‘Did you get a message Friday night?’

‘No. There was no call-in, no voicemail left and Hannah didn’t have the phone anyway. We have two handsets in the team and one’s with me all the time. Hannah …’

‘Hannah called the informant to set it up,’ Joel said. ‘And she didn’t tell you.’

‘She didn’t tell anyone.’

‘We ID’d the other girl that was there, the one who was left to look like an overdose: Macie Sutton. She’s on our systems as a drug user, shoplifter, some fraud offences and a spate of distraction burglaries. Nothing about her being an informant but she is, isn’t she?’

‘She is, but you wouldn’t be able to see that. We keep all that on a different part of the system, it’s hidden to most users.’

‘But not to Hannah.’

‘No.’

‘How did she even know to look at Macie Sutton?’

‘I did tell her, OK, about Sutton. But you have to understand the ball was rolling for an official approach and she knew that. But it can be a long process, a lot of risk assessments, a lot of planning. It was on the back burner, but I was doing what I could. We’re no different here to anywhere else – a lot more work than cops.’

‘And Hannah didn’t want to wait.’

‘I guess not.’

‘Okay, so what don’t I know about Macie Sutton?’

‘She was an informant for us. She was cuckooed by county line drug dealers for a while. She gave us good information about them, also about some piece of shit who was basically pimping her out at one point. Hers was not a happy life.’

‘Hannah wouldn’t have risked her career to go and see her about out-of-town drug dealers.’

‘She wouldn’t. She didn’t. How good are you at acting surprised?’ Miles now had a smile of resignation, like he knew that Joel wasn’t leaving until he had what he needed. Joel let him continue. ‘Macie Sutton gave us some stuff a little while ago about a man who had a big collection of indecent images of kids. He was trading with them, making a reasonable living by all accounts, and Macie was upset about this. She called us up out of nowhere and said she’d talk to us for free. The intel was good – very detailed – but we struggled to parallel source what she was giving us.’