Kelly was taken aback by Will’s candour, as well as impressed with his emotional disclosure. Not many men would readily admit this kind of respect and love for another man. She didn’t ask what the ‘stuff’ was they’d been through together.

‘So he gives you the low-down on the local thugs? Why are you so interested?’

Will didn’t answer straight away, and she thought she’d leave it, not wanting to pry, but he’d stoked her curiosity.

‘Can I meet him?’

‘Of course. He’s a top bloke. I know he’s on duty today because he asked me to ring him when I’d looked at the footage. Can he see it?’

‘Why don’t you give him a buzz and see if he’s free now?’

Will nodded and walked away from her desk with his mobile phone. Kelly went to check on the rest of her team, who were working tirelessly on leads for both murders. It had been a shock for everyone coming into work this morning to face a second murder. She’d briefed them about the coroner’s findings when she and Will got back from Potton Pond. It was a double-edged sword of a meeting: on the upside, they had two knives from the pond that were being examined in the lab; on the downside, they had two sets of perps, judging by the coroner’s initial assessment that the MOs were too different to be connected.

Rob had come up trumps with his mapping of the area and was busy adding information to it. He showed her how it could be used with the whiteboard in the incident room. Emma was on site at Keira Bradley’s flat, chatting to the forensic team, who’d finished at the Watson home earlier. Initial reports indicated that Ella Watson had been an average housewife who stuck to her routines and had no skeletons in her closet. In fact, she came across as too perfect. Two worlds had collided and Kelly could find no explanation for it.

Kate threw herself into the mammoth task of reading every single witness statement pouring in from the estate and the park, and deciding which nuggets of information to prioritise. She had at least three sightings of the Cotton brothers, and a statement had come in about a shop owner who’d been beaten up this morning, shortly after Keira’s death. The wife of the man, who was still in a coma, had pointed the finger at the brothers.