“Why did he still have VHS?” asked Trollope. “Do you know anyone who still has a VHS?”

“It has to be something he couldn’t risk getting digitized,” I said.

“These days?” said Trollope. “It would have to be something really disgusting or illegal. Child porn, or snuff movies, or, I don’t know, kitten strangling.”

“The wife will have to be interviewed,” I said. “Maybe she knows something.”

“Maybe that’s why she left,” said Trollope. “Reckon there’s a trip to Australia in it?”

“Not for us,” I said. “They never send DCs abroad. It’s always ‘experienced officers’ who get the free trips.” We shared a moment of gloomy solidarity. “If you had a bunch of stuff that you were desperate to keep hidden,” I said, “where would you stash it?”

“Garden shed,” said Trollope.

“Really?”

“That’s where my dad kept his grass,” said Trollope.

“Really?”

“Grow your own is a long tradition in these parts.”

“You ever been tempted to bust him for possession?”

“Only at Christmas,” he said.

Ideally we would have trooped out and had a look in the shed ourselves, but you don’t do that on a modern crime scene without checking with forensics first and they said we couldn’t go out until they’d checked the lawn for footprints. And they couldn’t do that until morning. Fair enough. So we went and reported unto Stephanopoulis who was mightily pleased with both of us and bestowed her munificence in the form of sandwiches and coffee. Which we had to go and eat out in the road so as not to get crumbs on the crime scene. It was surprisingly cold but the Norfolk Constabulary had parked a couple of Transit vans outside so we sheltered in one of them. Even this close to Norwich, the sky was amazingly wide and full of stars. Stephanopoulis noticed me noticing. “City boy,” she said.

I suggested that Johnson’s ex-wife be interviewed in Australia and she agreed although she felt the Victoria police were more than capable of handling that without the need to send a British officer over, senior or otherwise. Trollope snorted.

“Something funny, Constable?” asked Stephanopoulis.

“No ma’am,” he said.

The sandwiches were the kind that get stocked by the twenty-four-hour shops attached to petrol stations, which managed the trick of being both soggy and stale. I think mine was ham salad but I barely tasted it. Stephanopoulis put hers down after the first bite.

“We need to know what it was Johnson told Dunlop,” she said.

“I’ll bet it had to do with the Obscene Publication Squad,” I said. “What else would he have to talk about?”

“There’s more to people than the job,” said Stephanopoulis.

“Not this man,” I said. “If he had any special interests they were on the stolen tapes. I think he may have been killed, in part, in order to recover them.”