‘I hope you two are hungry,’ Caroline said. ‘I think I’ve done too much batter.’

‘Extra energy for the cycle ride,’ Mark added.

‘Are we going for a bike ride?’ Archie asked.

‘Maybe. We’ll see what the weather does,’ Caroline said.

‘Doesn’t look brilliant from here,’ Josh mumbled, another sign of becoming a teenager long before his time.

‘My app says the mist’ll clear by ten,’ Mark said, playing with his phone. ‘It’s meant to get up to twenty degrees after that.’

‘And in old money?’ Caroline asked, sliding three pancakes onto separate plates. With only three frying pans, she always made sure the family ate first. She’d have whatever was left.

‘Sixty-eight,’ Mark said.

Caroline smiled a little and nodded. Perhaps it wasn’t going to be such a bad day after all.

As she poured more batter into the pans, she noticed the sound of her work phone vibrating on the table in the hall.

‘Ah, can you grab that for me?’ she said, not noticing that Mark was already making his way out of the kitchen to do so. He returned a few seconds later and handed the phone to her.

When she saw Dexter Antoine’s name on the screen, she had a feeling it wasn’t going to be good news.

‘Dex, what’s up?’ she said, answering the call.

‘Morning. Sorry, but I hope you didn’t have plans for today.’

‘Uh, well sort of,’ she said, looking at Mark. ‘Why?’

‘Someone’s found a body on the water over at Normanton. Looks like murder. Do you want me to phone it through to the boys at EMSOU?’

Caroline knew when she took the job as the sole Detective Inspector of Rutland Police that it was usual practice for homicides and other major and violent crimes to be handed to the regional East Midlands Special Operations Unit. Whereas they had a dedicated major crime unit, Rutland Police was by far the smallest force in the entire country.

Rutland itself was barely sixteen by eighteen miles in size and the smallest historic county in England, with fewer than forty-thousand inhabitants. It was what had appealed most to Caroline when she’d decided to escape the Met. As much as she’d enjoyed the change of pace, it had been a huge shift for her.

In the Met, she’d known her place. There were plenty of large investigations for her to get her teeth into and prove herself. Here, though, things had been different. She’d seen the capabilities of her team, but she hadn’t yet had the chance to show them what she was made of.

‘No,’ she said, not even needing to think about her answer. ‘No, we’ll take it.’

There was a moment of silence at the other end of the phone. ‘Are you sure? First responders seemed pretty sure we’re looking at murder.’