Was it worth seriously considering Alex’s husband as a suspect? They couldn’t be certain that Louise had been the one to kill Alex, even taking into account her frantic efforts to cover things up. As Hanson had suggested, Alex could have walked Louise home, an action that was open to misinterpretation. Or he could, in fact, have gone home with Louise for sex. There was no reason to assume that Alex was only interested in men.

The question was whether his jealous husband could have made his way to Saints Close. Could he have tracked Alex through his phone? Or gone to the club to confront his husband, and then followed them to Louise’s house? Killed him, assuming he was being unfaithful, and then … what? Left him in her bed to punish her?

It was one solution to the bizarre discovery, but it was still all a bit of a stretch, Jonah thought. And proving any of that theory to be true was highly unlikely to be easy.

Lightman was alone in CID when the team’s phone rang. The duty sergeant, whose voice Lightman didn’t recognise, sounded a little harassed as he explained, ‘I’ve got a Niall Reakes here. I believe you’re interviewing his wife. He’d like to see the senior investigating officer immediately.’

‘I’ll come and get him,’ Lightman said, before adding, ‘but he’s going to have to make do with me for the moment. The chief’s out on an interview.’

There was a pause, and Lightman could imagine the sergeant asking why, exactly, a DCI felt it necessary to go out and interview people. But after the pause he just said, ‘OK. Not sure that’s going to go down well.’

Lightman made his way down to reception quickly, fully expecting a tirade from Niall Reakes once he got there. But Mr Reakes looked stressed out rather than angry. He was pacing the waiting area with clear agitation, looking strangely like a fair-haired, neurotic version of his wife’s lawyer. Niall, too, had boyish good looks, and was slightly running to fat. He was also impeccably dressed in a blue-grey suit and a white shirt. Despite having been travelling for half the day, they showed very few creases.

He shook Lightman by the hand when he introduced himself, and said, ‘Sorry for blazing in here, but this has all really … It’s knocked me back. You know?’ He looked over at the duty sergeant. ‘I’ve not been able to talk to Louise and my – her solicitor says there might be a murder charge.’

‘It’s clearly a very stressful situation,’ Lightman said. ‘I’ll do what I can to help. Do you want to come on up to CID?’

‘I … guess so.’

Once they were in the stairwell and out of earshot of the duty sergeant, Niall asked in a quiet voice, ‘Why has she been arrested?’