‘These were the ones Hopkins didn’t get on with?’

‘I don’t think it was a case of him not getting on with them. Sounds more like the odd disagreement. Plus, if they were involved, wouldn’t they just have turned his telly off, locked the house up, tried to make it look like he’d gone away?’

‘Not if they wanted to make it look like he’d been attacked by an intruder,’ Beardmore suggested.

‘Outside his house at the back?’ Lucy said. ‘Late at night? If you were making a story up, would you seriously expect someone to buy that?’

Detective Sergeant Kirsty Banks, who was sitting on the desk behind Lucy, now cut in. She was a hefty woman, with an unruly mop of blonde hair and a penchant for wearing big cardigans over her T-shirts and jeans, though as it was warm today and electric fans whirred in the otherwise empty CID office, the cardigan at least had come off.

‘I must be honest, Stan,’ she said, ‘if the Rodwells had done something to Harry Hopkins, and were trying to make it look like an intruder, surely they’d have wrecked the interior of his house … tried to make it look like a burglar had broken in?’

‘That’s your gut instinct, is it, Kirst?’

‘I think Lucy’s on the money. This needs further investigation.’

Beardmore thought about it. From his open-neck polo shirt, the garden chair he reclined in, the kids running around the lawn in the background and the muted conversation of friends and neighbours, he too was spending his Saturday at a barbecue.

‘Lucy,’ he eventually said. ‘What other work have you got on?’

‘Just bottoming off the paper from the dog-fighting arrests,’ she replied.

‘Get that done ASAP. Then you’re on this exclusively till we get some kind of result.’

‘No probs.’

‘Kirsty … how buried is Tessa Payne?’

Banks flicked through the crime log. ‘Not very. Plus, she’s on call today.’

‘Okay. Lucy … you’ve got Tessa.’

Lucy nodded. That would suit Tessa, she thought. The youngster had come into CID excitedly, and even more so on learning she’d be working with Lucy, whose recent results had caught the imagination of many young women in the job. Whether having an adoring student along for the ride was ideal for her, Lucy was less sure, but help was help.

‘Right … you all know what you’re doing.’ Beardmore reached forward to switch off his laptop. ‘If you need me, get on the blower.’

‘Oh, boss …?’ Lucy said.

‘Yeah?’

‘Can we copy Serious Crimes Division in?’

Beardmore sat back, looking suspicious. ‘Why?’

‘I don’t know …’ She shrugged. ‘But I’m hearing second-hand that some homeless people have dropped out of sight recently.’

Beardmore pondered this. ‘Pensioner age?’

‘They’re older people, certainly. And two different sources have now drawn my attention to it.’

‘Any suggestion these mis-pers have been abducted?’