard?’

Maggie was waiting for her, standing in the narrow strip of carpet between their whiteboard and the table, radiating energy, collars up like antennae, bangles chiming.

‘What?’ For a vertiginous moment Robin thought she was going to say that Josh had killed a man.

‘They’ve found a body.’

She stared. ‘Is it him?’

‘What?’ Maggie looked confused. ‘No – god, no, sorry. No. A woman – it’s a woman’s body.’

Robin reached for the back of a chair as her blood pressure went through the floor. ‘Who?’

‘I don’t know. Sara – Kettleborough, my mate who works at the Post – she only rang five minutes ago, not even. I knew you’d be here any second or I would have called you.’

‘Where?’

‘Tyseley, old engineering works. She didn’t have any details beyond that, it’d just come in, she was on her way there. I’m on the police Facebook page, see if …’ She tapped the keyboard, refreshing. ‘Yes, here. It’s just gone up.’

Robin went to look. At the top of the feed, accompanied by a generic picture of a PC by a squad car, were four short paragraphs posted two minutes ago.