She leaned forward and put her face near the gap between the door and the frame. She spoke in a stage whisper. ‘I don’t want my colleague to hear this,’ she said. ‘He’s young and I wouldn’t want to shock him. But when he and his buddies turn up with that warrant they’ll turn this place upside down. Rip up your mattresses, smash your cupboards, take a shit on your bathroom floor, dig into your computer. And they’ll find something, won’t they, Best? Because people like you always have something. Kiddie porn, stolen knickers, evidence of hours spent in chatrooms pretending to be the same age as the people you’re talking to. We’ll find it, Best. We’ll find it and then we’ll use it to unravel your life and lock you up for as long as we see fit.’

She stopped then stepped back.

‘So, Mr Best,’ she said. ‘If you aren’t going to let us in, we’ll be on our way. But we’ll see you soon.’

The door closed, and there was a click as the chain was undone.

4

Wynne stood in the hallway. To the right was the room with the bay window. At the far end was a door open on to a kitchen. A pale green carpet covered the floor and ran up the stairs to her left. There was a faint smell of disinfectant.

She recognized it from the last time she’d been here. The neighbours had called in a domestic dispute. She’d been in uniform then, and had come in to find Best’s wife, Carol, hiding in the upstairs bathroom. Her nose was broken and she had a contusion on the back of her head. Best was gone; another unit picked him up on the M56 heading towards Manchester.

He said he’d had an argument with his wife and was going for a drive to clear his head. Carol Best had a different explanation. She said he’d gone to destroy the photos they’d been arguing about.

Photos of school girls that he’d taken with a long lens camera and collected in an album, which he had hidden at the back of a cupboard where they kept the computer manuals. She had found it when the computer failed to start and she called customer support. She couldn’t follow their instructions, so they suggested she find the manual and look through it.

She found more than the manual, and, when she confronted her husband with the album, he went crazy and said he was going to kill her.

He didn’t; she managed to get away and lock herself in the bathroom. Best left the house, taking the photo album – and any negatives, Wynne checked the house for them – with him. He’d developed them himself, so there was no other record of them.