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ground.’
    â€˜She doesn’t even know I’m here,’ Anna said. ‘She came to me because she doesn’t want the police involved.’
    Thorne was taken aback. ‘OK, so how are you going to explain this conversation to your client?’ He could not suppress a smile and felt more than a little guilty as he watched her start to fidget and redden again.
    â€˜I’ll just be honest and tell her that I was getting nowhere,’ Anna said. ‘That I couldn’t think what else to do. I’ll tell her I’ve spent a fortnight staring at that sodding photo and that I’m none the wiser.’
    â€˜Why did you come to see me?’ Thorne asked.
    â€˜I thought you might be able to get a bit more information from the photograph.’ She looked at Thorne, but got no response. ‘Don’t you have ways of . . . enhancing pictures, or whatever? I mean, there must be some way to tell where this picture was taken. I don’t know, geographical profiling, a computer programme or something ?’
    â€˜This isn’t CSI ,’ Thorne said. ‘We haven’t even got a photocopier that works properly.’
    â€˜I also thought you might be interested .’ Anna was leaning towards him suddenly. ‘Stupid of me, I can see that, but it seemed like a decent idea at the time. It was your case, so I hoped that if you saw the photo you might at least think that maybe it wasn’t . . . finished.’ She stared at Thorne for a few seconds longer, then sat back and reached for a strand of hair to pull at.
    â€˜It’s a waste of time,’ Thorne said. ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve got more important things to worry about. Actually, I can’t think of anything that isn’t more important than this.’ He pushed back his chair and, after a moment or two, Anna got the message and did the same.
    â€˜I’ll get out of your way, then,’ she said.
    She took a step towards the door.
    Thorne thought she looked about fourteen. ‘Look . . . I’ll run it past my boss, all right?’ He saw her expression change and raised a hand. ‘He’ll only say the same as me, though, so don’t hold your breath.’ He picked up the photograph again, nodded down at it. ‘Could do with a bit of that myself,’ he said. ‘Sun and sand.’
    â€˜Tom?’
    Thorne looked up to see DI Yvonne Kitson standing in the doorway. They shared the office and most of the time Thorne was happy enough with the arrangement. He certainly liked her a lot more than he had back when she was a high-flier, and suspected that she felt the same way about herself. Like Thorne, she could still put noses out of joint without much effort, but it was hard not to admire the way she had rebuilt a career that had plunged so calamitously off the tracks after an extra-marital affair with a senior officer.
    â€˜Like a self-assembly wardrobe,’ she had once said to Thorne. ‘One loose screw and the whole thing fell to pieces.’
    Now, she had one eye on Thorne’s visitor. He gestured towards Anna, the photograph flapping between his fingers, and introduced her.
    Kitson nodded a cursory greeting and turned back to Thorne. ‘I just thought you’d like to know that the jury’s gone out.’
    â€˜Right.’ Thorne stood and moved around the desk.
    Anna was doing up the buttons on her jacket. ‘The case you were in court for?’
    Thorne nodded, thinking about the wink he’d given Adam Chambers. ‘One that isn’t quite so . . . piss-easy,’ he said.
    Â 
    DCI Russell Brigstocke’s office was twenty feet along the corridor from the one Thorne shared with Yvonne Kitson. When Thorne walked in, Brigstocke was on the phone, so Thorne dropped into a chair and waited. He thought about an eighteen-year-old girl whose bones still lay waiting for an inquisitive dog and about a man who had died screaming, handcuffed to the