He’d been given all the details over the phone on the journey from Leeds. The fire was called in early that morning, by which time there was little to be done. Smouldering, the dog-walker had said, before continuing his walk, quite unconcerned. This wasn’t the first time a car had been left in flames here, and it was only as the fire fighters were dousing the burnt-out shell of the Toyota that they saw the remains of a body in the passenger footwell.

He parked a few yards from the white-and-blue tape cordon and got out. First impressions: the park was large, a series of open fields rising to a peak in the mid-distance. Good dog-walking country. But here, at the bottom, there was a sizeable car park, and the Toyota was at the very back, close to a swathe of tall, mature sycamores that would have hidden the flames and disguised the rising smoke. The perfect spot.

‘Morning, guv,’ said the uniformed officer on the cordon, as he took a note of Joe’s credentials.

‘How you doing, Mark?’ Joe asked.

He knew the lad, an athletic-looking young man with a likeable face. He’d joined the Force just before Joe went to Lyon.

‘Been on nights all last week. Today was supposed to be my easy day. Now look!’

‘Yeah,’ Joe said, watching as three SOCOs in white overalls moved around the vehicle, meticulously taking samples, hardly talking as they worked. ‘Well, there’ll not be much to see here, I reckon.’

‘Black on black’s what they’re saying.’

‘We’ll see.’

Black on black. The victim was a criminal. Word had already got out. The car had been identified first: registered owner Jane Shaw, the mother of Joe’s missing drug dealer. The occupant had been identified not long after that from the remains of his wallet: Craig Shaw, convicted drug dealer. No one was going to be making much of a fuss about this one. He’d get a standard team, but not for long.

Joe surveyed the crime scene. There wasn’t even an inner and outer cordon. Just one section of ground had been taped off, big enough for a decent sweep of the immediate area, but nothing more. There were several rectangular patches with white edges where the prints of car tracks had been taken. Two vehicles in, one out? CCTV might help, not much traffic around here late on a Thursday night. Where were the nearest cameras? Out on the main road, possibly. There were none in the park itself, by the look of things. Someone had chosen well.

‘Hi, Joe,’ said a woman in white overalls and boots as she walked across to meet him.

It was a young assistant crime-scene manager. They’d met a couple of times, although he wasn’t sure of her name.

‘Hi there. You managing the site?’

She nodded. ‘They let me out all on my own! Do you know this place?’