She examined the grille; rather than being screwed in, it appeared to rest on slots. She shook it gently. Movement. Her fingers were sliding in the silk – too hard to grip. She unwound the scarf – they’d hardly check a radiator grille for prints, would they? She lifted; the grille came loose. Behind it a radiator running the length of the window. Again, nothing. Her eyes were drawn to the thin gap between the radiator and the wall. She checked the right side, could just get her fingers behind and slide them from bottom to top, searching for some kind of contact. She moved to the left, repeating the process. Two thirds of the way up she hit something – an edge of paper or envelope. She tugged. It stuck. She pulled harder and heard ripping. It came away, sellotape dangling from one side, a tear on the other.

Had he anticipated that someone out there would want to invade his desk?

She wiped her brow with the scarf and rubbed the sweat from her fingers on her shirt. Don’t touch anything else. She walked back to the desk, lifted the phone and dialled 999. No need to avoid her prints on that handset.

She guessed she could count on another three or four minutes. She ran her eye over Morahan’s office. No sign that she’d disturbed anything – no reason she hadn’t gone straight from discovering him to the nearest phone… and then, as she now did, to the bathroom.

She put the envelope beside the basin, washed and dried her face and hands, wiped her shirt, replaced the scarf on her head. Now more composed, she picked up the envelope – feeling it again, it seemed surprisingly thin and light. She peeped inside. It didn’t look like the Blackburn files. What else? Did she have time to read or take it in? She removed the contents – a one-sheet print-out of a corporate-style profile and a short note.

The profile was all too familiar. She read the note. Her heart hammered, her legs wanted to give way. This was not the moment to try to understand all the implications.

What did Morahan really know? What game had he been playing? Playing with her.

A tornado of thoughts crashed in from every direction. There was a design to her being here, thrust into a perfect scenario for scandal and conspiracy theories. One of the country’s most senior judges – a man engaged in an inquiry of supreme national importance – found half-naked with his trousers down, asphyxiated by a leather belt. And, as and when it came out, discovered by an attractive young lawyer working with him.