She indicated with her hand that he should help himself and he did, taking a huge bite of the sticky Danish pastry. ‘When did you last eat, Craig?’ she asked.

‘Yesterday breakfast,’ he said through a mouthful of food. ‘I’ve had a bag of crisps, a cereal bar, a banana and an apple since then.’

She waited for him to finish. ‘What I need now, Craig, is a one-paragraph substantiation of Mr Lal’s motive for killing Mrs Tanvi Roy.’

‘I’m guessing, but I think he was sick of hiding in the shadows as Harry’s secret lover. This wedding would have been the end for him. With Mrs Roy out of the way, the pressure for Harry to marry would be over. Or so he thought.’

He looked at her, the intense blue gaze patrolling his face. ‘And your evidence?’

‘Right now? Nothing. Rob Townsend is leading a team searching every email and every text between Lal, Harry and Morag. If there is a conspiracy, we’ll find it.’

Rigby steepled her hands. ‘I was really hoping for something more substantial than this web of conjecture.’ She gave him the full unwavering stare, until he began to wilt. ‘Okay, Craig, for heaven’s sake go and get yourself a few hours’ sleep. I don’t want you driving in this condition, so you can use the service flat here. Tiredness like that leads to errors of judgement. And that’s the last thing we need.’

Gillard nodded and, in front of his boss, promptly dozed off.

Ten miles away, in Ashtead, DC Rob Townsend slipped quietly from Kirsty Mockett’s bed. It was their first night together, and had arisen unexpectedly from a casual drink with colleagues. Rob was a serious and studious officer, not usually the first to score with the opposite sex. The elation he felt at finding himself in the naked embrace of this beautiful woman drew its power from its rarity. But duty called. He’d had a message from Gillard asking him to get in for a nine a.m. meeting at Mount Browne, and a link to a list of all the devices seized from the homes of Harry Roy, Zayan Lal and Morag Fairburn. Desktop computers, laptops, tablets, phones and car satnavs meant a mountain of work for the electronic analysis team. They had barely begun the work on Deepak Tripathi’s devices.

He looked up, and noticed that Kirsty was eyeing him from the bed. A single beckoning finger was enough to get him to replace his phone on the bedside table and lure him back to her warmth.

Detective Inspector Claire Mulholland was leading the nine a.m. incident room meeting in Gillard’s absence.

‘I’ll keep it brief, because this is now a manhunt. We have a strong reason to believe that Zayan Lal both attempted to poison and then brutally assaulted Mrs Roy.’ She pointed to a whiteboard where some details about the man had been hurriedly scrawled in marker pen.

‘He’s thirty-one, UK citizen, lived for the last year and a half in the flat immediately beneath that of Harry Roy, his lover.’ She couldn’t help but notice the curled lip of Colin Hodges. ‘Harry Roy is being held in custody as an accessory, and we are watching the homes of Morag Fairburn and Kiara Roy in case Lal turns up there. DCI Gillard and I will be interviewing each of them later. In the meantime, we are seeking Lal’s vehicle, a distinctive yellow Mini, though if he’s got an ounce of sense he will have dumped it by now. We think we have accounted for every other vehicle in the Roy family that he may have had access to. Okay, let’s look at family and friends.’ She then rapidly ran down the list of Lal’s brothers and sisters, most of whom were grouped around the Blackburn area of Lancashire. ‘He’s got a sister in Reading, who is a catering manager, and a younger brother, who lives in Catford. I’ve called in the help of the appropriate police forces to assist us, plus British Transport Police. We have his passport, but I’ve still alerted the Border Force.’