Mary Trelease hadn’t been interviewed at all, despite a long and elaborate description she’d given Ruth Bussey of an encounter with a detective from London. All lies. Dunning had called at 15 Megson Crescent several times and got no response. When he finally got round to entering the premises by force, Trelease and Ruth Bussey had already left for Garstead Cottage. Simon had found this out from DC Kevin Prothero, the newest member of Milward’s team, the one to whom she’d assigned the task of dealing with some of the more awkward loose ends. Two of these were Simon and Charlie.

Milward had spoken to Simon once since last Wednesday, on the telephone. Without apologising, she’d explained how wedded she’d been at first to Stephen Elton in the role of chief suspect, and given Simon her reasons, in the manner of someone who’d forgotten she’d been proved wrong. Her ‘thank you’ had been distant and non-specific. Simon would have preferred one that came firmly attached to a mention of he and Charlie having risked their lives and put Milward’s case to bed for her in the process.

‘Look at what we know,’ said Proust. ‘Smith’s been in trouble with the law for most of his life. An alcoholic, a wife-beater, a gambler. Seed’s got a clean slate.’

‘Which is why anyone with a brain’d believe him over Smith,’ Simon pointed out. ‘Len Smith had no reason to kill Mary Trelease. ’ He hadn’t expected this, not on his first day back at work. To be in the thick of things, as if he’d never been gone, arguing his case, as he always did; an unpopular case, as it always was. Proust wasn’t a fool; by now he was surely aware of the extent to which Simon and Charlie had gone this one alone—reporting to no one, with no official authorisation.

When they’d been summoned to the Snowman’s office, neither of them had been in any doubt that a bollocking was coming. Nothing official—Proust wouldn’t want to put his name to the suspension or sacking of anyone the tabloids were calling heroes, and neither would the Chief Super or the Chief Constable—but something that, nevertheless, would let Simon and Charlie know that they would be paying for the sins of their over-inflated egos for a long time to come.

They’d rehearsed their resignation speeches all the way to Proust’s glass cubicle. Sam Kombothekra had looked as surprised as they had when the Snowman had started to talk as if it was business as usual, as if Simon and Charlie had been in the loop all along.