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It had been pandemonium in the office all morning, and after 1 p.m. Shearer finally decamped to an interview room, along with Gareth Murray, to give Robyn a chance to make headway on her cases.

She’d never experienced such disorganisation and so many distractions. Everybody was under duress, not helped by DCI Flint, who’d been in three times asking for updates on all the cases. Tom Shearer looked like she felt – baggy-eyed, hung-over with work and the demands being placed on him. She had no time to feel sorry for him. Following a television appeal for witnesses to the assault made on Henry Gregson, the phones had been ringing non-stop.

Moving about the office had been a tightly choreographed procedure with each of them side-stepping and shuffling to get to drawers, cupboards, files and the coffee machine, which had been refilled three times.

Forensics had dropped off Tessa Hall’s iPad, so Robyn had swapped the teams about. David was now searching through car registrations in the vicinity of Cannock Chase on the fourteenth of February, while Anna examined the device.

‘You okay with that, Anna?’ Robyn asked.

Anna, glued to the screen, was tapping it repeatedly. Suddenly she realised she was being spoken to, stopped to tidy a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Sure. Sorry. It’s a little unusual. Tessa appears to have deleted her browsing history and cookies.’

Robyn scrunched her nose. ‘You’ll be able to fish out any deleted history, won’t you?’

‘Of course. Leave it to me. I’m trying to get into her emails at the moment. Need a password.’

‘Try Schrödinger.’

‘I tried that first. It doesn’t work. I’ll crack it. Give me a few minutes.’ She lowered her face, her long, straight fingers flying over keys, fully concentrated on her task. The series of codes flying across the screen were a mystery to Robyn. She straightened her back and decided she needed to fit some training into her schedule. She’d been planning on doing the Ironman event in June and up until January had been in great shape for it. Since the arrival of the photograph, she’d dropped a few of her gym sessions and it was becoming obvious. She’d have to fit some training back in, even if it meant less sleep, or drop out of the event altogether.

Robyn had always looked after her body. A sugar-free diet and daily exercise kept her in physical and mental shape. She missed the regular rush of endorphins that came with her early-morning runs or cycle rides. She mentally chastised herself. She ought to have gone this morning.

‘Guv, you definitely want to see this,’ said Matt, waving Harry McKenzie’s pathology report on Tessa Hall.

‘Go on,’ she said.

‘Tessa died due to a blow to the head resulting in a fractured skull and a massive haemorrhage to the brain, as we suspected. But get this… she was expecting a baby. Harry reckons the foetus is about two months old.’

Robyn took a sharp breath. ‘Do we know who she was going out with?’

Matt winced. ‘No. None of her friends or work colleagues knew about any steady boyfriend. She didn’t tell a soul about the mysterious man.’

‘Did you speak to Juliet Fallows?’

‘I interviewed her,’ said Mitz. ‘She said the same as the others. Tessa hadn’t mentioned any new boyfriend.’

‘That can’t be right. The only reason I can think she’d keep a relationship quiet would be because she was seeing a married man. We must establish who that man might have been. Has nobody come forward? Surely if he cared about her, he’d have wanted to know who killed her?’

‘Unless he killed her because she was pregnant,’ said Anna.

Robyn rubbed her forehead in dismay. ‘As much as I hate that idea, it’s possible. That makes it even more imperative we identify him. I’m seeing Juliet Fallows about another matter in half an hour. I’ll see if she knows any more. Talk to her parents, relatives, anybody. We have to locate this man.’ She took a step backwards as another idea struck her. ‘Tessa had five hundred pounds in her purse, which I found odd. I’ve just had a rather unsavoury thought. Her boyfriend or somebody – maybe even his wife – might have given it to her towards an abortion.’

‘I’m in,’ said Anna. ‘Oh. She hasn’t got any emails. She’s deleted them all. That isn’t normal. There ought to be one or two hanging about in the trash at least. Who deletes every email?’

Robyn came across and looked over her shoulder. ‘Somebody who’s trying to hide something.’

‘An affair?’

Robyn wasn’t so sure. It seemed peculiar to delete all email history. ‘I don’t know. You’d delete them if you were hiding them from somebody, but she lived alone. Who’d see them? Is there no correspondence between her and her lover?’

‘Nothing. I can’t retrieve a thing. Someone with excellent computer skills has deleted them all, or told her how to.’

‘Maybe the killer deleted them.’ Mitz’s suggestion rang true for Robyn.

‘Is she on any social media sites?’

‘She was. She’s deleted her Facebook account.’

‘When?’

‘Two weeks ago. And she’s closed her Twitter and Instagram accounts,’ Anna said, as she pulled up the information on her own computer, which she was using in tandem with the iPad.

‘That’s really strange. She’s been described as bubbly, and yet she’d dropped out of all social media activity. That doesn’t make any sense. Keep checking, Anna.’

Robyn checked her watch. It was coming up for 4 p.m. and she had only an hour or two left to make headway before she clocked off. Tonight, Amélie was coming over, and she had to finish before six.

She dragged up Harry McKenzie’s post-mortem report on Henry Gregson and reminded herself of the details. Henry had been killed by a .455 cartridge that entered the left side of his neck and into his spine at C6/7. The tissue and organ damage corroborated Connor’s findings. She thought once more about Henry’s sister, Libby, and her boyfriend, Tarik. Even though she’d been trying to establish a connection between Henry, Lauren and Tessa, she hadn’t completely ruled out Tarik, who had history with Henry and knew his sister well. Had he or Libby also known Tessa? She made a note to talk to them both again, and stuck it on her desk to remind her. She was about to leave when Anna sidled up to her.

‘You might be right about the money in Tessa’s purse. I just checked out the cost of a private abortion and it’s about £500.’

Robyn winced at the news. ‘Thanks, Anna. It gives us another avenue to pursue.’ As she darted from the office to rendezvous with Juliet Fallows, she wondered if there could possibly be a link between the secretive, pregnant young nurse who knew Henry Gregson, and his wife, who desperately wanted a child.