Was he SIO, this Webster? If they had a DI leading, they were treating it like a simple domestic murder, a self-solver, and it was hardly that, was it, hardly the husband turning himself in at the nick, clutching the carving knife. Was he competent? He’d done all right on camera, but that was no gauge. With his broad face and wide-spaced brown eyes, the impression he gave was bovine: Aberdeen Angus in a green wax jacket.

DS Thomas had been the opposite. In the dark of the bottom bunk now, Robin felt her face go hot. You were in the job yourself, weren’t you? She hadn’t been ready for the shame. I’m not this person, she’d wanted to say as she’d sat in that godawful armchair, D-list celeb on a wedding throne; I’m a good detective – really good. This is short-term, a cock-up; I’d never buy an aqua three-piece suite!

And Samir. Their guv’nor. What would he tell them?

Lennie shifted, turning her face towards the pillow, and Robin peeled her arm from round her stomach, feeling the sweat between their bodies. The window was open and the garden glittered with frost but the cold air reached a foot into the room then stopped, repelled by the central heating. Even the wall behind her was warm.

Corinna was dead, Josh missing. Her best friends, and there was nothing she could do. She was a DCI in the Met, not even borough CID but an operational command unit, and there was nothing she could do. Whatever her skills, however well she knew the victims, she was powerless: she had to leave it to West Midlands Police. And even then, said another voice, sly, how thorough did she really want them to be?

Chapter Five

She’d done her best but Christine was too quick. In the time it had taken Robin to get down the path and into the car, her mother had somehow lost the apron, gained a pair of shoes, a jacket and – could it be? – some lipstick and materialized at Maggie’s window.