‘So you changed flights and collected it?’

‘Yes,’ Niall said. ‘And it was bloody stressful. I could just see everything crumbling, which it did. Just … for a different reason.’

‘Where did you go once you were back in the UK?’ Hanson asked him.

‘Oh, I met Dina at Gatwick airport, like I said.’ He looked between them. ‘I wasn’t lying about that. The stuff was supposed to go to her … She could have just bloody lied for me, and this would all have been fine.’ Niall made a slightly disgusted sound. ‘You know, I don’t even think they told her to throw me to the wolves. I’ve been thinking about it, and it’s much more dangerous to have me questioned under pressure. I think denying it was all her idea. A way of making me know that she had power over me. She probably thought she could leave me to sweat for a few hours and then admit that she saw me.’

‘So you met her at Gatwick,’ Jonah said. ‘And the handover went as planned?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then?’

Niall looked disconcerted. ‘Well, I stayed at the hotel, so Louise wouldn’t find out I was back early, and I hung around there on Saturday morning. Went to the gym, had coffee and read the papers … I was just killing time. And then … and then Louise called and told me what had happened.’ He shook his head, his expression angry. Even after everything he’d done, he still seemed aggrieved at his wife’s actions.

‘So you weren’t in Southampton on Friday night?’ Jonah asked, his voice hard. ‘You didn’t make your way home, thinking to catch Louise out for drinking?’

Niall shook his head, very definitely. ‘Why the hell would I do that? I was trying not to get caught out myself.’ He shook his head, slowly. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t have a clue what happened to that guy. It had nothing to do with me.’

‘Do you believe him?’ Hanson asked, as they returned to CID. She wasn’t quite sure why she was asking. Perhaps because she wasn’t sure what she thought about it all.

‘Not necessarily,’ the DCI said. ‘The people Niall works for are exactly the kind of people who might stab someone using a custom-made weapon. It’s possible that Alex saw something he shouldn’t have done, and Niall ended up reacting violently out of desperation. But it does seem unlikely that he’d then leave the body in his own house. Or frame his wife, for that matter. It’s too close to home.’

‘But he still could have had a knife like that and flipped out because he found Alex with his wife,’ Hanson countered. ‘I still want to try and link Niall Reakes to that weapon. Possibly his ex-wife, too.’

‘Good,’ Sheens said. ‘I agree that we shouldn’t rule him out.’