I swallow the last of my coffee and make a point of picking up my jacket. I address myself generally to the CID office. "I'm off to the autopsy on this Burtonheath body. You've got my number if anything comes up."

There's a general murmur of muted acknowledgement, but I still am not entirely satisfied that the room recognises my authority. On the other hand, in the temporary sickness absence of Carford's other DS, I'm all they've got until the DI gets back from his week in Marbella. I hope the office get used to it before I do. The words of the senior officer who assigned me here, under slightly irregular circumstances, come back to me: 'God knows, they could do with a capable DS for a change.' I hope I can justify his confidence in me.

Something which had obviously been at the back of my mind since I'd gazed on the body in situ that morning – but had bided its time while I was busy setting up the incident team – pops into my head as a parting thought. "Can we get someone to take a look at the books in the guy's study?" The thought blossoms in my mind. "Who's on site just now?"

DC Kirk checks the shift rota and does a swift calculation. "Think it's Carrie out there at the moment, Sarge."

"Good. Thanks, Carl." Carl Kirk is dependable but boring: reliable, methodical, with a useful ability to wade through piles of mundane evidence but no imagination. Carrie Rowbotham is a newly made-up DC: a disarmingly small, fresh-faced woman with a clever, and surprisingly suspicious, mind. Given my new thought, Rowbotham is who I'd want on the job. "Carl, can you ask Carrie to have a good look at the books? There may be a catalogue of them somewhere in his desk anyway, given his generation. Sort of guy to keep a record, I'm hoping. If not, ask her to make a brief list of the contents." I pause a moment, remembering the set-up in the victim's study. "Might be a long job, if she can't turn up anything pre-made – get her to pull in a uniform to help."

"Sarge." Carl rings Carrie as I'm gathering my bag. His face splits into a grin a moment later, and he turns back to me. "She's already on it, Sarge. Says there's maybe a pattern, but she'll let you know."

"Great. I'll be interested to see what she turns up." I smile around the room as a whole; it's good to acknowledge everyone in the early-days grunt work on a thing like this – even if there's some quirks in the victim's life, someone still has to manage the door-to-door and routine background checks. It can feel like unglamorous work. "Thanks, guys. Sooner we know as much as we can about this guy, the better. It'll give us something to work with once the SOCO boys pull their fingers out."

There's a muted murmur of assent around the room. I don't like knocking other departments – they have their jobs to do, and we ours – but sometimes a bit of internal team self-preening can be a useful short-term morale-boost. I need the office to think I'm indisputably one of them more urgently than anything else, at the moment.

I pull on my jacket and head out.