‘There’s so much ice in town these days that the locals have started calling us “Little Antarctica”,’ Sparrow said. ‘Twenty bucks a hit. Cheaper than a slab of piss, and no risk of a hangover.’

‘And what about crime?’ Manolis asked, half-expecting the answer.

‘Up,’ said Kerr. ‘Way up. Burglaries, robberies, assaults, all off the charts. Junkies desperately trying to feed their habit.’

Manolis bit his lip. There were a lot of drug-filled dead bodies in his rear-view mirror. To be told his home town was being cannibalised was something he took surprisingly personally. Having not given Cobb a second thought in years, he’d reconnected with the place, with his parents, and his childhood. It was an outcome he almost feared.

‘And what have you been doing about it?’ he asked. ‘Any major seizures or arrests?’

There was a moment of heavy silence. Sparrow sipped his water. Kerr adjusted her hair tie. Finally, she said, ‘We asked residents for tip-offs, and said they could respond anonymously. We got nuthin’.’

‘Crackers used to go off two, three times a week,’ Sparrow added. ‘Now, it’s almost every night.’

Manolis shuffled his feet across the grimy lino, stood before the window. He stuck two fingers through the dusty slats, peered in both directions. The street was strewn with garbage but otherwise empty. He wanted to go outside with a dustpan and broom.

Returning to his original position, he sighed. There wasn’t even a corkboard.

‘Okay, I may as well use this to segue into why I’m… we’re here. Local schoolteacher Molly Abbott. I understand you each have your own theories. Here’s one that just occurred to me – an unpaid drug debt.’

There was laughter.

‘For a primary school teacher?’ Sparrow said. ‘Doubt it.’

‘Don’t be so presumptuous,’ said Manolis. ‘I’ve seen fully functioning addicts who worked in childcare centres with babies.’

Kerr turned to Sparrow. ‘Did you check her arms for acne or scratch marks?’

‘Bugs crawling under the skin,’ Manolis said. ‘A common hallucination.’

‘We saw her arms,’ Sparrow said. ‘She was clean.’

‘Did she have any tattoos?’ Manolis asked. ‘That’s a tactic they sometimes use for hiding bad scratch marks.’

‘She had a couple, but not on her arms.’

Manolis recalled the oral and dental decay that came with long-term meth use. ‘What about her mouth, her teeth?’

‘Broken,’ said Sparrow. ‘But not otherwise abnormal.’

‘And when can I see her body, where is it now?’

‘Hospital morgue,’ Sparrow replied. ‘Actually, there were a few people at the pub yesterday askin’ about a funeral.’

Manolis shook his head lightly. ‘No. Sorry, but the funeral has to wait until we’ve found everything we can, and preferably when there’s someone in custody. Her body’s probably the most valuable piece of evidence we have, and I haven’t even seen a bloody report yet. We just can’t have her in the ground.’