Two vehicles belonging to the Tickett family showed up. The first was an aged silver VW Golf belonging to Aidan and registered to his address in Upper Rissington. It had shown up as passing the camera on the way to Amersham at 5.13 p.m. and coming back at 8.26 p.m. A second vehicle, a midnight blue BMW X5 registered to Christopher Tickett, had passed once, coming back, at 8.26 p.m. ‘There were no traces on any phones known to be registered to the family in that vicinity,’ Hoskins said. ‘Christopher Tickett’s phone remained on and in place at the yard in Rissington Common throughout that day. So they must be using burner phones.’ He made no mention of the final search, for Ray Slater’s car. It had come back blank. If he had been anywhere near Amersham it was in a car they knew nothing about.

Gillard took over and gave Hoskins permission to go home. ‘Our main focus now switches to the whereabouts of Kelvin Arrowsmith. Thames Valley Police remain in overall charge seeing as he was snatched on their patch, but now we know the Tickett family’s cars were in the Amersham area, I think we bring the whole family in.’

He looked at his watch. ‘We’ve got eight cars full of uniforms, a riot van full of our heftiest lads for the Tickett yard, and a single firearms unit just in case. We don’t expect them to be tooled up, but you never know. That’s forty-six officers in total, split between three locations: the builders’ yard, Rory Tickett’s new house near Haslemere, and Aidan’s home in Upper Rissington. We’re going in at five a.m. I’m going to brief them in half an hour.’

Christopher Tickett was detained after a siege of the yard in which two officers were bitten by guard dogs, and another fell over rusty machinery and gashed his cheek. Aidan Tickett and his girlfriend Jo were arrested without incident in the bedroom of his house in Upper Rissington. But the attempt to take Rory ‘Typhoon’ Tickett went pear-shaped right from the start. The first two patrol cars pulled up outside the wrong house, officers realising their mistake just before using the door ram. The correct address was 14 Rissington Lane, but they had missed the tiny turning and arrived at 14 Lower Rissington Road. By the time they had arrived at the correct address, Gillard was almost there himself. He was in a Ford Focus patrol car with PCs Michael Craven and Alan Dearing when a black SUV swept past them in the other direction.

‘That’s Rory Tickett’s car,’ Gillard said.