She’d discovered not only that he had gone to school with Liam Brook, but also that he was close to being convicted of a robbery-related offence when he was sixteen years old, but had cut a deal, accepting rehabilitation in a ground-breaking experiment in youth crime and reoffending stats. There was little public support for treating offenders with anything but contempt, but these experiments that popped up occasionally were powerful. She’d never heard of this one.

It wasn’t on Will’s official record – and certainly not on his CV, which she’d checked alongside all the others on her team – but she’d found it when she’d searched Liam Brook’s record. Liam Brook had been recruited from the same rehabilitation programme as his buddy. The authorising officer accepting the two young street scrappers into the ranks of the constabulary was none other than the senior chief inspector Neil Ormond, fifteen years ago, just before he made superintendent. She wondered what to make of the massive conflict of interest that was emerging as a pattern.

It made her dig deeper. Both junior officers had done time on the Cumbria drugs squad but moved in the same year: Will Phillips to detective and Liam Brook to squad policing.

Kelly didn’t like coincidences.

A creeping feeling settled under her ribcage. She’d asked around and she knew that Will had been paired with PC Brook on Op Eagle. Of course they had been: they were best muckers. She wondered who else it could have been that was so interested in Jackson Akers. Sharon had been sure that two officers had been to his flat. Why? She pondered all the operations she’d shared with Will, a young man with such a great future, and it pained her. She recalled him saving her skin a couple of years back, when she’d entered a property unassisted because she knew there was a first-class bastard inside, potentially about to murder a young girl for what she knew about his organised crime network. Will had had her back and she’d pulled it off. She could easily have been investigated for malpractice; she could even have been sued by the surviving casualty. She should never have gone in alone, but she was a rookie in the area, eager to prove herself. And Will had managed to make those details disappear. He’d turned up with Armed Response later, but the timeline had been overlooked.

Now she questioned what was behind his ability to do that so smoothly. Had he had previous experience of smudging reports? They’d never discussed it. She knew he wasn’t being entirely honest with her.

Rob leant back in his chair and it made Kelly look up.

‘Boss, it’s quite clear from several eyewitnesses to yesterday’s cock-up that two officers went into Jackson Akers’ flat yesterday to talk to him.’