She went back upstairs and along the corridor to CID Admin, where she spent half an hour rooting through files, both paper and electronic, but was unable to locate any outstanding theft of a Rolex as reported locally in the last two years. Deeply puzzled, she traipsed back to Custody, where DI Beardmore was now pacing the Charge Office wearing a disgruntled frown.

‘Don’t tell me he’s not having it?’ Lucy asked. ‘Royton, I mean.’

‘No, he isn’t,’ Beardmore said.

‘Seriously? I saw him clobber Harry … happened right in front of me. And surely we’ve got statements from the witnesses at O’Halloran’s and Tesco?’

Royton and his unknown associates (the latter two of which, equally fit and powerful individuals to him, had used the distraction of the carwash fight to get clean away, fleeing through the supermarket itself) had apparently battered two young blokes senseless at the snooker hall in what other people who’d been there had described as an unprovoked attack.

‘He’s not having anything,’ Beardmore said. ‘He says he’ll only talk to the arresting officer.’

Immediately, Lucy had an inkling why. Was Royton banking that a young female cop would be more malleable, less likely to get something out of him they could run with?

That was a challenge she would normally have risen to. But not at present.

‘Stan, I’ve got to close this burglary case.’ She glanced at the clock above the Charge Office desk. ‘I’ve got nineteen hours left, admittedly, but a complication’s arisen and it needs looking into.’

Beardmore frowned. ‘I thought it was a straight-up job.’

‘So did I,’ she said, walking out.

Reg Murgatroyd, blinked several times at the Rolex watch in its transparent exhibit bag, but it was the blinking of a rabbit in headlights rather than an elderly man trying to adjust his rheumy vision. In truth, he’d been twitchy since Lucy had returned here. More so than previously. As before, even though seated in the armchair in his own living room, he sat bolt upright, his arthritic hands hooked into the armrests on either side. The last time this had happened, Lucy had assumed it was the simple shock of having been burgled. Now, she was wondering if Reg Murgatroyd himself had something to hide.

‘That’s not mine, love,’ he said. ‘No, I couldn’t afford a watch like that?’

‘You know what kind of watch it is, then?’ she asked, not yet having put it into his hands so that he could examine it closely.

‘Well, erm …’ Again, he faltered. ‘It’s a Rolex, isn’t it?’

Lucy studied him. She very much doubted that he could see from the other side of the room that this was a Rolex, which meant that he was already familiar with it.

‘Reg,’ she said, ‘I’ve got absolutely no doubt that you’ve done nothing wrong here.’