‘Must have been around half seven.’ Kim felt more nervous the longer the interview went on. ‘I had nothing to do with Toni’s death. It was just a silly little argument. We used to have them all the time. It didn’t mean anything.’

Barrett looked at Palmer and gave a knowing nod.

‘Well—’ Barrett got up. ‘Thank you for coming in. As I said, we’ll need your friend’s details. I’ll be in touch if we need anything else.’

‘OK.’ Kim stood up hastily, grateful that the conversation was coming to an end.

Back in the incident room, Barrett looked cross: his brow was furrowed and he sat in his chair staring at the board on the wall. There was something off about the case but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

‘How are you coming along with the names of the people who attended the book club?’ he asked Palmer, who was glued to a computer screen.

‘I’m getting there, sir.’ Palmer was tapping at the keyboard furiously.

‘There is something not right about this whole damn thing.’ Barrett got up and went over to the board, which was a mess of photos, maps and scribbled writing.

‘Normally, I’d want us to focus our attentions on the husband, but he has a cast iron alibi. It seems unlikely that the murder was as a result of a spat at a book club meeting.’ He paced backwards and forwards with his hands behind his back. Palmer hated it when he did that. He found it extremely annoying.

‘Should we consider the possibility of a serial?’ Palmer said, quietly enough so that Barrett was the only person in the room who heard.

‘There is no evidence of that, yet. The geraniums in her hair are an oddity, but I think there is something personal about this case. Unless another body shows up, there is no reason to suspect that is the case.’

‘Apart from the geranium,’ Palmer insisted, ‘and,’ he cleared his throat, ‘the fact that her clothes were missing.’

‘Yes. No sign of a sexual assault yet she was discovered naked. Where are the clothes? Why strip the body?’ Barrett stood looking at the photograph of the body and cocked his head to one side. ‘Humiliation,’ he said thoughtfully.

‘Excuse me, sir?’

‘Well, if there was no sexual motivation behind the killing, by removing her clothes the killer has humiliated her. Look at the position of the body: face down, legs spread apart, bum on show. The body has been carefully arranged like that.’

‘And with the petals,’ Palmer added.

‘Yes,’ Barrett snapped, ‘the damn petals too.’

‘Could it be ritualistic?’ Palmer got up and stood next to Barrett, looking at all the images from the crime scene.