‘Did you provide the details?’ I asked. ‘Or did Nicole?’ I thought it better not to raise the possibility that the girl was a changeling. Not when Sharon was so obligingly thinking herself down a cul-de-sac.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I provided all the details – so much for professionalism.’ She straightened her shoulders. ‘Is Nicole psychic?’

‘We don’t use that term,’ I said.

‘Really? What term do you use?’

‘We just refer to them as people who are unusually good at getting other people to do what they want,’ I said. ‘It’s disconcerting, but luckily it’s a bit on the rare side.’ As was my ability to talk bollocks, I thought.

‘And Nicole is one of these unusual people?’

‘Inquiries are ongoing,’ I said.

Except they weren’t. Because I was stuck waiting for the DNA tests to come back.

First step was to get some bodies out in the field behind the Old Rectory to ensure fake Nicole didn’t do a runner out the back. Fortunately, I was in Windrow’s good books for so promptly dealing with Sharon Pike.

‘Who is where?’ he asked when I called him up.

‘In her cottage having a lie down,’ I said.

‘Any sign of the media?’ he asked.

‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘What was the reaction after Ms Pike left?’

‘Confused,’ he said. ‘I think they may just pretend it didn’t happen.’

‘Seriously?’

‘We’ll find out soon enough,’ he said.

So I got some bodies in the fields and on the main lane with instructions to watch out for any comings and goings, but not to intervene unless asked to. I was just trying to figure out what to do next when Dr Walid called.

‘In the first instance,’ he said, ‘Hannah and Nicole are half-sisters, they both share Derek Lacey as their father.’

‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘Sharon Pike wasn’t kidding about Derek.’ And then the implications hit me. ‘Wait. If you could tell that, then the sample I gave you must have come from Nicole Lacey.’

‘Correct,’ said Dr Walid. ‘The samples taken from the drink bottles were definitely of the child of Derek and Victoria Lacey – assuming you didn’t get the samples mixed up.’

I didn’t bother asking him if he was sure. When Dr Walid gives a DNA result you can take it into court – literally.

He obviously correctly interpreted my silence as proof that I was floundering, because he went on to tell me that he’d contacted the labs which had processed the DNA samples for the investigation.

‘The bottle samples match the blood sample from the strip of cloth you found, but not the baseline samples that were taken from the Lacey house at the start of the investigation,’ said Walid. ‘Hair follicles, I believe they were. Although they have a parent in common.’

‘Derek Lacey?’

‘Very good,’ said Dr Walid.

Boy, I thought, he really does get about.