So, I’m looking at the CCTV, standing over DS Davis’ shoulder. The overriding smell inside the incident room is of testosterone and the overheating plastic of computers, with overtones of stale coffee and sweat. It’s a unique scent; the smell of hard work and dedication, not altogether pleasant, but I still can’t say I don’t like it.

However, as I lean over Davis I get a waft of her perfume. She’s been going through CCTV from the hotel lobby on the day of Baxter’s death, and from the twenty-four hours before and afterwards. This girl has been on it for almost three days now. I want and need these kinds of people on the force, the job, or whatever you want to call it, because her tenacity has paid off: she’s found something.

‘Talk me through it, Davis,’ I say, though my causal tone belies the flurry of adrenaline that’s clawing its way through my veins liked barbed wire. I’ve been in this game long enough to know how it often works; once you get that first break in the case the rest starts to roll. It’s like a chain reaction, one lead leads to another and then another, and then… gotcha! But it’s getting that first break that can be a real pisser. And you need it quick on homicide. It’s human to have momentum at the start of a murder case, and it’s also human to gradually grow despondent and weary when you don’t catch a break. I’ve worked on cases that have gone cold, though admittedly, luckily, only a few, and while momentum wanes, the team doesn’t want to give up. Giving up is the worst feeling in the world. It’s failure. You failed to do your job, you failed to catch the bad guy, but most of all you failed the victim, their family and their need for justice. And I’m not about to fail poor old Nigel Baxter, or Janet and her kids for that matter. I’m not in the habit of failing.

‘Well, boss,’ Davis says, starting to run the video, and I can hear the triumph in her voice already, which sends my adrenaline further into overdrive. I have to grip the back of her seat, my face almost touching her hair. It smells nice, kind of herbal. ‘I’m cross-eyed with this after going through it over and over again… At first look, I saw nothing of note, like twenty-four hours of nothing of note…’ She clears her throat in preparation, ‘The lobby was busy that day… really busy… but I couldn’t put my finger on something—’

She’s dragging it out and I let her because she’s earned it. It’s only fair. To deny her her build-up to the moment would be like sex without foreplay, and I’m not a one-way street kind of bloke, at least I hope not. Rach never complained anyhow and I’m sure she would have. She wasn’t the type to hold back.

‘Go on,’ I say coaxing her gently.

‘There were so many people coming and going…’ she sounds retrospectively weary. ‘But I’ve studied them all… every single person who entered that lobby that day and the following day… I know who came into that building and who left… and given the time line…’

Her hair is reacting to the static from the computer and the cheap plod carpet, and it’s beginning to fly up a little in my face. I want to brush it away, but it seems too personal so I let it stick to my chin. I miss being personal with a woman… Maybe I will reply to that woman, Florence, on SadSingles.com when I get home and agree to coffee. Nothing to lose when you’ve already lost it all.

I swallow back the desire to spin Davis around in her chair so that she quickly gets to the point but like I said, she deserves this moment: she’s worked for it.

‘So, I think there’s no one of note… at first,’ she says, briefly looking back at me, her tired eyes shining. ‘Baxter arrives,’ she continues, ‘there he is…’

She plays the video and I’m glued to it, the image burning through my retinas. I see his large bulk enter the lobby and I feel a pang in my chest because he looks happy, you know, it’s in his step and demeanour, silly, fat sod. And that poor man, he has no idea he’s about to meet his end.

‘So,’ Davis says, efficiently, ‘he checks in around oneish… all good.’

The CCTV captures him heading to the lifts on the left-hand side. Then he disappears out of view.

‘We lose him here.’

‘Okay… ’ I say with an intake of breath. I’m about to combust. Davis runs the tape forwards.

‘And then this…’

I’m up closer to the screen now, nose almost touching it, like I don’t trust my own eyes.

‘It’s 3.36 p.m. The blonde there, see her? She doesn’t check in… goes straight into the lift… look… she’s seen again on CCTV going up to room 106… the camera gets her, Gov.’ Davis looks me fully in the eye then, grinning. This is ambrosia and we both know it.

‘She knocks on the door and goes into the room…’

My heart is galloping like a bunch of wild horses and I’m pretty convinced Davis can hear it, even above her own heartbeat.

‘And there’s no CCTV of her leaving…?’

‘Nope…’

I implode. ‘Fuck me…’ I swear. I actually swear.

‘Or so I thought at first…’ She’s teasing me now; the performance isn’t over yet, there’s more. ‘But then I kept running and re-running the tape because I figured, what goes in must come out.’

Logical thinking. I like it.

She rolls the CCTV forward and the whirring sound of the machine grinds on me. ‘It’s almost 4 pm… three quarters of an hour later. Look…’ She points to the screen ‘… see the girl here…?’

I stare at the image: a dark brunette with a beanie hat on, dressed in dark jeans and a bomber jacket. She’s wearing glasses.

‘An accomplice?’ I’m speculating now, because I don’t know what she’s getting at.

‘No boss,’ Davis says with an air of confidence that suggests she already knows something I don’t. ‘It’s the same girl. It’s the blonde.’

I stoop down and she freezes the frame, but I’m still not seeing it; she’s nothing like Blondie, the hair, the get-up, it’s all different.

‘A disguise you think?’

Davis nods profusely.

‘Exactly.’

I feel a bit deflated because, well, it’s an assumption rather than fact, and in all honesty it’s not even a very clear assumption if my eyes are anything to go by.

Davis senses this and says, ‘It’s her, boss, I’m telling you. This is the blonde who went up to Baxter’s suite an hour earlier… and this is her leaving.’

I nod. I don’t want to discredit what she’s saying, rain on her parade, but I’m not entirely convinced. ‘I suppose it’s conceivable,’ I say, ‘she could’ve gone incognito.’

‘She did,’ Davis says quickly with a conviction I admire, even if I don’t actually share it. We might have to get the experts in on this one; the facial recognition people. And

that means more time and money spent.

‘What makes you sure it’s the same woman? Am I missing something?’ I keep the disappointment from my voice, or at least I try to.

Davis beams at me triumphantly, infectiously. I find myself smiling back at her. ‘Yes Gov, you are.’

I shrug my shoulders and open up my palms.

‘Enlighten me.’

‘See that?’ she says, rolling the tape on a bit and freezing it on a full frontal of the brunette as she exits the lift.

‘See what?’

She places a neat short fingernail on the screen. ‘The handbag,’ she says. ‘The tote she’s carrying… it’s exactly the same one as the blonde’s.’