First of all, she’d made further enquiries with other charitable institutions in Crowley, and it had soon paid dividends. It seemed that in several cases, similarly unsolicited gifts of cash and even jewellery had been delivered to the doors of the needy during the hours of darkness. The recipients included Crowley Family Welfare, the Action on Poverty drop-in centre, Crowley Young Carers, and the Methodist Mission Hall close to the Crowley Emporia, the town’s main shopping centre. Will Raglan, one of the helpers down at the Mission, had informed Lucy that he’d heard about similar anonymous donations being made to homeless people – they’d literally been sleeping rough in underpasses or on park benches, and had found the presents waiting alongside them when they woke – and even to private addresses: homes and flats where vulnerable pensioners lived, or where impoverished single mothers were struggling with tribes of rumbustious kids.

This latter suggested to Lucy that it was not just random generosity; it was being targeted, which meant that whoever was behind it had done some serious homework.

In the light of all this, she hadn’t felt especially great about continuing to investigate. No crime was evident here. But when she’d heard that Sally Skegg, the bag-lady of Broadgate Green, had walked into a shelter not two nights ago, wearing an emerald and sapphire-studded bracelet, which the staff on duty had estimated must be worth several thousand pounds, it became screamingly obvious that something about this wasn’t right. The jewellery itself, which in normal circumstances would have given Lucy her most obvious lead, added nothing; mainly, because in all cases it had gone to private individuals – more homeless, more transients – who had almost certainly sold it on by now, or who, as Sally was currently proving, would be difficult to trace. The institutions themselves had only received cash, the sums varying from a few hundred quid to batches of several thousand. However, the Methodist Mission Hall, the beneficiary of the most generous donation to date – £18,000 crammed into an old shoebox – maintained a single security camera over its front door, and after paying them a visit, Lucy had come away with a copy of the CCTV footage from October 29 on a pen drive. It was this that she was now watching, having further copied it onto her laptop.

It fascinated her to think that the figure depositing the shoebox of cash was almost certainly the same person who’d been donating these expensive gifts across the borough. But that wasn’t the only fascinating factor.

Because something else had now cropped up.

Near the end of the snippet, just before the hooded figure vanished from sight, it glanced around, partially in the direction of the camera. Almost certainly, it was unintentional; the guy hadn’t realised it was there, and he looked away again just as quickly, so only a glimpse was to be had of his face, but it was sufficient to show … fabric.