In the secure porchway by the front door, a top-of-the-range alarm system was still switched off. Attached to the right-hand side of the property was a triple garage housing a red Ferrari and a black Range Rover. The garage doors were open, but both vehicles were untouched. The car George had driven to the charity auction, a dark green BMW, was on the gravel driveway. Jack noticed all three vehicles had tinted windows. ‘Tinted windows mean it’s likely the burglars couldn’t see that Mathew wasn’t in the car with you. They’d have presumed your house was empty,’ Jack reasoned.

‘Mathew watches television with the lights off, door closed and headphones on. He must . . .’ George sipped his whisky, which he’d brought with him, before continuing. ‘He must have been scared shitless when he saw them, otherwise why was he flapping about in the middle of the road with no shoes on?’ George’s voice deepened into a low growl. ‘How dare they? How fucking dare they?’

He drained his glass and, without thinking, headed for the front door. A young PC dutifully stepped in his way. Beyond the police tape on the front door, George could see dozens of paper-suited and masked CSIs, painting everything he owned with fingerprint powder. He looked and felt helpless, no longer master of his own domain.

‘Sir.’ Jack’s tone respectful. ‘Let’s go back in the way we came out.’ As they walked back towards the conservatory, Jack asked George to repeat the list of stolen items. ‘The written list your wife gave me, sir, doesn’t include the string of pearls.’

‘Oh, my mistake,’ Barrowman said. ‘Her list is correct.’

He didn’t flinch, didn’t smile. Jack instantly knew he was hiding something.

*

DC Cariad Bevan stared at her computer monitor watching CCTV footage, whilst simultaneously typing a report on everything she was seeing. After leaving the incandescent Barrowman in Jack’s hands, Gifford had returned to the station and immediately tasked her with trawling through CCTV, because of her known talent for being able to do the most mundane of tasks with the enthusiasm of a newly adopted Labrador puppy. She was one of those officers who was thrilled just to be there.

There was no CCTV on the quarter-mile driveway up to the Barrowmans’ house, nor on the first ten-mile stretch of road. The cameras only kicked in two miles outside Chipping Norton and there were a couple of turn-offs before that, so the burglars could have bypassed Chipping Norton altogether.