He is an odd bloke. She can look at him more closely now he’s unconscious, the red mark clear on his neck. It’s obvious what he’s been doing, although exactly how far he got she neither knows nor wants to spend too long thinking about. He’s not bad-looking, short dark hair, growing grey at the temples. Standard cut, slightly longer on top, due a trim. A man who dresses in greys and blues and blacks – colours that can’t clash, clothes neutral in style. Maybe that’s his charm – the complete lack of self-interest.

She looks at his eyelashes, flickering against his cheek. Too long, wasted on a man. Nice eyes that slope down slightly at the corners, giving him a kindly air, despite his brash manner.

He has a rare smile that slips from his face almost as quickly as it arrives, as if his brain can’t sustain the happiness to hold it there. Never verbose, he talks in clipped tones, often mistaken by her colleagues for rudeness. She’s never heard him discuss his weekend, or ask about someone else’s. But despite this, she finds herself liking him. He’s clever, his mind always two steps ahead of hers, challenging, directing, asking her opinion. And unlike other sergeants she’s had in the force, it seems he’s not afraid to let her take the lead when it counts.

Like today. He’s already said he wants her to be on point for the interview with the escort agency. They don’t like the police, he said on the walk back to Waterloo, so a gentler touch might help. Yours, he added with a small smile, acknowledging his own failings.

Watching Butler in slumber, she feels her own eyes starting to close. She didn’t sleep well last night, crying for hours, then tossing and turning through dreams about Jon. Dreams where he’s alive, with her, feeling so real she can almost reach out to touch him.

She woke drained, but full of determination. As ridiculous as she knows it sounds, she feels like he was speaking to her, spurring her on to find out what happened on that Monday night. And the more she hears about Amy Miller, the more she doesn’t like her.

So she had cheated on Jon. And with his best mate, of all people. The injustice of this burns. If he’d known what she had done, then maybe he’d have left her sooner. They could have been together, and maybe he’d be alive. Maybe. Maybe. There’s so much she’s desperate to have done differently, to still have Jon here. It creates an almost constant ache that makes her feel sick inside.