‘Look, I’m sorry about cancelling earlier tonight.’

‘It’s fine. We’re even now,’ she said with a smile.

‘It wasn’t tit-for-tat.’

‘I know. I was joking.’

Harry pinched the bridge of his nose. It had been a stressful day and it had reminded him of all the reasons he hated working at Conmere. Dominic had been on his back again about Steph, and when his mother had said she’d seen Steph up by the lake Dominic had gone off on one, repeating all his reasons why he didn’t like or trust her. He had seemed particularly agitated that she’d been at the lake at all and no amount of reassurances from Harry that she was simply taking photos had made any difference. Sometimes, you just couldn’t tell Dominic anything once he’d made up his mind about something. Stubborn bastard – just like their dad.

‘I’ll walk over hot coals to make sure we get that drink. How does Friday sound? I’ll definitely be free then,’ he said. ‘Although I think I should at least upgrade it to a meal.’

‘That will be nice. I’ll look forward to it.’

Not without a good deal of effort, he forced himself to say goodnight. As he walked down the hallway, he found himself wondering how on earth he could pacify his brother about Steph. He had a bad feeling about what Dominic was thinking, and his instinct to protect Steph was overwhelming.

By the time he’d reached the ground floor, he’d made up his mind. It probably wouldn’t go down too well with Steph, but it was the only way forward.

He went into the office behind the reception desk and, switching on the laptop, he called up a password-protected file.

It had been a long time since he’d read anything in here – two years, in fact. It contained all the information he’d received about Elizabeth’s death, from a list of people dealing with the case to the official findings and scanned documents relating to the enquiry. There was another folder with more pertinent information – death certificate, coroner’s report and suchlike – but that was kept in a safe-deposit box at the bank. He took a deep breath and clicked on the folder icon, before locating the contacts list and the name he was looking for. There it was – the telephone number for DCI Wendy Lynch. Beside her name was the police-station number, her work mobile number and her home number. It was the latter he was interested in.

It was late to be making a phone call but Harry couldn’t wait until the morning; he wanted answers tonight so he had time to work out what to do next.

Wendy Lynch answered the phone on the third ring. She sounded alert. ‘Hello.’

‘Wendy Lynch?’

‘Yes. Who is this?’

‘Sorry to ring this late at night. It’s Harry Sinclair.’