There was a wooden box at the bottom of the bed. Winters lifted the lid and saw heavy dumbbells of different sizes, imagined what it would be like to get into a fight with a fastidious bodybuilder.

He stepped across the corridor to the kitchen and saw a picture of a cow, labelled to identify each cut of meat on its body. Winters was drawn to the drawers of a sparklingly clean but old-fashioned unit. He opened the drawers at once and saw cutlery lined up in neat sections in one of them and, in the other, a range of professional carving knives that went from an extremely small blade through a rising range of lethal sharps and ending with a plastic-handled cleaver.

Winters pictured the images he’d seen of Annie Boyd and Amanda Winton, post-mortem, their faces and heads flayed, and he shivered at the gleaming metal in the drawer, wondering if these sharp objects had been used to skin them.

A voice came from the living room. ‘DC Winters, can you come in here, please?’

The armed officer stood in front of a tall bookshelf full of DVDs. Winters read the titles on the spines, took one from the shelf and looked at the writhing bodies on the cover. He turned it over to read the blurb and slipped it back on the shelf.

Apart from the bookcase, the room was dominated by three objects. A widescreen television that looked like it had cost at least four figures, a DVD player and a solitary armchair facing it.

Winters let out a heavy sigh and looked up and down the shelves at the titles of the DVDs in Edgar McKee’s living room.

‘He’s got quite a collection of hard-core pornography here,’ said Winters, feeling the urge to run the hand that had touched the DVD under boiling hot water.

He looked around the bare walls.

‘He’s got a state-of-the-art Technogym running machine in the bathroom,’ said the second officer. ‘What do you want us to do, DS Winters?’

‘Ask the guys on the floors beneath us to find out all they can about McKee from the neighbours. Then wait here for Scientific Support to arrive. They’ll pull this place apart.’

85

8.38 pm

Walking back to her car, Detective Chief Inspector Eve Clay took out her iPhone and called Stone.

‘Eve, I can see you heading back to your car. He didn’t show!’

‘Are you surprised?’

‘No.’

‘This is a quick one. I want to keep my line clear. I need everyone on their toes. They’re looking out for me but they’re also looking for any lone males in the vicinity. I want those lone males followed and confronted.’

She disconnected the call and remembered the automated message she’d listened to when she called Geoff Campbell’s mobile phone and his answer machine kicked in.