I couldn’t believe it. I could have wept at Nick’s stupidity, at his greed. For the first time I felt he deserved what had happened to him. But when it came to money, Nick just couldn’t help himself. ‘The old fool!’ I cried bitterly.

‘Quite!’ the inspector agreed. ‘Unfortunately for Vlad, his boss decides to send him back to Russia on some dirty work, so he has to wait his time.’

‘And then he came back and murdered Nick,’ I completed for him.

The inspector gave one of his long, thoughtful pauses. ‘Well, now that is the really interesting thing, Miss Browne. Vlad claims that when he and Pietrov returned to England, several weeks later, and came down to Ashburton, Mr Nickolai was already dead and his property was a crime scene.’

‘But that can’t be true,’ I protested.

‘They decided this was not a good place for them to hang around and they … er … persuaded Mr Evans that it was in his best interest to break in to Nick’s and steal the icon for them.’

‘But he didn’t.’

‘No, he didn’t, and that’s how he ended up floating among the fishes.’

I chewed this over for a few moments. ‘But we know that Vlad killed Nick.’

‘There’s no forensic evidence connecting him to the murder scene.’

‘But his prints are on the icon,’ I insisted.

‘So are yours.’

‘Meaning what?’ I asked.

‘Meaning that, like you, he once handled the icon. So what? It’s circumstantial. It doesn’t put him in Nick’s living room on the night of the murder.’

‘Shit,’ I muttered angrily.

‘My sentiments exactly, Miss Browne.’

When I thought about it later, what the inspector had said made perfect sense. If Vlad and Igor had murdered Nick, why wouldn’t they have searched for the icon at the time, torn the place apart, as they had Albert Evans’s place? The police had also been able to confirm that Vlad and Igor had flown back from Russia on the date he said they had, after Nick was murdered.

So that was that. For so long I had nurtured my conviction that Vlad was Nick’s murderer, that now I was at a loss. I didn’t know what to think. Richard and Helena were the only other suspects and they both had alibis. I felt a terrible sense of anti-climax. And my mood wasn’t improved by the fact that I had attracted the attention of the local press. A spotty youth from the Dartmoor Gazette had been round to the house to interview me about my exploits in Paul’s workshop. I made it to the front page of the next edition: LOCAL HEROINE CATCHES KILLER. It was so bloody embarrassing. I’d caught a killer all right. He just turned out to be the wrong killer.