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Cross was unlocking his bike in the shelter outside the Major Crime Unit in Bristol when he heard a noise behind him. He turned, expecting to see maybe a stray cat or dog, but instead found a woman crouching in the corner of the racks, eating a sandwich. He’d seen this woman before. She had been sitting in the reception of the MCU for the past three days. On one occasion he’d seen her talking to the desk sergeant. She had seemed quite calm, gently spoken, as if whatever it was she was there for was being dealt with. She was well dressed in a middle-class, fairly affluent way. She didn’t seem to be creating a fuss or making a nuisance of herself.

After three days of walking past her Cross had determined to talk to her and find out what the issue was. But she wasn’t in reception as he left that day, so he assumed that it had been dealt with. Her presence in the bike shelter obviously contradicted this. She had left the building, yes, but she hadn’t left, per se. His previous curiosity was now doubled by her apparent dogged determination not to leave. She was bedraggled, her hair and clothes wet from the incessant rain they’d had that afternoon. ‘Wet rain’ was how his work partner DS Josie Ottey had once described it. When he’d asked her whether rain was not, by its very nature, always wet, she explained that she meant the kind of rain that fell in large voluminous drops. Drops so large they were almost impossible to avoid, as if there was a giant leaky tap in the sky.