‘I’m glad to hear it. You’re my bagman from choice, not necessity. But on this firm, we don’t go off on our own, McIntyre. We do things through the proper channels. We clear on that?’

Paula kept her eyes on the traffic and her face expressionless. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Is that what you called Jordan? “Ma’am”?’ It wasn’t quite a straight question.

Paula wasn’t comfortable with where this was going, but she wasn’t willing to start lying over something so apparently trivial. ‘No. I called her “chief”. She wasn’t very keen on “ma’am”.’

‘No more am I. Ma’am’s what you call the queen. It’s fine in formal situations, fine from the grunts in uniform to remind them who’s in charge. But it makes me feel a bit of a twat coming from my own officers. My lads call me “boss”, but “chief” would be fine.’

So, it was a power play. Call me ‘chief’ or I’ll assume you rate me lower than Carol Jordan. Paula had never had a conversation like this with a senior officer before. Was that because men just assumed they’d be treated appropriately according to their rank but women had to fight for that right? Whatever. She’d try to avoid calling Fielding anything. If she had no choice, she’d go with boss. If it was good enough for the lads, it was good enough for her. She was saved from answering by the beeping of Fielding’s phone.

‘Text from the pathologist,’ she said, bringing it up on her screen.

‘What’s Grisha got to say?’

‘He’s finished the post-mortem. I need to call him.’ She plugged her phone into the car jack so she could make the call on speaker and keyed in the number.

‘Shatalov speaking,’ came from the tinny speakers.

‘DCI Fielding. I got your message. What have you got for me?’

‘I completed the post-mortem on Nadzieja Wilkowa. Cause of death was internal bleeding from multiple blunt trauma injuries.’

‘Not the head injury?’

‘The blow to the head was probably sustained first, given the bleeding around the site, but it’s doubtful whether that would have been enough to kill her on its own. I’d say she was beaten with a tapering cylindrical object such as a baseball bat. And she was kicked repeatedly. So much so that the skin was torn and bleeding. That’s not all. There was a considerable amount of old bruising at various sites all over her body, consistent with regular assaults over a period of up to two weeks.’

‘Not longer than that?’

‘Bruises generally fade completely after two weeks. So any predating that will have disappeared.’

There wasn’t much to say to that, Paula thought. But Fielding found something. ‘On the scale of beatings you’ve seen, where would this figure? Top five? Top ten?’