He paused before continuing, sounding increasingly excited. ‘Now get this. The plot of the BMW’s satnav and of Niall Paternoster’s phone indicate he departed from their Nevill Road home at 2.11 a.m. and headed north-east towards Ashdown Forest – also confirmed by two ANPR cameras. He arrived at a location we’ve identified as a car park on the edge of dense woodlands at 2.48 a.m. and remained static in that vicinity for just over an hour. From there he travelled to Shoreham Harbour, arriving at 4.35 a.m., heading to a point that we’ve identified as the east mole of the harbour breakwater. Niall Paternoster’s phone was then shown as leaving the BMW and heading down to the end of that mole, returning to the BMW minutes later.’

‘Taking in the early morning sea air?’ Grace ventured.

Cleo looked up at him, puzzled, then got up, walked around the room and sat back down again.

‘A normal thing to do in the middle of the night, wouldn’t you say, boss?’

‘Doesn’t everyone?’ Grace replied flippantly.

‘The BMW and Niall Paternoster’s phone returned to the locale of the Paternoster home at 5.02 a.m.’

Grace thought this information through carefully before replying again. ‘The couple had a row. It ended with what the neighbour thought might be a blow. Then in the middle of the night Niall Paternoster drives to a forest. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

‘Deposition site?’

‘Unless he has a particular interest in forest wildlife,’ Grace replied. ‘Then he drives to the harbour. A second deposition site?’ He frowned. ‘I’m trying to make sense of the timeline here. The previous Saturday they drive to Parham House and take photographs. The following Thursday they have a row, which a neighbour hears, and suppose he kills her. Did he dismember her, which might account for the blood at the house? He then drives out into the forest and buries part of her body. The rest he dumps out to sea at the end of the harbour, where there are strong currents. Four days later he reports her missing, giving the explanation that she went into a Tesco store to buy cat litter and vanished off the face of the earth. Am I missing anything?’

‘I think we’re on the same bus,’ Branson replied.

‘We need an underwater search team to check out the area around the harbour mouth. But it’s strongly tidal.’

‘It was an ebb tide at that time, boss, which means that anything he dumped in the sea would be carried some way out.’

Grace was pensive for some moments. ‘Ashdown Forest?’ He knew, from experience, that some parts of Sussex were more conducive to burying a body, or body parts, than others. Much of the county was on chalk, which made digging a grave deep enough to conceal a body a challenging task, even more so during the summer months when the soil was dry and hard.

Thirty miles south of London, located in the north of Sussex, Ashdown Forest had originally been created as a medieval hunting forest soon after the Norman Conquest. More recently it was the home of Winnie-the-Pooh. And with its sandy soil, it was a very easy place to dig a grave.