‘Kombothekra said Gibbs was needed elsewhere,’ Simon told her, ‘Reading between the lines, he didn’t trust him with it.’

‘He doesn’t think Gibbs is capable of checking if someone’s alive or dead?’

‘Mary Trelease wouldn’t let him in,’ said Simon. ‘He didn’t see the house. Most importantly, he didn’t see the master bedroom, the one facing the street. According to what Seed told Gibbs yesterday, that’s where he left Mary Trelease’s dead body, in the bed in that room . . .’

‘Hold on. When did he say he’d killed her?’

‘He wouldn’t say. Nor why, though he did say how: he strangled her.’

‘Ruth Bussey said Seed had told her he’d killed Mary Trelease years ago.’

Simon blinked a few times. ‘Sure?’

‘Me or her? I’m sure she said it, and she seemed convinced that was what he’d told her. I think she quoted his exact words as, “Years ago, I killed a woman called Mary Trelease.” ’

‘Makes no sense,’ Simon muttered, turning to face the window. Which was why Sam Kombothekra hadn’t wanted Gibbs on it, thought Charlie. Most of what CID were called upon to investigate had some logic behind it. People hurt or killed each other over money, or drugs, usually some combination of the two. They stole from shops, disturbed the peace or terrorised the neighbourhood because they saw it as the only way out of a hopeless life—it was grim, but you could see the reasoning.

Charlie was about to ask Simon what he’d meant about Seed trying to use logic to convince him Mary Trelease was dead, but Simon was already saying, ‘He killed her years ago, left her body in the front bedroom at 15 Megson Crescent, and expects it to be there, undisturbed, for us to find several years later when he decides to confess? No.’ Charlie watched him junk the hypothesis. ‘Trelease didn’t live in that house years ago. She bought it in 2006, from a family called Mills.’

‘That’s two years ago,’ she pointed out, knowing what the response would be. Would she ever be able to hear ‘2006’ without experiencing a small earthquake in the pit of her stomach?

‘The phrase “years ago” implies longer,’ said Simon, on cue. ‘You know it does.’

She couldn’t argue. Ruth Bussey had said Seed had confessed to her last December, at which point 2006 would only have been ‘last year’. ‘What else did he tell you, apart from that Trelease’s body would be on the bed in the master bedroom and that he strangled her?’

‘In the bed, not on. He said she was naked, she’d been naked when he killed her. And her body was in the middle of the bed, not on one side or the other—he made a big point of that. Apart from saying several times that he didn’t rape her, that was all he told me.’

‘Ruth Bussey mentioned none of this.’ Charlie pulled a cigarette out of a packet on the window-sill. She had nothing to light it with. ‘Was he in the bedroom with her when she took her clothes off? Had they gone to bed together?’