‘He’d never be able to enforce that agreement,’ Gillard said. ‘Especially not now.’

‘I read that he is accused of some fraud, something connected to Empire of Spice. Is that right?’ Kirsty asked.

Gillard nodded. ‘That’s right.’ He looked down at his papers, and then asked probably the most important question. ‘So you haven’t spoken to him since you left the property company?’

‘No.’ She didn’t meet his gaze.

‘Ms Mockett, take a look at this. I know you’ll recognise it because you’ve been on the training course.’ He passed across a sheet of paper.

‘Oh, shit.’ She rolled her eyes, and sat back heavily in the chair, groaning.

‘It’s a call log extracted from Deepak’s mobile phone,’ Gillard said. ‘You will notice your landline—’

‘I refused! He offered me money and I said no. I don’t know what he’s told you.’

Hoskins smiled. ‘He hasn’t told us anything, we didn’t even know about this connection until we got the phone analysis.’

‘So why did Deepak contact you after all those years?’ Gillard asked.

Kirsty sighed. ‘He’d read about me being a witness to the murder of Mrs Roy. He tracked me down by ringing my old flatmate and getting her to give him my up-to-date number. I didn’t want to speak to him, but he turned on the old charm and explained that he worked for the same company as his friend Mrs Roy, which I hadn’t realised. He said he was approaching me on behalf of the family, because they felt that the police were withholding information about who the murderer was. He laid it on pretty heavily about the grief they were all feeling, and said he wanted me to feed him all the information from the investigation that I could, just to put their minds at rest.’

‘How much did he offer you?’ Hoskins asked.

‘I don’t even know. I hung up before he had said. He didn’t believe me when I told him that I couldn’t actually get access anyway, that I wasn’t involved in the investigation.’

‘But you were involved,’ Hoskins said. ‘You had access to the forensic evidence found in Mrs Roy’s flat. You could have planted evidence or removed it.’

‘But I didn’t, I promise you, I didn’t. I told him to leave me alone.’

‘You did the right thing,’ Gillard said, thanking Kirsty for her time and allowing her to leave.

Hoskins watched her depart, his jaw jutting with an irascible frustration.

‘Carl, I think she was telling the truth,’ Gillard said, once they were alone.

‘Okay, boss, then tell me who poisoned Hodges? His missus told me that after coming home on Friday he had a Sainsbury’s steak and kidney pie with her and the kids. He told her that after having breakfast in the canteen with us, he only had the cake. Nothing else. He didn’t have anything that no one else had, just coffee from the machine like we all do. The only thing he had to drink in the evening was a couple of cans in front of the TV.’