That was when she realised her mistake: she had assumed that cops such as Collins and McDade would be more likely to help her once they learned that Jim used to be on the force. She’d forgotten that any such loyalty would be to Jim first and foremost. McDade might just as easily want to prevent anyone looking into Jim’s whereabouts if he thought Jim was trying to stay hidden. She had no idea what the DS had gleaned from his visit; he could have sussed precisely what it was all about, to his own reassurance and satisfaction, but he wasn’t going to share it with her.

McDade hadn’t troubled himself over the bizarre question of why Jim would be looking for a long-dead gangster, nor even to enquire who had been paying him to do so. Maybe Jasmine didn’t know what she was doing, but that struck her as an odd thing to so quickly dismiss – unless he had some undisclosed reason to believe it wasn’t relevant.

Or perhaps he wanted to give her the impression it wasn’t relevant so that she wouldn’t look deeper into it and ‘contaminate the trail’.

She opened the Fallan file and leafed through it, struck immediately by how few pages it contained and what little information was on them. There were no invoice copies, no client details, only that rather redundant affirmation on the folder that there was a client. All the other case files contained the most pedantic and pernickety stage-by-stage progress notes, every phone call, visit, name, address and physical observation logged meticulously.

Jim’s case notes were like maths papers: it seemed imperative that he show his working, so that he could retrace his steps if need be, whether to see where he took a wrong turn or to check the veracity of his conclusions. In the Fallan file, however, this scarcity of information, this conspicuous absence of detail, made it look like he didn’t want anybody to be able to follow his footsteps or to see how he had reached his conclusions.

Yet the conclusion itself was noted: or at least the last point his calculations had led him to. There was a name – Tron Ingrams – and an address in Northumberland. The file stated, in Jim’s block capitals, that he had contacted Ingrams ten months ago, which appeared to have been where the investigation ended, as supported by the computer records.