Paula flipped open the wallet. Three credit cards in the name of Nadzieja Wilkowa; loyalty cards for Freshco, the Co-op and a fashion store group; a book of first-class stamps with two remaining; a tight bundle of receipts and forty pounds in cash. No photographs, no convenient address. She took a quick pass through the receipts. Car parking, petrol, sandwich shops, fast-food outlets and a couple of restaurant bills. She’d pass them on to the officer in charge of doling out assignments to the team. Someone else could go through them in more detail, preferably after they’d got her diary off her phone.

And that was it. It was all very well to live an orderly life, but it didn’t help detectives like Paula when you ended up dead. What they really needed was a home address. She opened the internet browser on her phone and navigated to Bartis Health’s home page. Their offices were located in a town in Leicestershire she’d never heard of. Their business model appeared to be based on producing cheap generic versions of drugs whose patents had expired. Plenty of uptake but tight margins, Paula suspected.

She called the number on the contact page. The woman who answered the phone was rightly suspicious of her request for information but agreed to call back and ask to be connected to the extension perched on a corner table. Paula had little confidence in the capabilities of the system, but she was happy to be proved wrong less than five minutes later. ‘Why are you asking about Nadia? Has something happened? Surely she’s not in any kind of trouble,’ the woman asked as soon as they were connected.

‘Do you know Nadia well?’ Paula was careful with her tense.

‘I wouldn’t say well. I’ve met her a few times. She’s a very friendly, open sort of person. And they think very highly of her here. But what’s happened? Has she been in an accident back home?’

‘Back home?’

‘In Poland. She emailed… let me see, it must be three weeks ago? Anyway, she said her mother had been diagnosed with stage three breast cancer and she asked if she could have compassionate leave to go home and be with her mother for the surgery. Because her mother’s on her own now, with her dad being dead and her sister in America. It was inconvenient, but you don’t want to lose somebody that’s as good at her job as Nadia, so the boss said yes, she could have a month.’ The woman stopped for breath.

Baffled, Paula said, ‘You’re sure about that?’

‘I opened the email myself,’ the woman said. ‘And I had to email her only last week with a query about a customer’s repeat order. She answered me the same day. She said her mum was making a slow recovery but she’d be back next week.’