DCI Varma sits at her desk eating a sandwich and reflecting on how little progress she has made on Holly Lewis's murder. The forensic investigation has produced nothing useful: Holly's phone is still missing, her personal emails are too heavily encrypted to read, and a partial fingerprint recovered from the bomb fragment proved to be Holly's own. That result suggests Holly handled the device before she died and may even have triggered the explosion herself.

Varma also reviews the business trail. Companies House records show that Holly and Nicholas James Silver jointly run some kind of storage facility, but after a week of inquiries the police still have not located it. Nick remains an obvious suspect, yet he is proving impossible to find, and Varma knows she is not pushing that lead as hard as she could.

The one development that seems genuinely promising came from De Freitas's tip about the missing Bitcoin fortune. After Varma emailed the Financial Intelligence Unit, she learned that Lord Townes had been publicly talking about a huge Bitcoin deal, which was unusual enough to attract attention. Because Lord Townes is local, Varma sees him as a possible link between the money and the murder investigation.

Even so, the lead has not been pursued aggressively. Two uniformed officers already called at Lord Townes's address and found he was not home, and they plan to try again the next day. Varma recognizes that she could be doing more herself, but her commitment to the case is fading.

As she thinks about retiring to focus on pottery, Varma looks up kilns online and admits to herself that she may not solve her final case. She considers going back to Coopers Chase with Lord Townes's photograph to ask whether anyone saw him on the night of the murder, but before she acts she is distracted by a second-hand kiln for sale in Horsham. The chapter ends with the investigation still stalled and official momentum slipping away.