‘So, what’s so urgent?’ she asked, when they were settled at a table with a pint of IPA for him and a Diet Coke for her.

Emad was bursting to tell her. ‘I just got back from a call-out to Ashworth – you know, the mental institution near the A3?’

‘Oh yeah? Natives revolting, are they?’

Emad took a gulp of his pint, swallowing a hiccup and putting a hand over his mouth, embarrassed. Gemma laughed, but not meanly.

‘Not exactly, but someone escaped this morning.’

‘It’s low security, that place, isn’t it? Can’t they pretty much come and go as they please anyway?’

‘Medium security. And they definitely can’t. Anyway, this one did, and she’s not the sort of woman we want on the outside, not if she’s not taking her meds.’

‘Well, surely she can’t be that dangerous if she’s in Ashworth?’

‘The governor told me that she’d calmed down massively in the past couple of years; that’s why she was moved over there from Rampton. Long-term patient – first went in when she was in her twenties. History of extreme violence, manipulation, coercion, you name it. Has tried to kill other staff and patients on several occasions over the years, but not recently. Several suicide attempts – the most recent five years ago when she made a swallow dive head first off her bunk onto the concrete floor. Smashed her nose in and gave herself severe concussion.’

‘Ouch. How old is she now?’

‘Mid-fifties.’

‘No spring chicken, then.’

‘No, but she managed to knock out a nurse with no difficulty – the woman’s in hospital. The nurse had taken her for a dentist’s appointment, and the prisoner did a runner in the car park. She had a getaway driver.’

Gemma didn’t seem overly interested, so Emad thought it was time to play his trump card: ‘Thing is, Gemma, there’s a connection to Meredith Vincent.’

‘What? How?’ Gemma had a slight habit, Emad had noticed, of not concentrating on what he was saying, looking over his shoulder or, occasionally, fiddling with her phone – but he had her full attention now.

‘I went to look at the woman’s room in Ashworth, and when I got in there, one wall had bits of Blu Tack all over it. When I asked what she’d had up there, the nurse who took me in said – and you won’t believe it – “Oh she was obsessed with some band from the eighties … Funny, she must have taken all the pictures with her”.’

Gemma’s glass stopped en route to her mouth. Her jaw dropped. ‘You’re not going to tell me it was Meredith’s band? Cohen?’