‘Hello, Jacki,’ he said. ‘Thanks for meeting me.’

‘No problem.’ I wondered if he guessed that I’d thought twice about coming. I suppose it didn’t matter; I was here now.

‘I ordered you a hot chocolate,’ he said. ‘Hope that’s OK?’

‘Yeah… sure,’ I said, a little taken aback. How did he know about my current hot-chocolate addiction? Did he know everything about me? I decided it was probably just a lucky guess.

‘The team and I are delighted you’ve agreed to come on board,’ he said, shaking a packet of sugar into his paper cup. I looked at the stuff laid out in front of him on the table – a laptop, a sheet of paper and a blue folder, so full it looked like it was going to burst open.

‘I’m happy to help,’ I said. Although, come to think of it, I wasn’t sure what he was expecting of me. ‘Um, Sergeant Lawlor… what exactly will I be doing?’ I asked.

‘Call me Matt,’ he said kind of awkwardly. ‘Well, like I said on the phone, we’ll take it one case at a time. I really want to get working on this one. Let’s see what happens after that.’

I shifted in my seat. I was feeling a little unsure of myself – I hadn’t done this professionally before.

He hadn’t seemed to notice my discomfort, and continued. ‘The first one I’d like you to work on is the Kayla Edwards case. You know the photographs I gave you? She’s the girl with the -’

‘Red hair?’

‘… Yes.’

‘I dreamed about her last night,’ I explained.

He nodded, acting casual, but I could see the mix of astonishment and fear on his face – the mixture I seemed to evoke in people whenever I talked about this kind of stuff. He hid it especially well though.

‘We should get started on this case straight away,’ he said. ‘If that’s OK with you?’

‘Yeah, sure. Deadly.’

Deadly? That probably wasn’t the kind of word I should use when discussing a murder case. Well, technically it was a missing-person case, although I was pretty sure Kayla was dead. My dream certainly suggested that she was. I took a deep breath and tried not to feel anxious talking to Matt Lawlor. You’re helping him, remember? He had this authoritative air about him – it made me trust him, but also made me a little nervous at the same time. It was going to feel strange calling him by his first name.