Gillard held his head in his hands. The new explanation didn’t make any more sense than the old one. Because as every member of the CID had seen, in the ‘case of the flying slipper’, someone really had stolen the car from Halliday. He couldn’t have stolen it from himself, because there was CCTV showing him running out to stop the car. And CCTV doesn’t lie.

Moreover, some big bloke in a car coat and ski mask had used the vehicle to try to run him down. And that was well after it was stolen. At a time when Kyle Halliday was still on crutches. Either way, there must now be a big question mark over Halliday’s witness account.

The detective felt his brain was going to explode. Worst of all, none of this conjecture seemed to bring him any closer to finding Sam.

John Perry had been off duty from six. No longer the detective inspector, he could get back to his freelance operation. He was sitting in his VW Polo just down the road from 16 Wensleydale Walk. At 6.42 p.m. the same athletic-looking, dark-haired man he had seen before exited the house, got into the black Range Rover and drove off. Perry was tempted to follow him, but there would be other opportunities for that. He had seen a woman’s face at the window, and thought it might be a good opportunity to speak to her. Angela Wright, thirty-three, a company director at AWL Property. He’d found out quite a lot about her from LinkedIn. Perry wondered if she knew what her partner’s ‘hobbies’ were. He had the perfect excuse to get a little closer.

He waited a few minutes and then went up and rang the doorbell.

The woman who answered was tall and arrestingly attractive, seemingly dressed for a night out.

‘Detective Inspector John Perry,’ he said, showing his card.

‘Is it about the stolen car? Because if it is, Kyle’s just gone. He’ll be away in Madrid on business for a couple of days.’

‘I just need to double-check a few details with you.’

She sighed and rolled her deep blue eyes before showing him in. She had long wavy dark hair, one of those lacy black blouses that hint at the underwear beneath, and a grey knee-length pleated skirt. With the high heels she had at least four inches on him. Perry was juggling with unfamiliar emotions. His years as a schoolteacher, seeing in pupils the damage caused by self-image worries, had stopped him judging women by their appearance. After leaving education and joining the police he had been shocked by the outdated attitude amongst male colleagues, whose treatment of women was often, to put it mildly, Neanderthal. But right now, his own testosterone was surfacing. This long dormant part of him wanted to try to seduce this woman, to treat her like Kyle Halliday had treated Mel. He caught a glimpse of himself in the hall mirror, and common sense intervened. A thinning-haired, paunchy forty-two-year-old with a hangdog expression who was, he had recently been assured, under-equipped to please any woman. Ugly, but definitely angry.