Dark memories from her childhood surface in her head, but she suppresses them and pushes them from her mind. Cold droplets of rain splash onto her face. She wipes them away, turns up the collar of her coat and hurries on, conscious that she should not be late on her first day.

Charing Cross Police Station has had a makeover since she was last here three months ago to make an arrest. A generous and questionable police budget of half a million has seen the immense four-storey Georgian building restored and painted a luxurious period cream colour. She looks up at the four sturdy columns and newly repaired Corinthian capitals that support the portico entrance. Such a different station to the one she was at recently.

She pauses before entering and considers what lies ahead. She is taking over the job of ex-DI Andy Rees, the same man she had arrested and sent down three months ago. Stepping into his shoes hadn’t been part of the plan, but she is hungry to move on in her career and this opportunity is too good to turn down, despite the resentment she will inevitably face from his colleagues. Aside from that, she’s never expected to end up working here, of all places. The same station where her father also served as DI, a career cut short by a brutal gangland murder eighteen years ago. She wonders what he would think of her now on her first day stepping across the same portico that he had walked through every morning. He would be proud, she knows that, but he would probably also advise her to be cautious and to watch her back. She smiles to herself. He always had been one to state the obvious.

Her old boss, Charlie Bates, a scrappy old-school copper laid it bare for her: ‘Don’t let the past hold you back. Your old man would want this for you. And forget what Rees’s cronies think. Take the job at Charing Cross or you’ll face a secondment of NCA investigation work in the arse end of nowhere. I can promise you.’ Charming Charlie has a way with words. Archer has a sharp mind and is ambitious. Charlie understands that more than anyone and this was his no bullshit way of telling her not to turn down this opportunity.

She gives her name and shows her ID to the receptionist, a stern-looking woman who shoots her a cold stare and mutters something indecipherable. Archer swallows. She isn’t even in the building and it has already begun. The worst is yet to come, she knows it.