‘Hannah’s role didn’t get her killed so much as her interpretation of it,’ Alan Miles said, his anger back.

‘What does that mean?’

‘Look, my bosses know who you are, they know you’re SIO. They told me that they would talk to you and made it quite clear that I shouldn’t. So that’s where we are. You will still get all the answers you need, just not from me.’

‘Did they tell you we have a suspect?’ Joel instantly knew from Miles’s reaction that they didn’t.

‘Who?’

‘This has to be an exchange of information. I’m not just going to sit here and tell you what I know with nothing in return. Let’s miss out the bosses and their bullshit, shall we?’

‘Bullshit it might be, but they specifically told me not to.’

‘I’ll act surprised. I don’t care about the politics in here, the finger pointing, none of it. We believe Hannah was shot by a man called Danny Evans. He has a fifteen-year-old daughter who was extorted for indecent images; she was one victim of five that we know of. Hannah Ribbons was the OIC assigned to that case while she was in Child Protection, but a little more than two weeks into that investigation she got an opportunity to join you here, which she took. I’ve only skimmed through the casefile but it’s obvious she crammed a lot into that two weeks. Hannah was obsessed, working similar hours to you and me right now, I would imagine. And it got her killed.’

‘Jesus …’ Miles muttered, his shoulders slumping further.

‘So … your turn.’

‘I told you …’

‘You’ve told me nothing. How about I rough you up a bit?’ Joel leaned forward to lick his lips, his head lolling to one side. ‘Then you can tell whoever you’re so terrified of that I beat it out of you?’ Miles’s eyes flared a little, like he believed him for a moment. ‘You know that’s a joke, right?’ Joel said, but kept his expression neutral.

Alan Miles sighed again. ‘The truth is, we don’t know, OK. We don’t know what’s going on here and everyone’s in a bit of a panic trying to work out what happened, who should have stopped it.’

Joel took a moment to take a breath and catch his temper. Suddenly the empty threat of roughing a colleague up for information wasn’t such a flight of fancy. ‘I went to the scene yesterday,’ Joel started through gritted teeth, ‘Hannah was still there. She was lying on her side and she looked small, like a child. She was shot twice from close range while her ankle was chained to a bed post. One of the shots took a piece of her finger off. You know what I think that means?’

‘Means?’ Miles spoke out from where he had taken to holding his head in his hands.