‘That’s Carla’s job. She’ll find him,’ Bremer said. ‘In the meantime, why don’t you go and—’

Carla interrupted him. Two hits on the intelligence database and she’d already got a lead.

‘Try the betting shop in Rose Hill. He goes there frequently and they may know more.’

She didn’t bother to take her eyes off the screen. As leads went it was weak so she needed more, but it was only when the pair had left the office that she settled into her stride.

Carla checked to see if O’Brian’s flat had any registered vehicles – none, good, that narrowed down his transport options, legal ones at least. Then she wrote down all known telephone numbers for him based on his criminal record papers and all intel logged about him. Three in total. She’d need to get the Telephone Unit to check their activity but she wanted to get the basics out the way first.

She went back to his criminal record. O’Brian had been put away for assault on a previous girlfriend, Gloria Benote, and then later for possession with intent to supply. Carla wrote down Gloria’s address – not far from O’Brian’s flat, she noted – then Gloria’s telephone number before phoning Council Tax to check the number and address were still current. They were. So far so good, but would a victim of assault harbour her assailant? Carla had seen enough domestic abuse victims to know the answer was yes, very likely.

She looked down at her notes. There was something familiar about one of the numbers. She wrote it out again, then again, before underlining it. Carla rarely forgot a number from a case, so there must have been one she’d worked on where Gloria’s number had featured heavily, but which one? Frustrated, she ran through cases in her mind, each logged, checking numbers, car number plates, addresses, for a clue as to which it was.

And then there it was. It hadn’t been her case at all, but it had been the first time she’d ever taken the dock, and she remembered now the look of fear on the victim’s face as she recounted the number of times the defendant had called her; the number of text messages Connor O’Brian had left in the run-up to his assault on her—

‘Carla?’ Bremer was standing next to her. ‘You look a million miles away.’

‘I was involved in the original O’Brian assault case.’

Bremer stared at her. ‘What?’

‘I know. I feel awful I didn’t remember her. Awful I didn’t remember his girlfriend, Gloria Benote.’

Gloria’s face came at her, tight, drawn, eyes pleading with Carla to stop saying the words that would help put her boyfriend away.

‘Go on.’