‘Yes. And presumably the other vehicle was parked in the main car park, or possibly at the hotel.’

‘What about CCTV at the services itself?’

‘Well, there’s plenty of it, but it’s mostly focused on the commercial side, the entrance to the Moto building, the petrol station and so on. I asked Thames Valley if they’d seen any sign of Ozzy or Crystal at Chieveley, but they haven’t forwarded me anything of interest. Of course they are probably still looking through the footage from dozens of cameras.’

‘Are ye thinking that Ozzy and Crystal were still travelling together?’

‘I don’t know. They were sharing that vehicle. But if Crystal was there, surely she would have raised the alarm. Not only if she witnessed the shooting, but also if they were separated, or he was abducted.’

Rainy shook her head. ‘This case is doing my head in, sir. We’ve a body we can’t identify, apparently killed in a house where no one was the tenant, by an Anglo-Saxon blade no one can find. We’ve three likely lads banged up for kidnapping an executive from the water company and leaving him marinating in a sewer, and we’ve got a second body, of another water company employee, killed near a motorway services, but not by the lads who abducted the first.’

‘That’s a good summary. Somehow, eventually, we’ve got to make sense of it. And I’ve got an idea how we can start.’

The search for the killer of Ozzy Blanchard had originally fallen to Thames Valley Police given the location of the body near Chieveley Services, but it was now handed back to Surrey Police following a conference call between the chief constables of each force. Gillard’s team had a pre-existing interest in the victim, and his girlfriend Crystal Willow. But that didn’t mean they had the resources to cope with this ever-enlarging inquiry. Radar Dobbs had provided just three extra bodies, recently qualified trainees, to help with the ever-mounting workload.