Apart from the Welsh dresser, the hallway was bare. A wooden floor covered in dirt led through to a small kitchen. There was a lounge to the left and a staircase to the right. There wasn’t anything particularly out of order on the ground floor, although it was sparsely furnished. Just a double sofa in the lounge, the sort of cotton-covered beige unit that looked like it belonged in an old care home. A wide screen TV sat in one corner and a wooden cabinet in the other. The whole place stank of body odour.

Upstairs, however, yielded much more harvest.

Karl’s bedroom was a mess – clothes thrown all over the floor, drawers open, as was the wardrobe. It looked like the place had been ransacked but Priest suspected otherwise.

‘Looks like he was planning to leave in a hurry,’ he said, looking around.

‘You think he had time to come back here after he shot Dominque?’ asked Rowlinson.

Priest looked at the drawers closely. ‘No. I think he did this earlier in the day. He knows the game’s up. He’s just going to bring the final act to a swifter conclusion.’

‘What’s the final act?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ said Priest, pulling a chair across and using it to climb up so he could inspect the top of the wardrobe. ‘There’s a thin layer of dust that looks awfully like the shape of a missing suitcase up here, though. So, I suspect it involves travel of some description.’

‘Put Jones’s face out to every force in the country,’ Rowlinson barked at a sergeant hovering by the door. ‘Notify border control, too.’

The sergeant grunted an acknowledgement and scurried off.

‘Sir?’ shouted a voice from another room. ‘You’d better take a look at this.’

Priest followed Rowlinson through to what was presumably the spare bedroom, which had been converted into an office of sorts, or more like a control centre. The whole of one side was taken up by a long, custom-made desk built into the wall itself. There were three computer monitors and a server unit in the corner spewing out leads of different colours that ran across the room and behind the desk into various smaller units. Two fans positioned either side were aimed at the server to cool it down. One of the monitors was on a lock screen, the other two were blank.

‘Get a tech team up here ASAP,’ Rowlinson told the officer. He also disappeared, speaking urgently into his radio, leaving Priest and Rowlinson alone to assess the room.

The back wall was covered with photographs of varying sizes and quality; all with one common subject matter.

‘This is Elinor Fox,’ said Rowlinson, concerned. He was examining a four-by-six picture of Elinor at a party wearing a long red dress and holding a glass of wine, laughing with other people at the bar, oblivious that she was the subject of the photograph.