“So? That doesn’t make him the killer. You’ve got to find the gaps, the hidden areas. His common-law wife is his alibi; she stood by him before, when he was convicted of a serious sex assault. He snatched the woman’s handbag, knocked her about a bit, then he freely allowed them to take samples for DNA testing to see if they could find anything else against him. They didn’t, so it was his first offense. His girlfriend must have gone through hell over that. No matter how hard-faced she seems, she’s still a woman! She was betrayed by him, but they both used the excuse of drink. He had been drinking, and a lot of men do things when drunk that they’d never consider doing when sober, right? But our killer is a cold-blooded, calculating man. He scrubs his victim’s hands . . .”

“Well, I agree with what you’re sayin’, ma’am, but there is something about him . . .”

“You can’t bloody charge a man because there’s something about him! You can only do that with evidence, proof, and we have not got enough proof to hold George Marlow.”

The radio crackled and Tennison went to answer it, saying, “Maybe this will be it, fingers crossed!”

Control patched through a call from Forensic. It was Willy Chang, though Tennison could hardly tell. His voice was breaking up over the air.

“Inspector? We’ve crackle the carpet, every inch of crackle, crackle . . . have nothing. There’s not one shred of evidence to prove your man was ever there. We’ll keep at it, but I’m not hopeful.”

Tennison leaned back in her seat. “Well, that confirms it. As I was saying, we have nothing, not a hair, a fragment of material, to put Marlow in that efficiency. She was covered in blood, but we’ve got not so much as a pinhead on a pair of his shoes . . . How did he get her in there and walk away without so much as a single stain?”

“But there was one, ma’am, on his sleeve.”

“Ah, yes, but he has a plausible explanation for that. The only thing that might possibly finger him is his car. If he killed her in his car he has to have left something . . . And by the by, Burkin, would you stop calling me ‘ma’am’, makes me feel like a ruddy queen. I like ‘boss’ or ‘guv’nor,’ take your pick. Kingston Hill coming up on the right . . .”

Otley led the three bewildered girls and the handsome, tanned young man to the canteen, pushing the door open to allow them to pass in front of him. Michael Hardy paused politely, and Otley waved him on, taking a good look at the boy’s high-heeled cowboy boots and heavily studded biker’s jacket. But it was the ponytail that got him; his eyes gleamed.