She gave him the minimum context, knowing that the idea alone was enough to inspire him. She returned to the lounge and looked at her home with fresh eyes. She needed somewhere bigger, where she didn’t have to sleep on the settee. But she couldn’t afford a place with a second bedroom, since she hadn’t got a penny of child support money from Ross. Ironic that her former partner, a paediatric critical care consultant, was blind to the needs of the one child he was truly responsible for. He just couldn’t stand it that she’d decided to put her own life first. For a decade she’d followed Ross, moving round Scotland from one hospital to another, always several rungs lower, always having to do the killer hours and the childcare while he got the glory and the money. Now at least she was her own mistress.

Poor but happy, and finally appreciated for her work.

She went into the kitchen, to the fridge, and helped herself to a glass of wine. Her first of the evening. Now that was a success. When she’d been working eighty hours a week in Glasgow it had often been a bottle at the end of a shift. She had frequently gone back to work in the morning a little tipsy. Not now.

‘Here’s to profiting from murder,’ she said to herself, raising her glass.

On Wednesday morning, just after eight, Gillard was sitting in his office when he spotted Rainy Macintosh walking into the CID block. As always, she was in a generously cut dark trouser suit that hid her plus-size figure. She had a Thermos flask in hand, which she set on the desk while she shrugged off her jacket and hung it on the back of her chair. He stood in the doorway and watched as she logged on, skimmed her emails, then helped herself to a coffee from her flask. He knew, from previous observation of the crumbs on her jacket, that she would have eaten a croissant sitting in traffic on the congested route from Reading to Guildford. Not the best commute in the world. He had sensed real potential in her right from the beginning. Something about the way she could turn round a problem in her mind and examine it from different directions. She had been allotted Colin Hodges’ old workstation, with its smeary screen and crumb-filled keyboard, and the dubious pleasure of sitting next to Carl Hoskins. She had gelled pretty well with Carl, which was more than could be said for most of the female members of his detective team. She could match him filthy joke for filthy joke, swearword for swearword. For all that, there was some melancholy in her, some dent in her confidence. He had asked Claire Mulholland to act as her mentor, woman to woman, and make sure she could ride out any early difficulties.

‘How was the homework, Rainy?’ he called.