In another part of the building Bradfield’s Chief Constable was wondering why he’d been so keen to take on this job. He believed he’d put together an efficient and effective team, but he’d just had to listen to the woman he thought his best DCI explain how she’d let a bee in her bonnet drive her over the edge of professionalism into a kind of stubborn madness. In the old days, he could have rammed a lid on her fuck-up with a fair degree of certainty that it would never leak out to the public. But these days, with a twenty-four-hour rolling news cycle and a ravenous social media, the chances of keeping things quiet were nil. You could only cling to the hope that something else would make a louder noise to distract the twitterati.

James Blake exhaled heavily and pushed himself to his feet. He opened a cupboard and stared longingly at a bottle of cognac. What he wouldn’t give for a large drink right now. But he still had a truly horrible encounter to deal with, and he daren’t go into it smelling of drink. He closed the door and pulled himself up to his full height. He knew he could be imposing in a certain way, and God knew he needed that now. He slipped into his executive bathroom and checked himself in the mirror. There was something old-fashioned about his looks, he knew that. His wife said he had the air of a man who should be astride a horse leading a pack of hounds in pursuit of a fox. And although his background was relentlessly lower middle class, he played up to that image. He’d cultivated an accent several degrees above his natural station, he tended to wear country tweeds with double-vented jackets over Tattersall checked shirts, his pink cheeks were always freshly shaven, his hair treated with some expensive unguent from Floris. He’d moved to Bradfield from Devon, where he’d fitted in better, but had felt constrained by the lack of serious crime.

Well, this was where serious crime got you. Standing in your office in the middle of the bloody night waiting to be eviscerated by a woman who could stand as the dictionary definition of ‘bitch’. James Blake tightened his stomach muscles and stalked back into his office. He crossed to the door, opened it and gestured to the waiting pair. ‘Do come in.’