‘Great. Can I just ask, has anyone from Cambridgeshire Constabulary been making enquiries?’ Lockhart says. Inspector Barker has asked him to make sure that it stays firmly within their remit. Because Thomas Warren was under investigation, the Home Office boys might be poking their noses in. On occasion there can be a bit of dispute if something happens on the boundary line but this one took place actually inside the station: it’s definitely theirs.

‘No, not the lads,’ the woman says, pauses, then adds a phrase that is always guaranteed to make an investigating officer’s ears twitch. ‘It’s probably nothing, but …’

‘What?’ asks Lockhart.

‘Dunno, odd, but one of our registrars seems a bit obsessed with this one. Came and asked me a lot of questions, about exactly what happened, then came back a couple of days later and asked to view the remains. He got quite, well, not upset exactly, more …’ Lockhart knows when to stay silent and let someone finish a sentence. It’s a quality that will serve him well when he becomes a detective. ‘More sort of, I’m not sure of the right word, fascinated. If I didn’t know better, I’d’ve thought he’d just taken something.’ She gives a little snorty laugh, to indicate this is a joke. She doesn’t want this police officer to think their junior doctors go round dropping tabs or mainlining oxytocin.

‘Any relation to the deceased?’

‘I don’t know, he didn’t say, but I worried a bit after, maybe he was and I shouldn’t have let him. Tricky though, when he’s a doctor, you know, you just assume it’s something professional. I suppose I should’ve asked.’

‘What was his name?’

‘Dr Goodison, works in the Fracture Clinic.’

Lockhart recognises the name immediately – he’s read the Coroner Liaison Report on Lisa Evans. Matthew Goodison was her boyfriend. He gave evidence at the inquest into her death.

‘Look, um, if the report’s being printed, any chance I could swing by this afternoon and pick it up in person?’ Lockhart asks then.

‘Sure,’ the Mortuary Manager says. ‘Make sure it’s after I’m back from my lunch break, one thirty, I’ll check it’s been collated.’

‘Great, thanks.’

*

Lockhart prints out some papers from the computer, adds them to the small pile on the side of his desk, then opens the top drawer on the left-hand side. It contains his handcuffs in dull black metal, a canister of CS spray in its holster and a half-eaten chocolate-covered flapjack. He takes out the flapjack. It’s hot in the office, Victorian heating pipes on full, non-adjustable. The chocolate coating sticks to the plastic wrapper and comes away as he unwraps the flapjack: he frowns, takes a bite. The flapjack disintegrates all over him but he doesn’t notice as he is too busy using his front teeth to scrape the chocolate away from the plastic wrapper when Barker comes in, the door to the office swinging open so swiftly that Lockhart is caught with chocolate on his teeth and oats on his shirt.