Updates popped up on HOLMES. The USB stick found in George Murphy’s car had been examined, and she opened the report. The stick had contained three files. One was a bank statement relating to a private account in the name of George Murphy, held at a Lloyds branch along Wanstead High Street. The only transactions were payments into the account, and transfers presumably made by George to another account they knew to be his primary account. But it was the payments that caught Kelly’s eye. Over ten years, more than one million pounds had come into the account, and every payment was made by the late Lord Allerdale. They’d stopped in January, a month after his death.

She sent a message to Matt asking if they knew where Montague-Roland was. There were several things that needed clearing up, not least the fact that people had been spotted on his property while George was there, and now they also needed to know if he was aware of funding from his grandfather to George. Remembering the last time she’d spoken to him, Kelly guessed he wouldn’t be happy about it, but with the dispute over the will, perhaps he knew already but had chosen not to tell them.

The second file contained scientific data that might as well be written in Icelandic. Kelly didn’t have a clue what it all meant, but she knew that Matt would be finding someone who did as she sat there in the car, still stuck in traffic. There were equations, sums, diagrams and names she’d never heard of, though she did spot a phrase she’d heard before: ‘reward pathways’.

The third file contained the autopsy report on George Murphy’s daughter. Kelly read it carefully, and by the time she’d finished, tears were rolling down her face. She thought of all the autopsies she’d studied, and how George’s daughter might have looked when she’d been cut open and examined. The girl was only fifteen years old, and the report said that she’d been revived successfully after an overdose of heroin, only to suffer a huge myocardial infarction.