Carla had been at her desk for three hours. She’d finally given up on sleep and decided she would distract herself with work. But looking at her empty notepad, she might as well have stayed in bed.

She typed Eve’s name into the intel database and noted every job she’d worked on in the last ten years in which a dead baby was involved: five in total, including the O’Brian case.

Carla opened each case file and scanned the text: infant found dead, parents accused, mother convicted. All serving prison terms of varying lengths, from two to seven years, depending on the severity of the child’s injuries.

Was it statistically likely that all five deaths would’ve been unnatural and that in each instance it was the mother who was found guilty? She’d have to check Eve’s ratio of female convictions against stats from other pathologists to be sure, but still, wouldn’t at least one of the five couples have experienced the sad yet natural death of their child? One would surely be innocent. But then she supposed that’s what Joanne was arguing: she was that one innocent woman.

Carla scanned the files, taking a mouthful of cold coffee brought in from home. Each one seemed pretty standard: pathologist file attached, judge’s comments at the end. She checked again. No, she was wrong, one of the reports was missing. She checked the case. Shit. Joanne. Why was the pathologist’s report missing from Joanne’s case but was attached in all the others?

She felt a rush of adrenalin – what if Joanne was right and Eve had faked her reports to apportion blame to the parents? But why on earth would someone do that? It seemed an extraordinarily cruel thing, and even if she had, why would Eve remove just one report from the files and not all of them?

Frustrated, she saw Bremer coming and wondered if she should run it by him now or wait for the debrief. The look on his face as he walked into the office told her it should be the latter.

‘I’ve got Eve to come in, but my God it was hard work.’ He threw his leather briefcase on the floor and sat down. ‘Gerry was determined she shouldn’t come to the station. “She’s a pathologist,” he kept saying, as if pathologists have the right to some sort of special treatment. He’s in the job, for God’s sake, so he knows full well we have to cover all bases, and anyway,’ he rolled up his shirtsleeves, ‘Eve doesn’t exactly strike me as the kind of woman who needs a minder.’

Carla almost laughed. But she didn’t. ‘He just loves her, I guess.’

‘Enough to argue with a superior officer for twenty minutes?’