There was no sign of her son in the house but the back door was open.

As she saw them out, Mrs Smales said, ‘If you do have a reason to arrest him, tell him he’s not to come back here. I’ll pack his clothes and he can pick them up from the shed.’

She closed the door, muttering, ‘Never had such a thing happen in the family before. He’s a bad egg, that one, and what I’ve done to deserve him, I do not know.’

They were both smiling as they got into the car.

‘Wouldn’t it be lovely if Raff is proved to be guilty?’ she murmured.

‘Brilliant. Let’s drive around a bit and see if we can find him.’

Bryce Dorling went for a little drive early in the morning, eager to find out what had happened to the houses in Saffron Lane, because he wasn’t paying those lads the rest of the money unless they’d done what he wanted.

As he queued for a morning coffee to take out at a kiosk near the station, he overheard conflicting rumours being exchanged of an accident, of police being involved and also, to his puzzlement, the fire and rescue service being brought in. What the hell had required that?

He drove slowly along the street that led to the lower end of Dennings. As usual he felt angry to think of all that land being wasted on a tumbledown old house. Damned heritage idiots should keep their nose out of things and stop listing properties that were no use to anyone. And as for the houses in Saffron Lane, they weren’t listed properties at all. Didn’t people realise there was a housing shortage in the real world?

From a distance the end house looked to be still standing undamaged, its roof intact and most of its windows unbroken. But the truck was something to see and he was tempted to get out his phone and take a photo. No, better not be seen doing that.

There was police tape strung about still. He got out the binoculars and scanned the area. There was a bloody great hole around the half-buried front of the truck. There must have been a cellar and that idiot had driven the heavy vehicle right on to it instead of hitting the house smack on, as he’d ordered.

Well, he wasn’t paying good money for that stuff-up. The idiot should have seen the cellar windows and aimed elsewhere. Strange, though. Now he came to think of it, Bryce hadn’t noticed any cellars when he looked over the houses. They caused extra costs, houses with cellars did, when you were levelling a block. No one built modern houses with cellars these days. Too expensive and not needed, unless you were on a slope and built an underport garage.

Shaking his head and letting out a little growl of annoyance, he took a swig of coffee and set off again, driving past the entrance and back to his office. He wasn’t doing anything till he heard from Hobkins exactly what had been discovered and how it was going to affect his plans.