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‘Well, shit,’ I remarked. I had never even thought to search Fran up in the database in the years I’d had access as a police officer.

It had crossed my mind a few times, sure, but part of me felt like doing that would not only be using my police privileges unethically, but also admitting to myself that I didn’t trust Fran to tell me everything.

At what point do you stop taking people at their word?

Fran was a social worker who had never been in trouble with the police, a law-abiding citizen as long as I had known her.

But then again, weren’t you supposed to tell your partner everything?

Why hadn’t she told me was involved with a police investigation before?

‘You read it, right? Her file,’ I asked Cis.

‘Well, of course I did.’

‘Anything in there that directly implicates her in this?’

‘No,’ Cis said, somewhat gently. ‘If there was, she’d be in a cell already.’ She realised the bluntness of her words. ‘Sorry.’

Now I knew she didn’t mean that apology, but I decided that I could call her out on being a bad friend when I’d finally found the sick murderer that had killed old man O’Neill.

‘I didn’t know that she grew up in a children’s home, though, St Nicholas’s?’

‘Fran doesn’t like to talk about it much, I don’t think it was easy for her,’ I replied with the same brusqueness that Fran would speak with when talking about her childhood.

There was a short, uneasy silence between us.

‘Look, take that, and considering you’re meant to be off the case,’ Cis said, cutting through the silence, ‘I’ll give you access to my email – off the record, of course, or you’ll cost me my whole career,’ Cis hurriedly added, her words picking up pace towards the end of the sentence as though she wanted to minimise the time they hung in the air.

‘Look through the file and then look at what forensics sent me and what Vivian forwarded on to me. See if anything clicks. I need you, Gareth, to help me put all this together.’

She quickly scribbled down the details on a piece of paper and passed it to me as I casually slipped it into my pocket.

Not very cyber-security friendly of Cis to give me her email password, but there might be something within those emails capable of completely exonerating Fran – something Cis had overlooked and she wanted me to be the one to find it for her.

That’s likely why Cis and I were such a good team during training; she excelled with talking to people, and I excelled at information, seeing how it all fitted together.

‘Let me make this clear again, Cis, I’m doing this to find out who killed O’Neill and to get Fran out of your crosshairs, do you understand? I’m not doing this to help you put her away.’

‘Yes, Gareth, I get it,’ Cis responded, like a child tired of her mum’s nagging. ‘Just… be careful with my email, don’t send Vivian a picture of your balls or anything.’

‘And is there anything else that I don’t know?’ I asked, ignoring her comment.

Cis took in a big inhale and crossed her arms.

‘Tesco Express are smaller shops for office workers, whereas Tesco Metro is more for the everyday consumer.’

I stayed for another hour at the station, my bright red highlighter like a knife as I circled every small breakthrough that confirmed my theory.

Inflated invoices, extortionate supply costs, donated money from corporates that had gone missing, fake salaries, bogus consulting fees, it all clicked.

After a while, I ran like a man possessed to my desk and logged into my account to access the database.

I typed ‘Thomas Macleod’ into the search bar, the man Fran had been investigated for murdering some seven or so years ago.

I read the digital version of the file. He had died in suspicious circumstances when Fran and I had been in our early days of being together at university.

I sifted through the reports on the internal system, but nothing jumped out as directly relevant or enlightening to our current situation.

My search led me to Macleod’s obituary on a local news website, which featured a cheerful photo of him on a fishing trip with his son.

And there, prominently displayed on one of his hands, was a bronze ring.

Lower down, there was another photo, this one a decade or so later.

Sure enough, there was it again, the ring still lodged tight on his finger.

I grabbed my phone and opened the message app.

The data and records of messages had been stored for years across various devices, despite having had two different phones since then.

Fran and I had hundreds of thousands of messages that went back to the start of our relationship, so I wouldn’t be able to keep swiping.

I searched online how to go back to a specific date, and then, using my computer, found what she had been doing on 3 September, seven years ago.

When I asked her when she was next free, she told me over text that she was away that weekend on a girls’ trip. If only I had known what she was really up to. I hadn’t questioned her honesty for even a moment. From the early days of our relationship, I had always trusted her implicitly.

I glanced through the records of the previous detective.

Fran had been a tenuous suspect, but a suspect, nevertheless.

She had been visiting the village by herself on what she called a peaceful getaway, when a woman of her description was spotted on a chicken shop security camera walking back from the direction of Macleod’s house in the early hours of the morning.

The police had questioned her but found nothing incriminating or suspicious.

Macleod’s death was, perhaps, ghastlier than O’Neill’s.

Forensics and post-mortem had found that he had been assaulted in the doorway, and his throat cut from the front whilst he had been struggling to get on his feet.

Apparently, the whole thing stank of amateur hour, since the cut lines were all over his neck.

The use of a knife matched up with Mr O’Neill – but knives and blades were the number one weapon for murder in the UK. That wasn’t enough to link Fran.

I read over her questioning report. Apparently, Fran had sobbed so much throughout the interrogation that they had taken a brief pause to console her, ultimately refusing to let her back in to finish the interview despite her demands to be treated like any other suspect.

The interviewing officer had said that he thought there was no way in hell a young woman would have been capable of a murder as gruesome as that.

Yeah, you and me both, mate. Even at the time, she had been vague about what they had actually done on their girls’ trip.

I read further down the report, searching for any kind of link between O’Neill and this Macleod guy.

There was nothing obvious until I popped his name into the archives.

Then his name appeared thousands of times, but not as any kind of perpetuator.

He had been an employee at the Met once, but he had been promoted since then.

Thomas Macleod, Director of the Serious Fraud Office.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.