‘Message for you, superintendent!’ shouts the desk sergeant, as she clatters up the stairs.

She stops, hair tangled in her earrings, fingerprints on her sunglasses, lipstick smudge on the lid of her coffee cup, papers spilling from the bag she carries like a cudgel. Gives him a look that implies she is willing to do serious prison time rather than go back down the stairs.

‘Burn it, would you, Frank?’

She gets a grin in return. The reception area of HQ is thoroughly modern, but the desk sergeant is decidedly old school. There are coffee shops, gyms and chain stores within five minutes of the front door, but she admires people who still bring a flask to work and who save a few quid each day by knocking together a meat-paste sandwich at home. He’s a bit of an anachronism here, in the shiny openness of Clough Road nick. It feels more like a hotel than a police station. No cigarette smoke in the air, no takeaway food or damp carpet or spilled celebratory ale. It’s hard to be a copper in a building like this. It makes her feel old. Obsolete. Past her prime.

She boots the double doors at the top of the flight of stairs. Pushes through into the corridor. Stomps her way down to the little office at the far end of the hall. The PA she shares with two other senior officers has an office larger than she does. Pharaoh’s only got an office here because she’s been strong-armed into accepting overall responsibility for Major Crime across the Humberside Police region. She’s been head of the Serious and Organized Unit for eight years, and has fought tooth and claw to stop it being swallowed up by the bigger body of CID. She fancies it’s a losing battle. Do more with less has been the mantra of every chief constable she’s served under, and there’s no doubt her elite little unit is expensive. During her last appraisal she was told that there was some ill-feeling among the larger portion of CID: accusations that her team of officers were cherry-picking the best jobs and that she showed undue favouritism to her unit in particular, and her sergeant in particular. She’d lost her temper. Challenged the ACC to find anybody who had given more to the job than McAvoy. She’d done such a good job of explaining his worth that the ACC had suggested putting him in charge of cold cases and raising him to the rank of inspector. Pharaoh had performed a swift U-turn after that. She liked him where he was.

‘Boss!’

Andy Daniells is hustling his way down the corridor, laptop under one arm and a sheaf of papers in his fist. Pharaoh notices, with a motherly gaze, that he has a chocolate smear on his shirt.

‘If he sees you’ve been eating that he’ll have your guts for garters,’ Pharaoh says with a smile, crossing to her desk and siting down heavily at her cluttered desk. She stands up again immediately and opens the window. Plonks herself back down on the seat and indicates to Daniells that he should remove the pile of papers on the chair opposite and endeavour to make himself comfortable.