Tanika didn’t immediately return to the Incident Room after her meeting. Instead, she slipped out of the fire door at the back of the building to get some fresh air. This wasn’t the easiest of tasks, as the back of the station abutted a dual carriageway.

Seeing the cars and lorries roaring past, she allowed herself to give in to her frustrations. As she saw it, her Super was setting her up for a fall. Or, at the very least, making sure that if she messed up, he’d have his back covered.

Do everything in your power to move the cases on, she thought to herself. She was already doing everything in her power. The problem was money. Her team wasn’t anywhere near large enough. Nor was her budget. But years of government cuts had left the police overstretched almost to breaking point. It’s why there wasn’t a detective inspector covering for DI Hoskins while he was off sick. And, Tanika suspected, it was also why her Super hadn’t yet managed to get a DI seconded to help. He’d be trying to make sure the significant extra costs wouldn’t come out of the Maidenhead budget.

And on top of everything else, Shamil, Tanika’s husband, was increasingly ratty at home because of her constant absences. He understood that her work was critically important to her, and he tried hard to give the necessary support, but, as he’d often say, he had his own dreams too. He’d always wanted to be a DJ, and being a stay-at-home-dad was getting in the way of his career, especially when he had to be out late at the weekends. The fact that Shamil had been pursuing the same dream for the last twenty-plus years without ever making any meaningful progress or earning any money was something Tanika had stopped mentioning years ago.

But what broke her heart was the look on her daughter Shanti’s face every morning as she asked if Mummy would be home to read her a bedtime story that evening. It had been even worse in the last week, because Shanti had stopped asking. She already knew the answer.

And as well as all of her responsibilities at home, Tanika also had to do the lion’s share of looking after her father, despite the fact that she had two brothers who were perfectly capable of helping, but didn’t. They didn’t explicitly say it was ‘woman’s work’, but then they didn’t have to because their father did. As far as he was concerned, since Tanika’s mother had died, it was his daughter’s duty to take over as his cook, driver, social secretary, cleaner and washerwoman.