Kelly watched him closely. He bore the expected swagger of somebody who’d enjoyed five minutes in the overt limelight of being a civil nuisance. It might not end well for him, given the charges, and the fact that his last sentence was a suspended one. Regardless of the outcome of the interview, it looked like Neil Hardy was going back to prison. She sighed at the game these petty criminals played. Her Majesty’s penal system, if one landed in a category C institution, was not onerous, and could be seen by some as an acceptable way of life. There was no deterrent against that. The prison system was full of them.

Neil Hardy’s address was given as a squat in the centre of the city of Manchester, near Centrepoint, on North Parade. A legal aid lawyer sat next to him and the two DCs began the interview. He was under caution and so his rights were read to him. The CPS had approved the charges in record time. The inquiry into Lord Reilly’s death had sent ripples around the country, and the two detectives were happy to do their bit to take a scumbag off the streets. However, all interviews had to be approached with a certain grace. If they wanted to get anything out of the suspect, they couldn’t go in there threatening and getting in his face. Those days were gone. They were on tape and being recorded. It was their brief to find out what else Neil Hardy had been up to over the weekend. If anything. Kelly’s hunch was that he had nothing to do with the helicopter accident, but she wasn’t ruling it out. If he was involved then her first impressions of the man was of a follower, not a leader. Egg-throwing was probably the height of his activism on behalf of democracy. Terrorism? She doubted it. She studied him with interest on her screen.

‘Were you in the Lake District for business or pleasure, Neil?’ one detective asked. The lawyer sat staring at her notes, as they usually did. They were there for the record.

Kelly noticed Neil fidgeting. He asked if he could smoke. Kelly rolled her eyes.

‘No, Neil, we became a no-smoking constabulary over ten years ago. You know that.’

Kelly watched as he smiled and put a fag behind his ear. He carried on fiddling.

The lawyer nodded to her client and Neil prepared to speak.

‘I was at the conference to bring attention to this government’s appalling record on climate change,’ he said defiantly. ‘I’m no murderer,’ he added contemptuously, to which the lawyer shuffled uncomfortably. This was a good sign, it showed that Neil Hardy was in the habit of going rogue. Kelly had already emailed over the questions she wanted asking, and the detective constables were doing a good job. Hardy denied being in Cumbria to bring serious harm to Lord Reilly.