‘Resourcing?’

‘As you are well aware, Operation Lagoon is currently using half the entire Major Crime Team’s available manpower, as well as one of only two Surveillance Teams our finances currently stretch to, so I thought you might like to give me an update?’

‘With pleasure, sir.’ Grace said the word sir happy in the knowledge he wouldn’t be saying it for much longer. Not from the moment Professional Standards acted on the information Guy Batchelor had provided. But for now, he maintained a facade of respect. ‘Should we still be calling it manpower, sir? Not a very up-to-date expression, is it?’

Pewe looked, as he so often did when confronted by anything distasteful to him, as if he could smell something nasty. ‘Do you have a better term for it?’

Grace gave him a deadpan look. ‘Resources?’

For the next five minutes he filled Pewe in on their progress to date and the major turn of events with the discovery of Rebecca Watkins’s affair with Niall Paternoster. When he had finished, Pewe sat for a while, saying nothing. Finally, he nodded.

‘You’ve established, through the surveillance, that Eden Paternoster’s husband and her boss, Rebecca Watkins, are having an affair? Nice work.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Grace said politely, expecting the sting was about to come.

Pewe didn’t disappoint.

‘Clearly, Roy, you believe in the possibility that Eden Paternoster, far from being murdered and her body dissected, may still be alive and well and in hiding?’

‘It’s one hypothesis.’

‘Do you have others?’

‘Three. The second is that she was murdered, either by her husband or by Rebecca Watkins – or by both of them – and her body subsequently dismembered, some of it buried in Ashdown Forest, some deposited in the sea off Shoreham Harbour. My third is that Niall and Eden Paternoster have conspired together to fake her disappearance.’

‘For what reason?’

‘Financial. I’ve been reading up on that couple, the Darwins, where the husband, John, faked his death to look like a canoe accident in the North Sea some years ago. He did it with the connivance of his wife for financial reasons in that case, collecting the life insurance on him. Emily Denyer is currently looking hard into the Paternosters’ finances as a major part of our enquiries.’

Pewe ran a manicured finger, sporting a Wedgwood signet ring, through his golden hair. ‘Would I be correct in saying that in your view, Roy, in all three of your theories, there is no life at stake at the present time? No life in danger? Eden Paternoster is either dead, or alive and well and in cahoots with her husband, or something else entirely? Would you agree with that summary?’

‘On the evidence so far, yes. Sir.’

Pewe smiled, his upper lip rising like a theatre curtain, revealing a stage set of immaculately whitened teeth. He looked to Grace, at this moment, like a piranha in a blond wig.

‘Here’s my dilemma, Roy. With the greatest respect, one of our Surveillance Teams is currently engaged in an operation to try to protect a teenage girl we believe is being trafficked into the sex trade by a Brighton criminal gang. This is vital work to protect a vulnerable person.’ The gleam of his teeth again, before he continued with the sucker punch.