When Lucy’s alarm went off she didn’t know if she could open her eyes; they felt so heavy. She scrabbled around to find the phone and turn the annoying sound off before she threw it out of the window. She lay there for five minutes, willing herself to move and letting out a loud groan when she finally did. At least she hadn’t had any nightmares, but her head was pounding from the wine and her mouth was dry. She ran downstairs and made herself a bacon sandwich and a large mug of coffee. The smell of the bacon made her stomach growl. She was so hungry she devoured it in a few mouthfuls and felt much better. Taking three paracetamol to clear her thudding head, she was as ready for the nightmare of a day ahead of her that she could be. Realising she’d left her car in one of the side streets by the Italian restaurant, she phoned Browning, who answered sounding even crankier than she had been when she’d woken up.

‘Morning. Can I have a lift into work, please?’

‘What time?’

‘As soon as you’re ready. I think Mattie might need one as well.’

‘You think right – he’s already texted and said we had to pick you up on the way.’

‘I’m impressed; thank you. I’m ready now, by the way.’

There was a grunt as the line went dead; she took it that he wasn’t.

As she walked upstairs to the incident room she saw the shadowy figure of a man in Tom’s office and headed towards it. She stared in shock at the sight of Patrick sitting behind Tom’s desk.

‘What do you think you’re doing in here?’

‘Morning, Lucy. Any news on Tom?’

She shook her head.

‘I’ve been asked to take over as temporary DCI – I’ve been waiting ages for the position to come up so this was kind of perfect.’

‘How is it perfect? Tom’s in hospital fighting for his life.’

Her fists clenched, Lucy turned and strode straight into the incident room, where Mattie had begun writing up another whiteboard. There were photographs of all the Martins with their names above them. She crossed over to her desk to see a steaming-hot mug of coffee and immediately felt better. Mattie turned to look at her and she mouthed ‘Thank you.’ He winked at her, then turned back around.

Mattie soon finished writing down what they had so far and sat down across from her, waiting for her to speak first.

‘My head is a complete mess this morning. I can’t seem to get my brain into gear and it’s not for lack of trying.’

‘Well, that’s you and me both. Last night was pretty intense – it’s no wonder. So what’s the new boy doing behind the boss’s desk?’

‘Apparently he’d been promised an acting DCI role so he’s taking over for now, the prick. Come on, let’s get this briefing over. I’ll feel better once I have a plan of action.’

She grabbed the handwritten list of notes she’d made whilst waiting for Browning to pick her up and attached them to a clipboard. Standing up, she led the way down to the busy room. As she walked in, the loud chattering stopped. She knew she had a reputation as a hard taskmaster, but it got results so she didn’t care. She was fair and treated her team as best she could, given their workloads and the stress that they were under. Rachel was faffing around trying to get the webcam working for the whiteboard, but Lucy shook her head.

‘It’s okay, Rachel, you can leave it. I haven’t had enough coffee yet. It’s way too early to have to stare at this lot magnified on that huge screen. It will put me off.’

There was a murmur of laughter around the room and she smiled.

‘Right, let’s get started. Someone put me in a good mood and tell me that we have Lewis Waite back in custody waiting to be interviewed.’

She looked across at the duty sergeant whose responsibility this had fallen to, but he shook his head.

‘Right, so what’s the plan on that score, then? Because right now he’s our only suspect for Stacey Green’s murder and a person of interest for Melanie Benson’s.’

The task force sergeant spoke up. ‘I have a full team on today, dedicated to tracking him down and arresting him.’

‘That will do for me, thank you. I’m splitting my team into two: I want Rachel, Scott and Ronnie working on the Green case. I need the rest of the CCTV footage from the nightclub and any businesses that weren’t open yesterday need to be visited to check their cameras. One of you needs to go to Stacey’s place of work and speak to her workmates, see if they knew who she was out with, et cetera. You know the drill – report back to me with anything at all. Is that okay? The rest of you, do the same for Melanie Benson.’

They all nodded. The door opened and in strolled Patrick Baker, who smiled at Lucy and headed towards the front of the room to stand next to her. It took all of her self-restraint to stop her eyes from rolling. Everyone in the room was watching him.

‘This is acting Detective Chief Inspector Patrick Baker. He is a temporary replacement for Tom until he’s better and back at work.’

Several hands were raised. ‘What’s up with the boss?’

‘He had a heart attack last night at the scene of the next crime I’m going to tell you about.’

There were lots of gasps and she gave them a moment as they whispered among themselves.

‘He’s in intensive care, hopefully a lot better now than he was last night. At least he’s in the right place. Rachel will start a collection – if anyone wants to contribute, the envelope will be in the CID office.’

Patrick stepped up to the lectern. ‘I know it’s a bit of a shock for you all, but I’m sure he’ll be fine. In the meantime we need to concentrate on the tasks in hand. I’m aware most of you don’t know me so I’ll give you a little bit of background information. I’ve just returned from a five-year secondment to the Met’s major crimes division, so hopefully I’ll be able to be of some use. I’m not an ogre; if you need anything or want to talk then my door is always open. Right, I’ll let you continue and I’ll leave you in DI Harwin’s capable hands.’

He smiled at Lucy, then walked back out, and she didn’t know whether to be happy or angry. Tom would have stayed and helped her out, although she supposed there was nothing that Patrick could add at the moment because he’d still be catching up. There was a lot to take in; so much had happened in such a short space of time. She realised that everyone was staring at her, waiting for her to speak.

‘Right, so there you go. He’s Tom’s temporary replacement. Anyway, Rachel, Scott and Ronnie, you can go and get cracking. No point confusing you with the next part.’

The three detectives stood up and made their way out of the room. She waited for Scott to close the door, then continued.

‘For those of you who aren’t aware, there was a triple murder the night before last.’

She picked up the enlarged photos of the Martin family and passed them around. The room had gone deathly quiet, though there were several sharp intakes of breath as the pictures were passed to each officer.

‘The post-mortems are scheduled for this morning, although I think they will go on until this afternoon because of the number. Col, I know you’ve been busy working on Stacey Green’s background checks, but can you also make a start on the Martins’? Focus on Craig because Michelle was a stay-at-home mum and he was the main breadwinner.’

Col nodded. ‘Yes, boss.’

‘I want to know who they are, where they socialised, how much money they had in the bank and what they liked to spend it on. Did they have any enemies? What sort of business was Craig in? We need to figure out why a seemingly normal family were slaughtered in their own home, in cold blood. I want officers and PCSOs on house-to-house enquiries. They lived on a street with only three residences and one house is empty; the family have been abroad for months. The other house belongs to the DCI. So what I’m going to do is print out a map of the surrounding area and work out their most obvious routes home from the boy’s school, the father’s place of work, et cetera, and then I want CCTV enquiries and door-knocking done to see if anyone knew or had seen the family in the last couple of days. Is that okay with you all?’

Every head in the room nodded in agreement with her and she smiled. ‘Thank you. Now let’s get cracking.’