Slater’s workplace was shockingly basic. The desk, tooled with inlaid leather, was the only decent piece of furniture. The desk drawers had been forced and emptied, each one labelled with a cross-reference to an evidence bag. An unfashionably squat plastic dial handset, circa 1970, lay on the floor, still connected to the wall socket. The client side of the room had some coffee-stained soft chairs, a round glass coffee table, a well-stuffed magazine rack and some dirty mugs. A solitary bluebottle banged its head repeatedly against the window, trying to get out. Gillard could well understand its motivation. This place was a dump. Surprising that Slater had got the Aqua Western contract, when there were bigger, slicker guys in the business.

A hunch was beginning to form in his head.

He picked a handful of magazines from the rack, and spread them over the coffee table. Several editions of Marie Claire reflected the gender of Slater’s usual divorce-job clients. House & Garden, a few copies of Metro, and some holiday brochures.

Italy. Plenty about Italy.

Interesting that Slater, like Arrowsmith, had an interest in Italy. Arrowsmith’s wife was of Italian descent, but what about Slater? Gillard flicked through the dog-eared brochures, from which a few pages looked to have been torn out. Looking around the office, he saw some other Italian influences: a framed photo of Slater and his wife in front of the Colosseum, a hand-painted Rimini ashtray, a book about Pompei and Herculaneum.

Gillard scanned the office for anything else of interest. Nothing.

He scooped up a sheaf of Italy brochures to take with him to Slater’s semi, a five-minute walk away. Gillard let himself in past a police padlock. The place was modern, modestly furnished, with mass-produced furniture and no signs of unexplained wealth. There was, however, more evidence of Italian holidays. The Met had made less mess here than at the office. Slater’s home office had been stripped of its computers and phones, but otherwise the place looked reasonably intact. Not much surprised Gillard, except the metal detector in the garage. That might explain the night-time incursion at the crime scene. It fitted what Hoskins had told him about Slater: opportunistic, with an eye to a quick profit on anything he could find.

It was the kitchen, however, that yielded the breakthrough. A pile of opened post on top of the kitchen table had been neatly stacked. It included an empty envelope, postmarked from Italy. The apparent contents of that envelope, at least to judge by the matching paper, was held to the side of the fridge by an Italy-themed magnet, together with three or four photographs. They showed a whitewashed villa, either under construction or renovation. Slater did not appear in these pictures. Removing them from the fridge, Gillard looked on the back and saw an address in the Apulia region.