Ava had a growing sense of admiration. Any other officer would have gone in with a sledgehammer. Tripp wasn’t even pretending, though. Naturally sweet, he was a secret weapon. Callanach had seen the quiet brilliance in him before anyone else, encouraging him to go for promotion, knowing Tripp would excel. For a moment she wished Callanach were here, seeing the junior officer he’d help to train come into his own. It was the first moment her anger with him had been replaced by a more positive emotion. She squashed it and watched Vicki’s response as the second film clip came to an end.

‘Vicki, do you know that man?’ Tripp asked.

She nodded, her eyes unable to settle in a single spot in the small room.

‘Did you give him information about patients from the drop-in centre?’ Tripp continued.

‘Hold on a moment,’ the lawyer interjected. ‘I’d like to know what that young man is supposed to have done before my client answers that question. Sharing patient information in the circumstances might not be a criminal offence, but you can lay your cards on the table if you want anything more.’

‘What’s his name?’ Tripp asked, ignoring the lawyer and looking straight into Vicki’s eyes.

‘RJ,’ Vicki said.

‘This interview ends here until you provide some initial disclosure. This is a fishing expedition,’ the lawyer said.

Tripp looked at Ava, who pulled her chair forwards a couple of inches, all business, ignoring Vicki and addressing only the lawyer.

‘The male on the clip – this RJ – was at the scene of an attempted suicide. It was the Reach You charity that took the call to send out an emergency counsellor. We know from the records that it was Vicki who took the call and assigned Rune Maclure to the case. It was a different counsellor – Charlie Packham – who attended another suicide attempt yesterday in Pennywell Gardens, but your client took that call also. Sure enough, RJ was present at that scene, too.

‘Given that we have your client’s mobile phone and a court order to obtain her telecoms records, she might like to be transparent with us about her communications with RJ and explain why her friend is so interested in suicide attempts.’

‘I didn’t even think about it,’ Vicki said quietly. ‘At first, you know, RJ was just really interested in my work, like it was important and he respected me because of it.’

‘Go on,’ Tripp encouraged.

‘He said he wanted to attend one – an attempt, I mean. Not to watch it happen, he said, but to see how the counsellors do it, you know, talk people down. He made out as if they were heroic. I suppose I wanted it to seem like my job was more important than it was, so I said I’d tell him next time I got a call.’

‘Did you phone RJ to let him know when an attempt was happening?’ Tripp clarified.