The Yale lock on Mike’s trailer, and the wood on the door surrounding it, were both scratched from where the warden repeatedly missed the keyhole. Laura was pulling her hair out as he missed the lock with the key, time and time again. Once the door was open, he backed off, perched on the edge of a stack of tires and waited.

Across London, Anik was feigning composure as he instructed a uniformed PC on how the search of Mike’s flat was going to go and what they were looking for. Ridley had gone back to the station, leaving Anik with this weighty responsibility. He waved the search warrant round ostentatiously and was a little bit disappointed that he had no one to actually serve it to.

Mike’s flat was a typical, grubby-looking bachelor pad in dire need of a very deep clean. The carpet was worn thin in a T-shaped pattern, showing that Mike walked most frequently from the kitchen, to his favorite armchair, to his bureau. The bureau was stuffed full of paperwork in no kind of order—bills, bank statements, ownership documents for a Range Rover and some payslips for Barry. This bureau gave Anik two vitally important pieces of information—Barry’s mobile phone number, and the only vehicle registered in his name.

Mike’s expendable cash each month amounted to nothing more than pocket money which, judging by the four empty whisky bottles down the side of his armchair, was mainly spent on booze. There was a block of several years when Mike’s bank transactions occurred in Spain rather than in the UK, so that was presumably where he was living.

The uniformed PC entered the lounge, holding an evidence bag containing an obviously well-used toothbrush with splayed bristles. Anik nodded his approval at the toothbrush being an appropriate DNA source.

“Can you also bag all of this paperwork, please?” Anik requested, waving his arm vaguely over the bureau before heading toward the kitchen.

As he left the lounge, he grinned to himself. He thought he sounded just like Ridley—authoritative, commanding, intelligent. Ridley was exactly the kind of copper Anik aspired to be. He wanted nothing more than to be able to dish out an order and then walk away from his subordinates, knowing that they’d do as he asked out of total respect . . . so it was a good job he didn’t turn around or he would have seen the PC, who was twice Anik’s age, making a “wanker” motion with his hand.

Anik knew Mike’s kitchen would probably be grubby, seeing as they were now nine days into the investigation, but the food in the fridge was way older than that. He gagged as he opened the fridge door and the smell of the cheesy milk hit his nostrils. In addition to the milk, there was a heavily sprouting red onion, half a bottle of white wine, several bottles of beer and a leaking breast of chicken in an open food bag.

The sink was piled high with dirty mugs, each patterned on the inside with several brown rings of varying shades, dating back weeks. Mike definitely wasn’t a man who could survive for long living alone. He needed to be looked after.