‘Well …’ Lucy mused. ‘The mud could have happened any time during the second half of the Tuesday in question. It rained that afternoon, creating puddles. Any car could have driven past and caused it, but Hopkins’s daughter said he was a fastidious, house-proud man, and the interior of the property was like a new pin, which kind of backs that up. She reckons it’s not the kind of thing he’d have left unattended to.’

‘Couldn’t it just be that he hadn’t noticed some innocent person had made a mess of his back gate?’ Beardmore asked.

‘Could be that,’ Lucy said. ‘But then we have the neighbours, the Rodwells. Around half-ten that night they thought they heard the sound of a vehicle speeding off along the back alley, which would have been quite unusual. It’s a fairly narrow passage, and they don’t get vehicles along there very often.’

‘But no one saw anything?’ Nehwal asked.

‘No one we’ve spoken to yet.’

‘Any CCTV in the area?’

‘Again, nothing yet, ma’am. I’ve got Tessa Payne, one of our acting DCs, trawling through footage, but I’m not hopeful. Hollinbrook’s a quiet residential district. I mean, there’s a Neighbourhood Watch thing going and there are some cameras, but so far zilch. If the abductor came in a vehicle – like, say a van – that kind of suggests that he or they are organised. And if they’re organised, they might have scoped out the cameras first, and taken pains to avoid them.’

‘The new one,’ Nehwal said, ‘the Lorna Cunningham incident. That one occurred about eight miles from Hollinbrook, on the canal towpath in central Crowley.’

Lucy was impressed they were able to be so specific so quickly. ‘We know this for sure?’

‘Oh yes.’ Nehwal handed Lucy some paperwork of her own: it was a print-out containing a colour photograph of a woman somewhere in her late twenties, clearly taken at a sports meeting, as she was red-faced and wore a sweaty vest with a number pinned on the front. Her longish, copper-red hair flew as she vaulted over a large, timber hurdle. ‘As I say, she’s a fitness fanatic. She goes for a run every night at around 9.45, usually following the same route, which takes her along the Bridgewater Canal.’

‘And she was definitely attacked on the towpath?’