That’s a knife, sweetheart, he was saying. You feel it? I’m going to squeeze down on it every time you move. So you’d better keep fucking still, hadn’t you?

And then she was crouching on the floor of a brightly lit room, her breathing rapid and shallow, begging them to let her have some air.

With Hanson and Lightman back in CID, Jonah called a briefing in the big meeting room before doing anything else. The one advantage of being in on a Sunday night was that they had their choice of rooms, which meant they were back in the much-coveted conference room, complete with big windows and comfortable chairs.

He gave them all a moment to settle, his gaze resting briefly on Hanson. It looked as though she’d been crying, and very recently. She now had the hesitant, careful air of someone just holding it together. He needed to check in with her again. It was frustrating that it might have to wait, though. They had two people in custody, both potentially to be charged, and a limited time frame to do something about it.

He loaded the map up on to the projector again and began.

‘Having established that Alex Plaskitt died in Louise Reakes’s bed, it now looks fairly certain that he wasn’t actually attacked there. There are significant splashes of blood down Saints Close, none of which were visible until the snow melted.’

There was a brief silence. Then O’Malley said, ‘It might scupper our theory about Niall Reakes finding them in bed together and going mad.’

‘It might,’ Jonah agreed. ‘Though it still remains possible that he went out hunting for his wife, found something going on and went on the attack.’

‘We have blood found at Asylum Green,’ Lightman said. ‘It could be Alex Plaskitt’s. We also have an earring and a glove. If Louise identifies either as hers, we can pin down some kind of event happening there. Possibly an attack.’

‘If it was Louise’s husband,’ O’Malley commented, ‘is it possible she’s still covering for him? Out of a sense of guilt for having cheated?’

‘Would he really have risked refusing to see her if so?’ Hanson asked, doubtfully. ‘Surely he’d want to keep her sweet.’

‘Unless refusing to see her is just an act,’ O’Malley countered, with a shrug. ‘They’re pretending to have rowed when they were both in on it.’

‘We’ll have a clearer idea once those bloods are back,’ Jonah said, aware that he was, as usual, slightly damping down the general enthusiasm. ‘We need to work out whether Niall really was in Southampton. I want to check public transport. Trains. Buses. Taxis.’

‘I’ll get on it,’ Hanson offered.