‘What case shall I say they’re for?’

‘Put them against the Miller investigation,’ he mutters, then turns away. He presses the coffee against his lips, the mere smell making him feel better. ‘And thank you for the coffee,’ he adds grudgingly.

She disappears and Robin tries to enjoy the peace and quiet. He wants to put the events of last night out of his head. Liv turns up, and he ends up blacked out, again. He wonders about that first night in the bar with her, but he remembers the sheer amount he’d put away. That had been alcohol, no doubt, but this time he knows he didn’t drink that much. And she’s stolen his notebook. But why? He keeps on coming back to that. What could the notebook possibly hold of interest to her?

The continuous bustle is starting to make his head worse, so he picks up his laptop and heads back home, leaving a brief Post-it for Freya. The drive is short but he can barely concentrate, and he feels an almost palpable relief when he gets inside his house.

He clears the mess off the kitchen table, then reconsiders and spends half an hour loading the dishwasher and doing the washing-up. The effect when it’s done is cheering, and Robin makes a mental note to take better care of himself from now on. Maybe give the drinking a break for a few weeks, too.

He sets up his laptop on the table and gets to work. A few reports wait in his inbox, work completed since yesterday. There’s not much of interest, but he spends the next few hours catching up on his neglected cases: reports that need writing, paperwork that needs logging. The homeless guy’s post-mortem has been completed – unfortunate, but natural causes. He ties off any loose ends on the system, closing the case. It’s mindless and repetitive, stuff he’s done hundreds of times before.

His email pings, and he looks at it. Evidence logged, he reads, then a list of items taken from the Miller house the day before. Three bags of recycling, three bags of general rubbish. He notices nobody’s offering to go through it, and he doesn’t blame them.

Then another file. The body-worn video from PC Wallis, taken the night of Khalid Riaz’s party. He clicks on it, then scrolls through to find the images of Amy and Jonathan at the chippy. Eventually, there it is.