That’s been the big problem up to now.

Life in this place, getting in the way . . .

I was never the type to cut corners. Never one to take the easy route, or ‘delegate’, when most of the time that really means skiving off. No, really, if I was working a case I was like a fucking laser . . . I was dead focused. In here, though, it’s hard to concentrate on anything for more than five minutes without something kicking off. I can sit in my room and do stuff on my laptop if I have to, but like I tried to explain to Marcus, that’s not what being a detective is about.

You need to get out there and engage with people.

Nine times out of ten, engaging with someone on the ward means arguing with them or just keeping them out of your face. Watching them nod off or just amble away while you’re talking. Listening to a blow-by-blow account of some sexual encounter that didn’t happen or else some half-arsed cobblers about how radio waves are reacting with metal in the vaccinations we were given as kids and turning us into aliens.

Then there’s all the other stuff you have to do, the routines that eat into your day. I know, I’m normally the first one to moan about how boring it is in here – at least it was, before bodies started piling up – but there’s still the meals and the one-to-ones and the tests and the groups and the community meetings and the washing and the visits and the meds.

Mustn’t forget the meds.

Like I said before, I’m still struggling with the best way to manage them as far as making headway in my case goes. It’s hard to get anywhere when the drugs are wearing off because I can get a bit jittery, and when they’re kicking in I’m every bit as likely to zone out completely. So taking all this shit three times a day means I’ve only got a small – what do you call it? – window of opportunity, which isn’t ideal.

Like I’m going after a suspect with one arm tied behind my back.

It is what it is, though, and anyone who knows me will tell you I’ve never backed away from a challenge. They’d definitely say that. Not that I trust many of them now and it’s not like they’ll even talk to you, but you get what I’m on about.

I got the number I was after in the end, though it took a while and one or two of the conversations were a bit awkward, but I didn’t really have a lot of choice.

‘Bloody hell, Alice!’ DS Trevor Lambert, who I’d worked with a hundred years before. On a team somewhere in south London now. ‘Blast from the past or what?’

‘Been too long, Trev.’