Fleet had assumed the name was some kind of departmental joke, but the room turned out to have a sign on the door. And as well as a fish tank gently bubbling in one corner, there were artificial flowers in a dusty vase, and washed-out floral prints on the pale green walls. They’d gone for calming, Fleet supposed, and had ended up with cloying. All that was missing were the panpipes.

‘Jesus,’ said Nicky, glancing around. ‘I think, if I was grieving, this place might tip me over the edge. I wonder how many people have drowned themselves in that fish tank?’

‘At least there’s a coffee machine,’ said Fleet. ‘Want one?’

But before he could figure out the correct sequence of buttons, Randy blustered into the room.

‘Christ on a Harley, Rob. You might have warned me I’d be getting a phone call from the PCC.’

Fleet glanced at Nicky. ‘The commissioner?’ he said. ‘What did he want?’

Randy ran his hands through his hair. He wore it long, bordering on unkempt, and Fleet suspected he dyed it. It was possible he even had a weave. Randy was in his early fifties now, but he’d never made any secret of the fact that he considered himself a catch. Three wives down, he was clearly reluctant to let that status go. To be fair to him, he’d been something of a rock star in his younger days, at least in the world of forensic pathology. He’d quickly earned a reputation as the country’s foremost authority on knife wounds, at a time when knives were becoming as essential an accessory as mobile phones, and he’d been a star performer in the witness box. He dazzled juries with his monstrous self-confidence, and intimidated junior barristers with his complete lack of deference and his caustic wit. But as with his tarnished looks, the gloss on his reputation had faded. Over the years, he’d stepped on too many toes, blasted too many of his contemporaries’ opinions, for his eminence to endure. These days, even though he was undoubtedly a first-rate pathologist, he tended to be the one most SIOs hoped they didn’t get.

‘What do police and crime commissioners ever want?’ Randy said, grinning now and flapping a hand dismissively. ‘Job security.’

Once again Fleet looked at Nicky. Given what they now knew about the case, they had expected interest from above. But Fleet for one hadn’t expected it to manifest so quickly.

‘Which makes me wonder,’ Randy went on, his beady eyes arrowed, ‘what is it about a corpse that has been hidden for twenty-two years that has got our elected overseer in such a flap?’

‘Twenty-two years?’ said Nicky. ‘Does that mean you have a positive ID?’