She’d seen it a thousand times before and figured that, when they finally apprehended him, Fenton could say that he and Keira were casual lovers and didn’t keep in touch every day. He could argue that he’d been visiting friends out of the area and hadn’t heard the news. It was possible. They had enough for an arrest, but charging would be a different story altogether if they failed to find any of Keira’s blood on that hoody. Unlike Ella’s stabbing, Ted was in no doubt that the person who’d killed Keira would have significant amounts of her blood on them, as well as possible hand injuries.

The lab had called to say that the black fibres found on Ella Watson’s blue running vest were nylon, and commonly used to make rope that had a thousand and one uses. She had a list of manufacturers and the lab had managed to pinpoint a compound in the polymer that was only added to the final product to strengthen it after 2017. It narrowed down the list of suppliers. The biggest buyer was B&Q; the rope was sold in the general hardware department by length. She had DC Emma Hide working on contacting all the local hardware stores in the area to check when the product had been sold and where. It was a mammoth task, and dull, but only dogged determination, persistence and patience would root out such a crucial link. It was Emma’s forte. She had an eye for detail and she never gave up. She’d requested the CCTV from the stores in question to correlate the purchasers’ details. They were looking for any person of interest on their growing list.

The office was quiet, with the odd interruption as something was brought to her attention. A casual observer might think that nothing much was being done about the slaughter of two women, but behind the scenes, in and around Penrith, Kelly had almost fifty officers gathering information, taking statements and otherwise digging for clues. The members at the golf club where Neil Ormond and Thomas Watson were members had been interviewed and had given their opinions of the Watson family and of the larger-than-life character that was the superintendent. It bugged Kelly that he was treated as something of a celebrity there.

Kelly was sitting on a wheelie chair in front of a screen in the incident room. Sometimes she worked in her office, and sometimes with everyone else. Today she wanted to be with everyone else. She leant backwards and folded her arms over her stomach as she stared at her computer. She’d done a bit of digging on Will’s background – her bright star rising through the ranks – and found a few surprises.