As if sensing his presence, they both turned to look at him in unison. He noticed Imogen’s eyes dart away for a second before resuming her composure.

DI Walsh held his hand out immediately. ‘Detective Miles, good to see you again.’

‘Detective Walsh. Please, call me Adrian.’

‘Likewise, call me Matt though, not Adrian.’

Adrian half-smiled. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Professor of Philosophy found dead in his office.’

‘Dead how?’ Adrian asked, annoyed that he was out of the loop and the information was being drip-fed to him.

‘Murdered. Looks like he got his head bashed in with a large glass paperweight,’ Matt Walsh said.

‘This feels like an episode of Columbo already,’ Adrian said.

‘The techs are just in taking photos and logging evidence, but go ahead.’

Adrian walked into the office, where three crime scene technicians were doing their business. He stayed in the corner and looked around the room. Being there in person was different to seeing photographs; in Adrian’s experience, memories of scenes could be powerful, things could get burned into the mind. Photographs just didn’t give you the same perspective. He had heard of cases in the military where they had to get in and out of a scene without touching it, so they would use special cameras to capture the scene, then use giant 3D printers to recreate it perfectly, just so they could get the perspective and walk through the scene as many times as they needed.

The professor’s face was hardly a face at all; caved in from the force and weight of the instrument used to kill him, the attack seemed almost frenzied. There were signs of a struggle, with books and papers strewn across the floor. Blood was spattered all up the walls, across the desk, everywhere, and the resin ball lay on the ground near the body. A blue flower was trapped inside, striking against the red of the blood. Someone must have been very angry to commit this level of violence, there was something crazed about it. No effort to tidy up or hide anything either. Adrian couldn’t imagine it was opportunistic in motive at least.

‘Any fingerprints?’ he asked the crime scene technicians.

‘Hundreds. But it looks like our perp wore gloves, so I doubt we’re going to find any,’ the technician closest to him said.

‘Any ideas at all?’

‘I’d say with the force used that you’re definitely looking for a male. And the stamina suggests someone young. They mashed his head. It’s going to be nigh on impossible to recreate the skull; it’s in tiny pieces and totally smushed in with brain matter.’

‘Vivid, thanks,’ Adrian said.

Adrian left the room; he’d seen and heard enough for now. Imogen and Matt Walsh were in the corridor, chatting about his previous placement.

‘Did you know DI Walsh used to work with DCI Kapoor?’ Imogen said.

‘I had heard that, yes,’ Adrian said, almost certain he had discussed it with Imogen before.

‘They used to be partners.’

‘Interesting,’ Adrian said, playing along with whatever Imogen was doing.