‘Not necessarily. Maybe he took something because he was nervous about what he was going to do. Maybe he got the dose wrong and it contributed to his death.’ Freya scowls. ‘I’m just saying,’ Robin adds. ‘We need to be sure.’

‘He didn’t take any sedatives,’ Freya says. ‘Here.’

He pushes his chair over to her screen, and watches as she pulls up his medical reports. ‘See?’

They both read down the notes – and sure enough, Jonathan Miller wasn’t prescribed with anything.

‘What’s that there?’ Robin asks. He points to a line at the bottom of the page. An appointment, the Friday before he died. ‘Why did he go to the doctor’s?’

‘I’ll find out,’ Freya says, but Robin stops her.

‘I’ll do it. You stick with the backgrounds.’

Robin picks up the phone. Even though their investigation, with Freya on it, is dodgy as hell, he wants to keep her as far away as he can. She loved Jonathan Miller, and her memory of him should be preserved as much as possible.

The phone’s answered quickly, the voice at the other end bored and grumpy. He explains the purpose for his call, and the receptionist grunts in response.

‘I’ll send an update through to the email address from last time,’ she confirms, then hangs up.

Robin sighs, then taps his finger on the desk while he waits. He picks up his mobile and stares at it, as if it’ll somehow give him the solution to the problem with Steph. He feels like he needs to apologise, but for what? He was telling the truth, but the reality of why, and everything entwined with it is so multifaceted he doesn’t know how to begin.

Yes, he is scared by the idea of having kids, but no, it isn’t because he doesn’t want children, or he doesn’t want them with her. It’s because of his sister, and the twins, and the man he killed…

Fuck.

Perhaps he should just leave Steph alone. Let her get on with her life and find a nice man with a steady job who hasn’t committed murder.

His email pings, interrupting him from the black chain of thought. He opens it and reads the brief notes on the page. Then he reads them again. The medical terms talk about viscosity, density, motility, but he can get the gist of it.

Four days before he died, the man that was supposedly leaving his wife had a fertility test. And the results were normal.

He glances across to Freya. But why?

If he was in love with Freya, why have a baby with his wife?

53

Freya’s too busy at first to notice Robin’s abrupt change in demeanour. She’s typing names into the databases – the Police National Computer, the Record Management System – eyes rapidly scanning the information presented to her on the screen.