He considers what happens next. Once he’s told Doggett. After fighting his way onto this case he’ll be forced to give it up again. He’ll become the latest joke Guy Daley shares with his mates down the pub. It won’t be the first time, and he doubts it’ll be the last. Jordan’s words come back to him. Always so much to prove. He thinks about Doggett’s comment earlier about the gardener. Good-looking lad, was he? And then the later jibe: Ladies first. He knows how it will be after this. He’ll always be the bloke who was shagging the suspect. If the suspect happened to be a woman, they’d be patting him on the back and it would be pints all round. But it isn’t a woman.

So, yes, of course he has something to prove. He always will.

He reaches the top of the stairs and walks along a narrow corridor and through an open doorway that leads into an attic room. The pallid sky is visible through the rotting rafters, and a single mattress lies beneath, filthy and sodden despite the fact it hasn’t rained in weeks. There’s a large wooden chest of drawers to the right and, next to that, an old-fashioned wardrobe big enough to climb inside. To the left, a dormer window framed by a pair of heavy winter curtains that reaches from floor to ceiling. Other than that the room is empty: bare floorboards, bare walls.

Very bare walls . . .

He hears the floorboards creaking behind him just before Doggett says, “Nice place. Bit of a fixer-upper.”

“I thought you were heading back to the station?”

“I’m just leaving now.” Doggett stands next to him and follows his eyes to the wall. “What?” he asks.

Above the bed there’s a subtly paler patch of plaster, a square of wall that has been protected from the worst of the elements somehow, around it a border of muck and grime. A border about the size of a small picture frame. About the size of the portrait he saw on the wall downstairs. Why would somebody move it?

“It’s nothing,” he says.

Doggett frowns at him but lets it go. “What happened with the Cartwright lad?”

This is the point of no return. This is his opportunity. The only one he’s going to get. He wouldn’t be the first person removed from a case because it struck too close to home. There’s no shame in it. All he has to do is tell the man the truth. And there is Doggett staring at him, waiting for him to fail.

“Daley’s taken him back to the station. I thought it was better to get him out of here.” And it’s as easy as that. The moment has passed. He doesn’t even have to lie.