Pat couldn’t help wondering if she was punishing him for being married to one of the patients. Stop it, you moron, he told himself. As if! He skim-read the rest of the rules and signed his name at the bottom, far more clearly than his usual scrawled signature: DCI Patrick Lennon. He left his thumb near the DCI in the hope that when he handed the clipboard back she noticed it. She did, and her expression switched back to the original flirtatious one, this time with added respect.

‘Oh – keys,’ he said, noticing another clause he’d skipped over. He put down the lilies and delved into his jeans pocket. His house keys were on a ring with one of those photographic fobs – a picture of Bonnie, her eyes shining with glee on being presented with a Peppa Pig cake on her first birthday. ‘If I take this off, I can take the fob in, right, and leave the keys?’

The receptionist nodded. ‘Is that your little girl?’ she asked, reaching out a hand with long scarlet fingernails to tap the photo of Bonnie’s face. ‘She’s so cute.’

Pat smiled – more at Bonnie than the receptionist – and put his stuff into one of the small bank of lockers in the lobby. The receptionist walked out from behind the desk, handed the lilies back to Pat, and produced a hand-held metal detector that she passed up and down the length of his body. When it passed over his crotch and beeped, she inhaled with surprise.

‘Is that . . . ?’

He nodded, willing himself not to blush.

‘Well. I’m sure you know the score, Detective Inspector,’ she said. ‘We’re all set. Let me show you through to the visitors’ room.’

She pressed four numbers on the keypad by the double door – 5786, Pat noticed – and ushered him through. He followed her down the corridor as she greeted two white-clad female colleagues with a high-pitched ‘Alright?’, which was echoed and replied to in the exact same pitch by both recipients, with the exact same words. Pat wondered if it was the requisite staff greeting. His gut twisted and he thought he would have to ask to stop and use the nearest loo, but before he could speak, the receptionist slowed and turned left, just past a large dayroom with nobody in it.

‘Here we go!’ she sang, opening a door into a small room like a hospital relatives’ room, pastel walls adorned with bland prints. ‘I’ll just fetch her for you. Have a seat. Won’t be a jiffy!’

Pat sat down in a pale green velour chair that was either very new, or had just been cleaned. When Gill came into the room, he was rubbing the nap of the velour the wrong way with his forefinger and on seeing her, his first thought was that it was he who had been detained indefinitely in a secure mental unit, and she was visiting him.