Detective Inspector Jake Porter spotted his partner waiting patiently for him by the main entrance to the apartment complex as he pulled into the last available parking space this side of the police cordon. It never ceased to amaze him how many people were content to loiter by the edge of the tape without a clue of what was going on, hoping to catch a glimpse of something worthy of gossip. On one level it was almost ghoulish, but he dealt on a regular basis with people who had far worse traits than that.

He rubbed a fist in each eye. They felt gritty and raw. He had dreamt about Holly last night. She didn’t visit him every time he slept. Probably once or twice a week, but when she did, it was like losing her all over again. That five or ten seconds of no man’s land between dreams and the real world, lines blurred between the two. The empty pillow next to him a reminder of where he was; of where she wasn’t. He almost welcomed those mornings in a masochistic kind of way. It was worth the pain to see her again, to feel for the briefest of moments that she was still alive. Almost two years without her now. After Holly’s funeral, his mum had put an arm around him, fed him the cliché of time being a great healer, but Porter was leaning more towards a term like quack. The face staring back at him in the rear-view mirror was a tired doppelgänger of the man in his wedding photos only three years back. He had spotted the first of the grey hairs amongst the dark brown a few months ago, but didn’t care enough to do anything about them. He sighed, grabbed his jacket from the back seat and headed over to join Nick Styles inside the cordon. London had almost shrugged off its winter coat, but the contrast between the heated car and the fresh February morning gave Porter goosebumps.

Styles stood with his back to the outer wall of the building, like a suspect in a police line-up. His six-four frame meant he towered above the officers who stood guard at the door. He was focused on tapping a message out on his phone and didn’t sense Porter’s approach over the ambient noise of the scene until they were practically side by side.

‘Morning,’ said Porter, tilting his head to compensate for the difference in height.

‘And there was me thinking you must have had a better offer, guv,’ Styles replied, both thumbs still pecking away at his phone.

‘Well, you know me with my packed social calendar.’

‘I may have got bored and poked my nose inside already while I waited.’

‘Come on, then.’ Porter patted him on the shoulder as he walked past him towards the door. ‘You can give me the plot summary on the way upstairs.’