‘If we had the time we would go and see them all again, every one of these families, and we would find out as much as we could. Everything there is to know about the lot of them. But we don’t have that time, all we have is what’s in front of us. Who would you focus on, where are the gaps?’ Joel gestured again at the busy desks. He was winding himself up now.

DS Rose looked a lot more enthused. ‘OK, so it has to be Nicholas Luckhurst. But there’s nothing on the police systems, and his wife didn’t want to talk about him – she doesn’t want us back there at all. I don’t think she’ll talk if we just turn up.’

‘I don’t think we have any choice.’

‘Aren’t you supposed to be giving a briefing?’

‘To the DCI. Marsden told me to meet him at Dover Police Station.’

‘And you didn’t tell her we’re already here.’

‘I didn’t. And by the time he gets here I have every intention of being somewhere else. We need something more, we need something to go back there for …’ Joel spun to the table where he had put Hannah Ribbons’s day book. He had marked the three entries that covered her meetings with Marilyn Luckhurst, using Post-It notes. He turned to the first of them now, his eyes skimming over the scratchy writing. There were still parts he could barely decipher. The notes were detailed, and the first meeting had started with the standardised ‘DASH questions’ completed. This was the framework for determining risk used by all police officers discussing domestic violence. There were 25 questions, many of them yes/no answers. Hannah had written out numbers 1–25 in the margin with an answer next to each of them. His eyes ran down the row of yes/no responses and stopped on question 17. Hannah had written: ‘Yes. Selemo.’

‘Selemo?’ Joel muttered.

‘What?’

‘Have you got your DASH card?’ Joel referenced an aide-memoire with all the required questions that was issued to every frontline officer. It was laminated and stiff, perfect for a TSG Team trying to open a locked door quietly. Joel had used his one too many times, however, and binned it as a tattered mess a long time before.

‘Back of my book,’ DS Rose said.

‘What’s question seventeen?’

DS Rose flicked her daybook to the back cover and read from her card. ‘Is the partner in employment?’

‘Employment … Employment!’ Joel suddenly raced back over the notes, flicking to all three meetings. ‘There’s nothing here about that, we don’t know what he does. Selemo … That’s Hannah’s writing. She must mean self-employed, it’s shorthand, I can see it now. But doing what?’

‘Hang on.’ DS Rose disturbed a terminal and opened a web browser. ‘Companies House. We can run a search. If he’s self-employed he could be registered.’