‘No, Cleo and I need to be with Bruno, it’s not looking good. Can you run things for me?’

‘Of course, Roy, seriously, leave it all with me.’

‘Do me a favour. When I do come in, probably tomorrow, will you ask everyone not to ask me how I am, because—’ He took a moment, choking on his words.

Sounding deeply and genuinely sympathetic, the Deputy SIO said, ‘Absolutely. But make sure you’re certain about coming in.’

‘I will,’ he said heavy-heartedly.

‘How is Bruno?’ Branson asked.

‘Not good – not at all good. He’s in an induced coma, which they’re hoping will reduce the swellings on his brain, but he has multiple head injuries.’

‘God, it’s awful, you both need to be with him. I’ll run the briefing and give you an update afterwards.’

‘Thanks. I appreciate it. You’re a good friend.’

‘You helped me when I was splitting up with Ari, when I went through all that shit of the separation and she tried to stop me seeing my kids. I’m here for you and always will be.’

Grace barely managed to utter his thanks. His eyes stung with tears.

49

Tuesday 3 September

Twenty minutes later, Glenn Branson sat at the head of the crowded conference room table, with his briefing notes and Policy Book in front of him.

‘This is the third briefing of Operation Lagoon,’ he said, then coughed and sipped some water, clearing a frog in his throat. ‘The investigation into the disappearance of Mrs Eden Paternoster. As we know, she was last seen by her husband in the car park of the Tesco Holmbush superstore two days ago, just after 3.15 p.m. on Sunday the first of September – if her husband is to be believed.’ He said the last few words with cynical emphasis. ‘There have subsequently been a number of developments giving us grave concern for Mrs Paternoster.’

He looked down at his notes. ‘I’m going to summarize the information – and evidence – we have so far. First is that Niall Paternoster claimed he dropped his wife at the store to buy cat litter, saying they had run out of it. When he met with uniform officers at his home yesterday, he told us that his wife, Eden, was annoyed with him because he’d forgotten to buy any cat litter himself, the day before. But this story has been thrown into doubt by Chris Gee’s team – they discovered two large sacks of cat litter clumsily hidden at the back of a cupboard in the utility room. Would anyone forget they had two sacks of the stuff? From what we know so far, Eden Paternoster was a clever, intelligent and efficient lady – I’d say it was pretty unlikely she’d have forgotten she had two whole sacks of the stuff in the house.’

He looked around at his team and saw nods of concurrence. Several of them were making notes.

‘Next,’ he said. ‘Despite the Tesco store having CCTV coverage both of the exterior and interior, there was no image of Eden Paternoster at all. But there is footage of Niall inside the store shortly before closing. There is also no footage of her from the CCTV cameras of the immediately neighbouring Marks and Spencer store or the McDonald’s. To add substantial weight to this, there is the photograph on Niall Paternoster’s phone of his wife in front of the lake at Parham House. He claims he took this earlier that afternoon. But according to the analysis done by Aiden Gilbert’s Digital Forensics Team, this photograph was date stamped over a week earlier, on Saturday August twenty-fourth. This is corroborated by the plot of Paternoster’s mobile phone, showing he was there at exactly that date and time.’ He looked at Louise Soper. ‘I believe you have further information on this, Lou?’