The girls left the room. Jones hovered. “Er . . . Who do I call, Skipper?”

Otley gave him an impatient stare. “You call the boyfriend, and we pick him up on our way back to the station.”

“Oh, right! His number’s in the book, is it?”

“In the book in your friggin’ hand, you fruit!”

The house in Brighton was a late Victorian building with a fish and chip shop on the ground floor. Elaine Shawcross, daughter of the proprietors of the shop, had been missing for ten weeks. Her parents were upstairs in their flat; while Tennison went to see them, Burkin ordered fish and chips for them both.

As he carried them back to the car he was surprised to see Tennison leaving the house. She climbed into the car and slammed the door.

“I’ve salted and peppered them, ma’am, did you want vinegar?”

“Yeah, I’d like to smother that Otley’s head in it, might make his hair grow. Either Detective Sergeant Otley needs his friggin’ head seeing to, or he’s deliberately sending me on a wild-goose chase. Give us me chips, then!” She crammed chips in her mouth and continued, “He’s pissed off with me because he’s back at the station interviewing hundreds of toms! Ha, ha, ha!”

As they drove back towards London, Tennison stared out of the window. “That snide bugger Otley did it on purpose! Sending us all the way down here, he’s just stirring it at every opportunity.”

Burkin did not respond, and she gave him a sidelong look. “So, Frank, what do you think of Marlow?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am?”

“I said, what do you think of the prime suspect? George Marlow?”

Burkin shrugged. He stopped the car at a red light and she could almost see the brain cells working as he chewed his lips.

“Well, spit it out! You do have some personal thought on the matter, don’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“So, tell me . . .”

“Well, I think he did it. There’s something about him, I don’t know what, maybe just intuition. But I think he’s our man.”

She lit a cigarette and Burkin opened his window. She felt the cold blast of wind, inhaled deeply and wound her own window down. Burkin promptly closed the one on his side.

Tennison gave him a sidelong look. “Draft too much for you, is it?”

“No, ma’am, just thought it might be too much for you!”

She stared out of the window, talking more to herself than to him.

“You know, being a woman in my position is tough going. I mean, I have intuition, but it’s probably very different from yours. As a man, you feel that Marlow did it. Are you saying that your intuition tells you that Marlow is a perverted sexual maniac? Because this girl was tortured, strung up, beaten and raped . . . And you just feel it’s George Marlow?”

“It’s more than that, ma’am. I mean, he had sex with her.”