As they walked in the entrance to the Major Crime suite Grace shook his head. ‘Nah, don’t want to take sweeties off a child.’

‘Yeah yeah!’

‘Have a good weekend.’ Grace bounded up the stairs, followed by Branson.

‘You know what you are?’ Branson called out. ‘You’re a born pessimist!’

Grace paused in the corridor at the top of the stairs. ‘Know the definition of a pessimist?’

Branson shook his head.

‘It’s an optimist with experience.’

Grace entered his office, logged on to his computer and stared at the screen, quickly glancing through his emails, then the day’s serials of all crimes logged, in case there was anything of significance. There wasn’t. He entered the password-protected evidence file on Operation Canoe, the investigation into the murder of Stuie Starr, and began viewing the video taken of the exterior and interior of the Starrs’ house by the CSI. He’d viewed it all before but now wanted to look at it again, to see if he could have missed anything.

First, he studied the exterior, looking at all doors and windows on both floors, as the camera tracked 360 degrees. Next was a slow panoramic sweep showing the busy main road in front of the house and the garage opposite. Cars and other vehicles streamed by. From the pathologist’s estimate and other factors, it appeared Stuie had been killed in the daytime. Someone must have seen something. Maybe a passing car – or even a cyclist – had caught something on a dash or helmet camera? But it would be a near-impossible task to find every car that had passed during the window of time in which Stuie’s killers might have been entering or leaving the house, and it would require immense resources and manpower. He made a note in his Policy Book, all the same, not wanting to rule this out. If someone had seen them, they might remember them. No matter how hard-nosed any killer was, in the immediate aftermath of having committed their crime all villains, in his experience, would be in an agitated state as they left the scene – the red mist, police called it.

But despite a public appeal by the local press and media, and his own plea for members of the public to come forward at the press conference he had given two weeks ago, so far there was nothing – and traffic coming down this road could have come from four different directions.

Next he looked at the video footage of the interior of the house. Gartrell had made a careful video record of the downstairs of the house, showing all the possible entry and exit routes. But he knew there was no sign of any forced entry.