‘On the contrary, Mr Slater, I suspect a jury will find it quite convincing. Moreover, we are able to show that Kelvin Arrowsmith bought you a £100,000 holiday property in Italy, and we contend that was in exchange for the hit on Ozzy Blanchard. Not an easy transaction to trace, but we now have all the details we need, including the Italian title deeds. Arrowsmith will be going down for a series of frauds which he unsuccessfully tried to pin solely on his partner in crime, Ozzy Blanchard.’

‘That holiday home is totally legit,’ Slater said. ‘I paid for it myself.’ He turned to his brief as if attempting to convince her. ‘You know, I was standing in the shell of my new swimming pool, talking to contractors, when the Italian cops came. They didn’t even give me five minutes to change.’

Gillard then formally charged Slater with murder and theft of a firearm. ‘There may be more charges coming if we think you were in on the Aqua Western fraud. You certainly benefitted from it,’ he said.

The detective was smiling to himself as he left the building and headed for his car. The sun was warm on his back, and he took off his jacket and slung it over his shoulder as he unlocked the vehicle. Both killings were solved, one a conspiracy following an accident, the other a deliberate slaying to cover-up a fraud. The perpetrators were now ready to be remanded into custody, job done, bar weeks of paperwork. He squinted into the sky, where a jet was just heading off to some warmer clime. He wondered whether he might even be able to leave work on time today. It would make a nice change.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Gillard was relaxing at home that evening, having got in at seven o’clock, not quite on time but reasonable enough. Sam was able to report that everything was quiet across the way, where Aunt Trish had now settled in. Over a glass of wine, he told her about the competing confessions that came to explain the death of the Lithuanian barman Tomas Valdovas.

‘So it was all an accident?’ she asked.

‘In a way, it was. No doubt being punched in the head by a former middleweight boxer did nothing for Valdovas’s sense of balance. So if an energetic five-year-old was bouncing up and down on his shoulders while he ran around, it’s quite possible to believe he lost his balance and toppled backwards onto the weapon. Stranger things have happened.’

‘Vicky Willow and her husband presumably convinced the Tickett brothers that his death was their fault, to rope them in on a cover-up?’

‘Yes. They didn’t want their child to be traumatised by the knowledge of having caused a death, so they tried to pretend to Callum that Tom was still alive.’

‘So how did they discover where he’d been buried?’