Harry stared at the paperwork, blinking back his disbelief. ‘This can’t be right. He was visiting relatives in Orissa. He told me.’

‘I’m afraid he lied to you. This,’ she said, tapping the e-gate immigration receipt, ‘is the proof that he arrived at Gatwick on the day before she was killed, and here is his embarkation record back to Dubai on the day after her death.’

Harry’s eyes had begun to water. ‘This can’t be true. Zayan adored her. We all did.’

‘She stood in the way of him being a permanent and accepted part of your life,’ Gillard said.

‘But this doesn’t make any sense. Zayan and I had agreed—’

‘Mr Roy, please,’ Shah said, reaching for his client’s arm. ‘Just say “no comment”.’

‘No, I have to answer this calumny. Look, we had agreed to set up then sabotage this arranged marriage. He didn’t need to kill her.’

‘But after this marriage, there would be another one, and another one,’ Gillard said. ‘I think he wanted to kill off the source of his unhappiness.’

‘I will never accept that,’ Harry said.

Gillard looked at this smitten man and believed him. He would never accept the truth.

He was going to release Harry Roy. There was no better way, he figured, to lead them to their quarry than let loose the person he loved.

‘What have you found to tie this wedding planner to the murder?’

Rob Townsend looked up at Kirsty’s question as they were finishing a pizza in the canteen. Their Thursday lunchtime conversation had roamed over all kinds of subjects for the half-hour of their break. He looked into her soft brown eyes and said, ‘Nothing yet, but there’s loads to do. I’ve done all the search histories on the Roy’s family’s phones, but we’re only just getting started on their PCs and laptops at home. Since we raided Zayan Lal’s home, we’ve got all his devices to do as well.’

‘You’ll be looking for searches on thallium I suppose?’

He looked at her. ‘How do you know about that?’

She laughed. ‘I was on the CSI team that took apart Mrs Roy’s flat in Leatherhead, and sat and watched at the Guildford lab as it was tested. I’d never have guessed about a poisoned deodorant though. That’s too clever.’

‘Well, it seems Lal is a clever guy. There was no trace of thallium found in the flat, nor of anything connecting him to the murder.’

‘Did he study chemistry or anything?’

‘Not that we can trace. He did catering at college, and art. But he was also a pretty good gymnast.’ Townsend got his phone out and showed Kirsty a YouTube video of Lal, aged sixteen, competing on the parallel bars in some regional competition. ‘That’s how he got away from Gillard, by leaping across the void from one balcony to another lower one from the eleventh floor of a tower block.

‘I’d love to see a video of that,’ she laughed. ‘Gillard looks seriously fit, but this guy sounds like something else.’