‘It’s your call, Sasha,’ said Vaughn. As senior investigating officer, Vaughn should probably even make the appeal himself, but he was happy to step back and allow Sasha to run the investigation as she saw fit. Vaughn – nobody called him by his first name, Claude, which he hated, not if they knew what was good for them – was a highly experienced officer, and Sasha regarded him as a friend and a mentor. If Vaughn gave you advice you listened carefully, and if he blew his top you kept your head down. ‘Good luck and let me know how it goes.’

She turned the radio back up, drove on towards Westcliff, singing along to ‘Torn’, and slowly passed her mum and dad’s apartment on the first floor of a seafront block. The sliding balcony door was open wide, letting in the light and sun – the white gauze curtain billowed in the breeze – and she saw a newspaper and an empty glass on the coffee table outside.

She parked the Spider and jumped out to buzz the intercom at the entrance, but her dad didn’t answer. Sasha stood below the balcony. Usually, he’d be sitting in the lounger in a pair of long shorts, a floppy hat and nothing else, letting the sun soak all day into his skinny body, while her mum moved about inside, tidying and cleaning. Since his retirement, it was all he wanted to do. In the summer, he’d take up his position before breakfast, watching the world drift past, and remain there until the very last rays evaporated from the sky, then head off to the pub. It seemed to Sasha that Alec Chancellor wouldn’t be content until every inch of his body was covered in melanomas.

It was no wonder her mum was so frustrated. When he’d retired, Ursula had imagined that she and Alec would see a bit of the world. She had talked exotic cruises, minibreaks at stately homes, retreats and spas, new life experiences in the twilight of their years. Instead, they’d downsized from their big family home in Shoeburyness to this modest one-bedroom apartment on the seafront, where her husband sat about from dawn till dusk.

‘Come on, Dad!’ He was up there, she was certain, listening to her behind that rippling curtain. ‘Let me up, I want to talk to you.’

But she had a busy day on the cards, Alan and Jessica Manning’s press conference was this morning, and she didn’t have time to play silly games.

‘Right!’ she called up at him. ‘You need to grow up!’

And then she jumped back into her Spider and drove to Victoria Avenue.

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