‘I thought about that, but I think you’re right, I think someone has leaked what’s happened and the same sicko from before has phoned again to see if he can get a better reaction this time. I did call Jamie’s school. No one can get to him there – schools are pretty shut down these days. And Callie … well, she’s on a ward with constant supervision. I’ll talk to them when I’m next there but …’ She shrugged again. Joel recognised someone downplaying a threat. He’d seen it before. It would be making her feel better to find simple explanations.

‘I’ll do that if you like. They might take it more seriously if it comes from us,’ Joel said.

‘OK, thanks.’

‘And you?’ Joel asked.

‘Me?’ Sharon sat back as a waitress arrived with a tray of drinks. ‘What can someone possibly do to me to make my life worse?’

Sharon left first. Joel and DS Rose remained silent as they watched her go. From the coffee shop, she was going straight to pick up her twelve-year-old son, and they both had a sense of what the next phase was going to be like for the Evans family.

‘You can see why Hannah got so invested in all this. Families and their kids, it always seems to matter more.’ DS Rose’s words punctured the silence.

‘It does,’ Joel said. ‘I need to understand that case better, or at least I need to understand what Hannah was doing with it.’

‘All she could,’ DS Rose said, her tone edging on anger.

‘I don’t mean like a case review, I mean I want to understand who she was talking to, what she’d been saying, who she was upsetting. That case got her killed.’

‘By Danny Evans. And we understand his motivation to do that, don’t we?’

‘We do. It’s everything else I don’t understand, not yet. Where is the file?’

‘It will have been uploaded – we can see it anywhere we can access Athena,’ DS Rose said, referring to the local computer system used day-to-day, alongside other national databases such as PNC. The local system was more user-friendly and contained everything from convictions at court to anecdotal intelligence, making it far more useful as a research tool. Athena was also where case papers would be uploaded in preparation for sharing with the Crown Prosecution Service if charge advice was being sought. Officers could upload every scrap of material they had on a case, including any handwritten notes, but only in specific circumstances when a case was going to court and a not-guilty plea had been entered. Hannah’s case didn’t meet these criteria and Athena might only reflect the official case papers. Joel wanted handwritten notes and scribbles, he wanted theories and abandoned lines of enquiry – the next best thing to talking to Hannah directly.