Lenihan was standing, arms folded, his back to the only window. Apart from a laptop on the table beside him, and three chairs, there was nothing in the room. No files. No notebooks. I tried to work out what was going on, but Lenihan’s expression gave nothing away. Grey in the face, there was a nervous caffeinated energy about him. He had been working all the hours. But to what end?

‘I was busy over the last few days. I didn’t have time to, em, take calls or anything.’

It was the closest I was going to get to an apology from him.

‘So did you follow up on the tips I gave you? I deserve to know,’ I said.

‘Why the fuck do you think you’re here? If you stay quiet for two minutes, I’ll tell you. The house first. We looked into it. So, yeah, Gill owns it, you were right about that. We got a warrant to search the two houses. Next door is vacant mostly, used only rarely by him as a guest house for when he has visitors in town, apparently. Also, it has a separate basement flat. And the interesting thing is that there’s a connecting door between Gill’s kitchen and the basement next door …’

‘So Gill had rear access to the garden next door.’

‘The connecting door was hidden by a dresser that was pulled in front of it when we called there the first time,’ Lenihan said. ‘We did a full-scale search the second time. Once we found the connecting door, we started looking closer at the place next door. Turns out there’s a garage at the end of the garden that opens on to the public road.’

‘Which is where Esther keeps her car,’ I said.

‘Well that’s what we were hoping, but the garage was empty so …’

‘Does she have a car? Did you prove that? If she does, it’s hidden somewhere.’

‘Not so fast. We found that Gill’s company Gill/Direct owns a Mini Cooper and, when we did another insurance search, we learnt that Esther is insured to drive it.’

‘We need to find that car,’ I said. ‘It has to be the car he used. He drove the Mini to Rhona’s house the morning of the murder and then dumped it somewhere, and got back into his house via the basement next door, and got an alibi from the mother. Now that you know the car, surely you can find it on traffic cameras and CCTV. There must be footage of him driving it when he’s supposed to be at home with his mother.’

‘That’s what we thought too. Turns out we were wrong. Your pal Jeremy Gill didn’t drive anywhere that morning …’

‘What are you saying?’

Lenihan grabbed a chair, sat at the table, and opened his laptop. Sadie and I pulled up the other two chairs either side of him.