‘How do you know her?’

‘I trained with her. She’s not a PCSO anymore, she’s a receptionist at a vet’s in Bedford. We’re good friends on Facebook.’

Gillard wilted under the blizzard of factoids, but tried to store them away in case he was tested on them later. Sam continued Ellen’s tale of being wooed: the surprise bunch of roses, the surprise holiday in Morocco, the makeover and spa weekend and so on.

Later, when they were in bed, Sam told him she had invited Ellen and her new beau over for dinner on Saturday. She smiled sweetly at him, an unspoken request for the workaholic detective inspector to take an evening off.

‘I’m sure it’ll be fine if we find the violinist alive,’ Gillard said. He summarised the case for her. ‘Anyway, it’s looking increasingly likely that she is just playing silly buggers. For what reason I have no idea.’

She put her arms around him, and the warmth of her body and their cosiness together culminated in a bout of gentle, unhurried lovemaking. He fell asleep with her hair fanned across his face, his arm around her shoulder.

He was awoken by his mobile on the bedside table. It was 1.47 a.m. He levered himself upright to glance at the caller. A withheld number. Something made him feel this was important, so he took the call anyway.

A woman with a pronounced German accent requested that he hold the line for the Minister of Justice. Shit. Gillard slipped out of bed as Karl-Otto Ulbricht came on the line. ‘Mr Gillard, I have only just had the chance to look at the CCTV you sent me.’ His voice was stern, with a tremble of upset or possibly anger. ‘You didn’t tell me that you had undertaken a reconstruction of my daughter’s travel.’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand,’ Gillard replied as he walked out onto the darkened landing, stark naked, and gently closed the bedroom door behind him. ‘We haven’t reconstructed her movements.’

‘So how do you explain these falsified videos?’

Gillard suddenly imagined the chief constable right in front of him here on the landing inspecting his naked scrotum prior to removal, if he had by some error sent the wrong video clip to Germany’s justice minister. ‘Sir, what I thought I sent you was a series of clips of your daughter entering Clandon station, boarding the train, and her departure from the platform at Earlsfield.’

‘Yes, but who is it? She is wearing my daughter’s coat and hat and carrying her violin.’

‘I’m sorry, are you saying that the woman on the train is not your daughter?’

‘Of course that’s what I’m saying. It’s not her.’

‘But, sir—’

‘It’s not her, do you hear me? It’s not her! I had expected better from the British police.’ He hung up.

Shit shit shit.

Sam called out to him. ‘What is it?’

‘That was the German Minister of Justice Karl-Otto Ulbricht.’

‘Calling you? Oh my God!’

‘He claims the woman on the train is not his daughter.’