McAvoy turns the page. There is a CCTV image of the girl, sprinting through the lobby of the flats, her likeness pixilated but still familiar. He considers eyes that he has not looked into for so long: eyes belonging to a girl he sometimes thinks about with hope, with kindness, with sorrow and regret.

The investigation team don’t have a name for her. McAvoy does. She’s Roisin Teague. She’s an Irish Traveller from Galway. And six years ago he half killed a man to save her from an attack that still chews at his soul.

He closes the file. Makes sure everything is as he left it.

Then he returns to his seat.

Puts his head in his hands.

And knows, all the way through to the centre of himself, that he will not be able to leave this be.

EIGHT

A gleaming Lexus, hugging the corners as it eats up the miles; big halogen lights setting the trees aflame and casting searchlights into the darkness. Heading east, the roads running parallel to the coastline. Signs, glimpsed and gone, pointing back inland to Patrington, Ottringham, Keyingham.

‘These place names are making me hungry.’

‘Eh?’

‘They’ve all got pissing ham in the title.’

Petulant, sulky, Detective Constable Andy Daniells moves the muesli and yoghurt around in his bowl. Tries to remove something from his back teeth. Suffers a surge of memory: for a moment he’s a boy again, embarrassed in front of the rest of his classmates, forced to walk up to the teacher and politely request a new pencil, having devoured yet another yellow HB. He endured a lot of tests as a child. Doctors and psychologists wondered whether he might suffer from some terrible disorder. By his mid-teens, people had just accepted he was a hungry boy.

Innate hungriness is the reason for the mélange of rabbit food and effluent that squats, maliciously, in his cereal bowl. His husband, Stefan, is taking his health seriously. He has him on a strict diet, and has laid out an exercise regime that, to Daniells, seems woefully short on rest periods. His ideal rest period would last from now, sitting in the passenger seat of Stefan’s swanky Lexus, all the way through to death.

‘How does it taste?’ asks Stefan, glancing across.

‘Tastes like I’d rather be fat,’ grumbles Daniells, just as the satnav interrupts to inform them they have arrived at their destination. The information is unnecessary. There are police vehicles parked all the way down the long, desolate road and a variety of uniformed figures are milling around, shivering and trying to look busy. Just beyond the furthest patrol car, he spies the bulk of his sergeant. He’s staring off into the distance, out to sea. His body language speaks in soft, sad whispers. Daniells knows this is going to be bad.

‘You’ve barely eaten any of it,’ says Stefan, peering at the homemade assortment of raisins and dust. ‘How do you know you don’t like it, if you don’t even try it?’