He presses return with a flourish. Immediately, the screen fills with data. What looks like numbers, times, dates. Her eyes scroll the list, until she sees what she’s looking for.

She looks at the username. And she knows who deleted the file.

48

After Robin disappeared from her house last night with barely a goodbye, and Josh and Mina left, Freya found that, once again, she struggled to sleep. But this time it was the man in the freezer giving her pause.

She doesn’t know why Josh’s theory bothers her so much. It is plausible. Tragic, yes, but possible, that he climbed in and suffocated. After all, there are laws around dumping freezers for that reason: kids have died in that exact way. But that was children. Was a fully grown man really so weak that he couldn’t force his way out?

And the fingerprints on the freezer are an anomaly. Who do they belong to? Connor? The boys? Someone else entirely? She lies back against her pillow in frustration.

As the light starts to trickle in, signalling morning, Freya gives up and goes into work. There is nobody else in the car park, the incident room empty as she sits down at her desk just past seven a.m. She puts her coffee and almond croissant down, boots up her computer, then pulls up the photos of the freezer.

The fingerprints cluster over the top and round the handle. Freya theorises it was the trio of boys: had they been messing around with it and didn’t want to own up to the cops? Or had they been involved? And what about Connor Vardy?

There was something about Connor’s interview that Freya found odd. The normal level of nerves was there, but there was something else. A shiftiness. A desperation to get away. The fresh bruise on his cheek.

She remembers Robin’s words about Finn: he so wanted to be liked. Desperate to fit in.

Freya needs to know more. She logs on to the police databases and starts to find out all she can about Connor Vardy.

Two hours later, Josh arrives, a tray of coffees in his hand. He’s startled to see her there, already so engrossed in her work, and hands her one of the cups. She takes it gratefully. He shrugs his jacket off, then sits down next to her.

‘What are you looking at?’

‘Background for Connor Vardy,’ she replies.

‘Anything interesting?’

She’s gone through both the RMS and the PNC with a fine-tooth comb, then looked up records for his mother and grandfather. She’s called children’s services, the National Probation Service. Carried out internet searches. Called on every resource at her disposal. And she lays it all out for Josh.