True, there were a few moments of excitement, but they were usually in the court room, sitting behind a barrister when a jury brought in a guilty verdict that you’d been working towards for months. There were moments when you had to drop everything and rush off to a critical incident, but those were pretty rare. There were other occasions when you had to deal with families going through the trauma of losing a loved one.

The rest of the job consisted of making lists of exhibits, preparing Narey files, sitting in CPS case conferences, sweating over duty rosters. She spent most of her time worrying about interviews, memos, file upgrades and threshold tests. Being a detective no longer seemed to have any kudos.

Recently, a new Assistant Chief Constable had joined the force from West Midlands Police. He’d even been commander for the Aston and Central Birmingham operational command units, where Fry had once been based. He was now Derbyshire’s ACC Operations, responsible not only for territorial divisions, but also for level two cross-border crime, crime support, armed-response vehicles, the task force and dog section.

Fry might have expected to be noticed under the new ACC. But her immediate problem was here in Edendale, in the form of Detective Superintendent Hazel Branagh. Since she’d arrived in E Division, she seemed to have been casting some kind of dark spell, like a female Lord Voldemort.

This morning, Gavin Murfin had referred to Branagh’s ‘empire building’. Fry was beginning to suspect that she might have no place in Branagh’s empire.

She found DI Hitchens still in his office. Hitchens had recently taken to wearing black shirts and purple ties, like a jazz musician. Fry suspected he was letting his hair grow a bit longer, too. Tonight, he looked as though he ought to be sitting in the corner of a badly lit nightclub, nursing a double whisky and a clarinet case.

‘Tell me we’re on top of this case, Diane,’ he said.

‘This is no one-day event. Not like turning up at a domestic, lifting the boyfriend and getting an instant confession.’

‘Yes, those can get a bit boring,’ he agreed. ‘Mind you, there’s likely to be a mountain of paperwork.’

‘True. Well, we think we’ve got an ID, at least.’

‘That’s like having one ball in the National Lottery. What about the other five?’

‘Five?’

‘Cause of death, time of death, motive, means. . .’

‘. . . and a suspect?’

‘No, no. That’s the bonus ball.’ Hitchens stroked his tie impatiently. ‘There’s another one, but I just can’t think of it.’

‘Where did you get this lottery stuff from, sir?’

‘Management training,’ he sighed smugly. ‘It’s a focus aid.’

‘A what?’

‘A simple concept that helps focus your mind on the essential elements of a task. You break down each task into components and identify them by a mnemonic or a visual tag. It’s so that none of the elements gets forgotten or overlooked.’