Finally, that week saw progress being made quickly. On Tuesday DC Corey Williams’ team, now with full assistance from Hampshire Constabulary and the SFO, had been notified of a payment from Aqua Western to Buckingham Pallets Ltd, one of the companies owned by the Ticketts. Tracing it back, it turned out to have been sent from a contingency fund at Aqua Western which had been set up to pay the victims of sewage flooding. By Wednesday it was discovered that Kelvin Arrowsmith’s signature covered more than two dozen different accounts at the water company. The payment reference was compensation allotted to Rissington Common households. Shireen had described it as a ‘breathtaking act of nerve to divert cash away from victims’.

The fraud investigation had gradually tied together the Tickett family, Ozzy Blanchard and Kelvin Arrowsmith. Evidence was mounting, and the CPS was impressed. DCI Stella Anderson’s name was mentioned in glowing terms.

But for Gillard, nothing was settled until everything was settled. At the top of that to-do list was trying to find the identity of the victim, something that had eluded them since the very beginning. They now knew it wasn’t Ozzy Blanchard, and strongly suspected it was Tomas Valdovas, but had no proof. He was aware that Rainy was spending hours on the phone to the liaison officer in Vilnius, trying to get hold of a DNA sample for Valdovas, and then get it couriered back to London for testing against the samples from Dove Cottage. On that side, things were just moving too slowly. It was late on Thursday afternoon, and Rainy was clearing her desk. She was due to knock off at four to pick up her son from school, and had her bag over her shoulder when her desk phone rang. Gillard looked up and watched from his office as she reached across and clamped the receiver under her chin. Almost immediately, her body language changed from casual to upright, and she turned around to him, beckoning him over.

‘Yes, that’s right. It is? Fantastic! Thank you.’ She hung up.

‘What have you got?’ Gillard said as he approached.

‘It’s confirmed, sir. The two samples match.’

Finally, they could be sure. The man killed at Dove Cottage, buried in the garden, and then reburied amongst the willows by the River Wey was indeed Tomas Valdovas. The Lithuanian barman’s DNA matched the bloodstains on the wall and on the spine of the book, and it also matched those recovered from the roots of the teeth.

‘That gives us some more pointers,’ Gillard said. ‘First off, it underlines Aidan Tickett’s involvement, and it gives us an approximate date of death, in the days running up to the date of the reservation.’