‘I didn’t leave, I was fired.’ Robin looked Thomas in the eye. ‘Misconduct. It was in the papers – Jamie Hinton.’

Thomas nodded and Robin saw that of course she’d known all about it; she’d just wanted to hear her say it. How she’d say it.

‘Tell us about that.’

Robin looked at her. She’d probably read the whole thing on her phone while Patel drove them over here. ‘We – my team – were investigating the murder of a guy called Jay Farrell. Officially, he was a property developer – thirty-three, good-looking, big house in Hammersmith a couple of streets back from the river – but as we discovered, he also had a couple of sidelines, significantly, running illegal parties. Raves. It started with a house he was converting to flats, before the building work, but it was such a success, he started hiring places – barns, a big empty house out in Hertfordshire. Word went out on Facebook and hundreds of people turned up, the Nineties all over again. He charged them entry and sold them drugs – which he’d bought from Jamie Hinton.’

‘Okay.’

‘Hinton’s a career crim – previous for GBH and acquiring criminal property, known gangland ties. A friend of a friend introduced them but they’d become mates themselves. They were very similar – both all about the lifestyle, the clothes, the cars, the girls. When we got Farrell’s phone, there were selfies of them out together at clubs.

‘But then – word is, at least – Hinton was robbed. A big stash of coke and E taken from a house in Richmond – a house Farrell knew about because he’d been there. His body was found in a park on the Thames towpath, tortured in various ways – cigarette burns, lacerations.’

Thomas raised her eyebrows, waiting for the crowd-pleaser.

‘Hands cut off.’

‘He was being punished for stealing?’ Patel.

Top marks. ‘Or so whoever it was wants us to believe. My guv’nor, Detective Superintendent Freshwater,’ she couldn’t quite mask her scorn, ‘wanted me to charge Hinton, but I wouldn’t because I didn’t think he’d done it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Several reasons. They were mates, like I said. They had a good thing going – they were both doing very nicely out of the parties so why kill the golden goose? Also, Hinton’s intelligent. If he had been stolen from, he’s far too clever to advertise either that – Excuse me, officer, someone’s nicked my drugs! – or the fact that he’d murdered the perpetrator. It was a set-up.’

‘But you didn’t have any evidence of that?’ said Thomas.

‘Not as things stood. So I let him go and he promptly went AWOL.’