Jack looked at the post office up ahead. Maybe he’d be lucky.

“Public transport’s a bit of a pain, sir, but I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Ridley handed Laura back her mobile.

“That boy thinks I was born yesterday,” he mumbled. Then louder, “Right, you lot! Let’s face front for a minute, please.” Ridley’s team turned toward him. He picked up a whiteboard marker and wrote underneath the photo of Connie Stephens, THE GRANGE B&B, TAUNTON.

“Missing Persons is an arduous task, so thank you all for your hard work so far. Our murder victim is in there somewhere, he has to be, so keep at it. Laura, what do we know about the kids’ home Dolly Rawlins was planning?”

“It’s legit, sir. There’s a paper trail of loan applications, building inspections and quotes, legal documents from social services, and a background check on Dolly Rawlins. The prison warder at Holloway gave her a glowing report, saying she was a model prisoner who helped guide the young mums. Rawlins frequently talked about opening a kids’ home when she was inside. Half her wing wanted her to take their kids on till they got out.”

“Right, so it seems The Grange women weren’t in Aylesbury under false pretenses. Anik?”

“‘Sheila’ isn’t Danny Green. As of last night, Danny’s in lock-up downstairs for flashing at a girls’ hockey team. So the word ‘pervert’ painted on the wall probably does relate to him and not ‘Sheila.’”

“And Jack’s on about the Fisher brothers. Why?” Ridley turned to Laura.

“Because they’re part of Dolly Rawlins’s past. Arnie’s dead and Tony’s inside. I think the connection is more to do with Harry Rawlins than Dolly. The men all shared the same patch back in the eighties, so ran in the same circles. Harry Rawlins was the one behind the Strand underpass robbery in ’84. I think Jack’s looking at how involved Dolly might have been.”

“Well, if Jack was here, we could ask him, couldn’t we?”

Laura didn’t like being spoken to as though she was in cahoots with Jack, although it was true.

“Right,” Ridley continued, “the priority is still to identify our murder victim so, tomorrow, it’s straight back on to Missing Persons, please, for all of you. We’re running his DNA against the Misper database, aren’t we?” There was a sea of nodding heads. “Good.”

Ridley went into his office and closed the door.

Ridley’s door was always open until that time of day when he wanted no more conversations, no more questions and no more work to cross his desk. It was the moment his team knew they could wind down, finish what they were doing and slowly filter out over the next hour or so. Ridley would be last to leave. He always was.

It was nine o’clock by the time Jack got home and Maggie was curled up on the sofa with a glass of red wine from their very own bargain box.

“How did it go?” she asked.