‘A thirty-three-year-old man, named locally as Jason Waddington, was arrested here at his home on Wednesday evening. This pleasant neighbourhood is just a few minutes’ walk from the parkland where Mrs Tanvi Roy was so brutally bludgeoned to death on Sunday morning. Residents describe their shock that someone capable of such a crime could live here. According to neighbours Waddington is a keen cyclist and bodybuilder. He had a tempestuous relationship with his former girlfriend, who moved out several months ago.’

The reporter then turned to a middle-aged woman standing to his right. ‘You live next door, I understand. What was he like?’

‘Well, she was very nice. He was all right to your face, but he used to hit her. I heard it and I used to hear her crying. I called the police no end of times. It doesn’t surprise me at all that he did something like this.’ The woman folded her arms, the judgement given.

Gillard rolled his eyes. ‘So much for keeping his name out of the papers.’

‘Why should we, sir? We normally name them once charged, don’t we?’

‘Normally, Carl. This decision came from the top, so we better stick with it.’

Hoskins shrugged and left. Gillard dropped his face into his hands. A microscopic trace on a single glove was now snowballing into a major miscarriage of justice. Waddington’s life would never be the same – that was already true. He might be a nasty girlfriend-beater, but in all probability he wasn’t a murderer. Unless Gillard could find the man who really did wield the hand weight, Jason Waddington might become the new Barry George. An innocent man who would never escape the connection with an unsolved high-profile killing.

DC Adrian Blake was doing his plainclothes stint on Ashtead Common, sitting on a bench within sight of the crime scene. He’d been there since dawn, having taken over from Hoskins and Gough, who seemed to be having all the fun. Blake’s cover was to be scruffy and unshaven, with two dirty carrier bags full of clothing, and a couple of empty cider bottles. Clearly down, but not yet out. Most dog walkers had given him a wide berth, eyeing him sideways after they had passed. Blake amused himself by muttering ‘stuck-up wankers’ and other insults to the most well-heeled.

His cover was temporarily blown at one p.m. when the Corporation of London ranger, a guy called Andy, brought him a mug of tea and a bacon sandwich. They both sat there watching a gradual trickle of people add to the mound of flowers and cards that well-wishers had brought. Andy was keen to resume the discussion about the two people who had been caught having sex at the crime scene last night, when DC Blake raised a cautionary finger and inclined his head to the right, where a couple of hundred yards away a cyclist was approaching on a mountain bike. The man was white, middle-aged and with fair hair that contrasted with his tan. By his wobbly progress he didn’t seem to be particularly practised on two wheels.