At the station, a calendar of social events for the next twelve months was plotted out in great detail on one of the whiteboards, an overlapping, chaotic mess that would be a nightmare to police. The most obvious problem was the upcoming annual equestrian event that lasted for an entire week and was, at some point, attended by everyone in the local area.

Gifford stood in front of the whiteboards with DC Bevan, admiring their hard work. Davidson avoided Jack’s eye by burying his head in a computer screen. The rest of the desks were empty as everyone else was at the Barrowmans’ searching the property for the weapon used on Mathew. Gifford seemed to be on a high from his productive afternoon so, for now, Jack kept quiet about Maisie’s revelation regarding the height of her burglar and allowed Gifford to go first.

Bevan started by explaining how she and Gifford had uncovered two new key pieces of evidence: an unmarked, untraceable, unidentifiable horsebox with dirty number plates; and a motorbike from out of town, with false plates. ‘Both vehicles can be seen driving up and down the stretch of road that runs by the Barrowman house. So, I went back to the CCTV footage from the other burglaries, and they both pop up in and around each target house on one, or all, of the three days before each burglary.’

Jack waited patiently. Bevan was clearly laying the groundwork for her big reveal.

‘If we accept that this gang uses rented horseboxes as one of their getaway vehicles . . .’ Bevan paused to look at her notes. ‘Eight months ago, a dead body was found in a submerged horsebox just south of Cirencester. According to the autopsy we have a white male, mid-30s, of South American descent. No ID. No criminal record. Dead for approximately three years. His hyoid bone was snapped, indicating manual strangulation probably from behind. In the pocket of his trousers was a pair of 18-carat white gold oval cufflinks, with inset diamonds, worth around £2,000. These cufflinks were on an insurance claim list from 2018 made by Mr Bright-Cullingwood; he’s a writer of kids’ books, lives in Kingham. He was our first known burglary victim.’

Bevan couldn’t help but look up to see how people were reacting – all eyes were on her. But now she’d paused for slightly too long . . .

‘You after a round of applause, girl?’ Gifford’s words nudged her back on track.