‘No. She didn’t tell me that. But it was blocked anyway. All handler meetings are run through a controller – a senior officer basically who has to authorise every meeting – and they wouldn’t authorise this one. Hannah had only been on the team a couple of weeks and didn’t have an existing relationship with this informant and it failed the risk assessment. Someone else on the team was going to be tasked with it, but it wouldn’t be any time soon. Hannah said that the whole team were wrapped up in some big drugs job. She was frustrated.’

‘So you think she did something off her own back?’

‘I don’t know that for sure, but I’ve never seen her so consumed … That was the last time I saw her.’

‘So that could explain why she was at an informant’s house, why she was on her own.’

‘It could.’

‘And now the source team have shut up shop because one of their officers stepped out of their processes and got herself killed.’

‘She didn’t get herself killed. Someone shackled her to that bed and shot her twice,’ DS Rose said.

‘You’re right, poor turn of phrase. We need to speak to the source team,’ Joel said, ‘more than ever.’

‘We’re getting nothing.’

Joel lit up his phone but changed his mind. ‘First thing in the morning I’ll speak to our superintendent again and see what she can do. We need to be a lot more difficult to ignore.’

Chapter 35

Monday