Mick Arbrose needed just four hours sleep every night, starting at one and ending at five. He was a well-respected businessman living in the village of Churchill who, each morning, would walk his Labrador the twenty minutes into Chipping Norton to collect the morning paper before the newsagent’s had properly opened, and then walk back. Part of the walk had no footpath, forcing Mick onto the narrow road, but so early in the morning, he always felt perfectly safe. On this particular morning, however, when Mick walked down the oak staircase, his old Labrador, Jonty, was not sitting in the hallway waiting to greet him. Mick went straight into the kitchen and looked under the breakfast bar, where Jonty’s night-time bed lay empty. Jonty’s routine was as rigid as Mick’s, so now Mick was beginning to worry. The only other place the old Lab could possibly be was in his daytime bed, which was under Mick’s desk in the office.

As soon as Mick entered the office, his blood ran cold. The safe in the wall was open and had been emptied of around £100,000 in cash, a Hamilton watch and the keys to the never-used Bentley that sat under a tarp in the garage. But Mick wasn’t looking at the open safe. His attention was fixed on the golden paw draped over the edge of the lavish tartan dog bed. He knew Jonty had to be dead because he always, always got up to greet Mick when he walked into any room. As Mick crept round the side of his desk, he could see that the red and green tartan at the front of the dog bed was now no longer tartan, but solid red. Mick’s breathing became audible as he fought back tears. A few more steps forwards revealed that Jonty had been stabbed through the ear with Mick’s silver letter opener, the ornate handle still poking out of his skull. Mick began to gasp for breath as a panic attack dropped him to his knees. He reached out his hand, placed it on the ribcage of his beloved companion, and kneaded his fingers through the cold yellow fur. He knelt there for the twelve minutes it took for the police to arrive. And he knelt there for the further thirty-seven minutes it took for the family vet to arrive. Only when Jonty was safely in the care of someone he knew, did Mick allow the police to get on with their job.

*

‘Mick said that Jonty would have greeted the burglars,’ Gifford continued. ‘He wouldn’t have barked. He was a soppy companion, not a guard dog. So there was no need to kill him. They did it because they wanted to.’

‘I could come and bounce some ideas around with you?’ Ridley suggested, but Gifford didn’t want that.