At five a.m., he decided to have a little pause, and took the hood down from his white crime scene suit and settled in a corner of the stinking, rubbish-strewn room. But the short break obviously turned into a nap, and now here she is.

He sits up, wincing as his stomach protests from the bruising last night.

‘What time is it?’ he mutters. He tries to open his eyes but only one is functioning.

‘What on earth happened to your face?’ Freya crouches next to him and tries to touch it. He winces and pulls away.

‘It’s a long story.’

‘So tell me.’

He sighs, then sees the coffee cup in her hand. ‘Is that for me?’ he asks. She passes it to him, then pulls a chair over to his side, waiting.

He slowly tells her the story of the strip club, and Liv. Her tale about teenage Amy and the life insurance. And then the bouncer.

‘So you got a beating for your efforts, but didn’t move the case any further forward,’ she says, and he nods, slowly. ‘Christ.’ She sits back on the chair. She looks nice – she’s had a shower, a good night’s sleep, put on clean clothes. Unlike him. He hates to think what he must smell like, but knows it’s probably masked by the lingering stink of this room.

‘And have you found anything in here?’ she asks.

He shakes his head and finishes his coffee. ‘You done next door?’ he says.

‘Yeah. I’ve bagged up the cling film tubes and boxes as evidence, sent it down to forensics in the hope of fingerprints.’ He looks at her, but she holds her hand up before he can speak. ‘And yeah, I know. If they’re hers then they’ll just say so what, it’s her house. But at least we can show that she put it there.’ She glances round at the rubbish piles. ‘Shall I come and help you with this?’

‘Sure?’ he says.

‘Yeah. But first, let’s get you tidied up.’

Freya ushers Robin up and out of the evidence room, then to the men’s shower room upstairs. She forces him in to get cleaned up, muttering, ‘I’ll find you something to wear,’ as she leaves.