Naylor ran through the spiel he had given me on Monday morning, about the missing persons report being filed on Ben Delaney, and the proof-of-life enquiries they had been carrying out over the last forty-eight hours. Since yesterday new evidence had come to light, he said, which had altered their focus on the case.

‘As I mentioned, this is not being treated as a missing persons inquiry any more.’

He let it hang in the air for a moment, waiting for either me or Larssen to bite. Neither of us did.

‘It’s now being treated as a no-body murder inquiry.’

That word again. Hearing it once, in front of my wife and child, had been bad enough. But to hear it again inside a police station, with my DNA sample on the way to a lab, was a whole lot worse.

One word. Two syllables. Enough weight to send you to the bottom of the ocean.

Murder.

‘On the basis of what new evidence?’ Larssen said.

‘We’ll get to that in a moment. Suffice it to say we now have enough to elevate the status of the investigation.’

I looked from him to Larssen and back again.

‘A “no-body murder” sounds like a contradiction in terms,’ I said.

Larssen frowned at me but said nothing.

‘Not really,’ Naylor said. ‘We have very grave concerns for Mr Delaney’s safety. We have a steadily increasing amount of evidence that foul play is involved, even without the discovery of a body.’

‘There’s no body to find,’ I said. ‘Because no one’s died.’

‘Our evidence suggests otherwise.’

I shook my head and Larssen shot me a look that said, Let me handle this.

‘It’s not common, Joe,’ he said. ‘But it does happen. Makes the police’s job much more difficult.’

‘That depends on what else we’ve found,’ Naylor replied.

‘Can you give us an idea of what that is?’

‘You know that I don’t have to disclose it at this stage, Peter.’

‘I realise that, absolutely.’

‘But I’m going to all the same, in the interests of keeping you fully and properly informed. Three further items of evidential value that have developed over the last twenty-four hours.’

‘Thank you, Detective Chief Inspector. We appreciate it.’

Naylor opened a folder he’d brought in with him.

‘Remember on Monday, Joe, when I told you about the blood found in Mr Delaney’s car, and how we were able to match it to his record in the database from a case last year?’

‘The bloke he fired from his company.’

‘That’s the one. Blood traces recovered from the underground car park of the Premier Inn, near Brent Cross, have also been matched to Mr Delaney.’

In my mind’s eye, I saw the blood dripping from Ben’s ear onto the concrete.