He looked across at Carol, who had not moved. ‘It passed,’ he said, moving past Scott to sit down opposite Carol. ‘I don’t know how long we’ve got here, but there are a few things I need to say. I think he’s local. Given that men tend to go for women younger than them and he chose Bev as a possible surrogate, I’d say he’s at least thirty-five. One thing that bothered me was that the women don’t seem to have tried to escape or draw attention to themselves after he loads them in the car. I’d have thought if there had been any reports of pedestrians hearing someone kicking or shouting in the boot of a car Paula would have said something about it. So I wondered if what he’s got in that metal case is a portable anaesthetic kit. Like paramedics carry. That would explain both why he’s carrying the case and the women’s apparent passivity. It’s because they’re unconscious. So maybe it’s worth checking if any of the local hospitals have lost one?’

‘Given the professions of the victims, he might even be a paramedic,’ Carol said.

Tony ran a hand through his hair. ‘I don’t think so. I’d put him in a white-collar job. But you could be right,’ he added hastily.

Trying to suck up. Pathetic. Carol made a note. One for Paula to suggest to Fielding, maybe. To make it look like she was on her boss’s side. She looked across at Scott. ‘Could I have a sheet of paper?’ Scott tore a blank page out of her legal pad. ‘I need you to write me a letter of authority to Bradfield Moor, asking them to give me access to any entries in the incident log involving you. We’ve got the dates when Nadia Wilkowa had appointments there and if we can match them up, we can undermine Fielding’s case.’

Even before she’d finished speaking, he was writing. ‘If we can do that, they’ll have to let me go, right?’

‘Not necessarily,’ Scott said. ‘Especially since somebody’s bound to leak to the internet or the local media that they’ve arrested someone as high profile as you.’

‘High profile? Me?’

‘In crime terms, you’re the bee’s knees. A profiler gone rogue? It doesn’t get any better than that.’

He looked shaken. ‘They’re going to put me all over the papers, right? Like that poor bloke in Bristol who got demonised for nothing more than having a weird hairstyle.’