‘I am, for your reputation, sir. We need to keep the crime stats down, don’t we? To make you look good, right?’

‘I told you not to push me, Roy.’

‘Is that because you know just how far you might fall?’ Grace responded facetiously, killing the call with a broad smile.

Oh yes, he was enjoying this. He felt the way he did in the weekly Thursday-night poker games he used to attend whenever he could, with a bunch of police colleagues. The rare, incredibly exciting moments during those games when he held a pretty much invincible hand. A full house, Aces on Kings, four Aces or – something which had happened to him only once in all the years he had been playing – an unassailable Royal Flush. Ace, King, Queen, Jack, Ten of the same suit.

It was that Royal Flush he held now. And he was loving it.

As he re-entered the room, still smiling, his phone rang again. Certain it was Pewe, Grace rejected it and muted the phone.

He addressed the team. ‘We are finalizing the strategies for forensics, search and arrests, and establishing the key lines of enquiry which will be circulated. A crucial line of enquiry at this stage is the victimology. Speaking to Eden’s friends, work colleagues and family will be a critical part of this.’

He turned to Branson. ‘Glenn, we’ve heard Niall Paternoster’s account of dropping his wife off in the car park of Tesco Holmbush and her apparent vanishing. Despite all his supposed endeavours to contact her, as he told the officers who attended at his house this morning, and you and me subsequently, so far we have nothing to confirm that his missing wife is OK. He made a couple of comments, which I relayed to you, that gave me cause to believe all was not good between them.’

DS Exton raised a hand. ‘Boss, given the photograph’s analysis from Digital Forensics, do you think Eden Paternoster was even in the car at all yesterday afternoon?’

‘It’s a good question, Jon. My hypothesis at this point is no, his wife was never in the car. This is a cover story her husband’s made up and it all sounds very plausible – at least to him, in his mind. I think it is very possible Niall Paternoster murdered his wife sometime before Sunday afternoon. One urgent task for the Outside Enquiry Team will be contacting her employers again, Mutual Occidental in Croydon, for more information. Apparently, she has not been to work since Thursday of last week.’

He looked at Luke Stanstead. ‘Can you continue to develop the sequence of events and timeline and share it with the team?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Perhaps Paternoster hasn’t taken into account the CCTV coverage that the Tesco store has. There is clearly no evidence, from the footage or the staff interviews, that his wife was either in the car park or the store at the time he claims. All we know for certain, from the plotting of his phone, is that he drove to Parham House at the approximate times he told us, wandered around the grounds for three hours and then drove to the Tesco store before going home. There is nothing to support his assertion that his wife was with him during this time. And the evidence from Aiden Gilbert’s Digital Forensics Team indicates this. It’s my view that he is trying to mislead or misdirect us.’