‘There’s certainly more to the relationship than being just good friends, as they’d like us to believe,’ said Fry. ‘Todd wants Sandra to leave her husband and stay with him permanently. But, as for her, well …’ Fry shook her head. ‘Who are we to try to understand other people’s relationships? A lot of us don’t understand our own.’

‘So the business in the car park – what was that all about?’

‘Sandra had arranged to meet Ian Todd in the pub after work, before they went back to his place in Darton Street. But she was kept late at the office by a meeting that over-ran. Naturally, Todd thought she’d changed her mind. He couldn’t get hold of Sandra on her mobile, because she had it turned off while she was in the meeting. So he went to the car park to see if he could catch her on her way home. When he found Sandra’s Skoda on Level 8, he decided to wait for her. And by then, he was out of contact because there was no mobile signal on his network inside that multi-storey.’

‘Why didn’t he wait by Sandra’s car?’ said Hitchens. ‘That would have been the logical thing to do.’

‘He said he didn’t want to give her a chance to get away,’ said Fry. ‘So he waited by the lift. He felt sure she’d come up that way, and he wanted her to see him as soon as the doors opened.’

‘He doesn’t know Sandra quite as well as her husband does, then.’

‘No.’

‘I suppose it all fits. But it’s a pain in the neck that people can’t sort their lives out without giving us all this trouble.’

‘It’s not sorted out quite yet. Mr Todd is seriously pissed off at this moment.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Hitchens. ‘Not only has he been used as a pawn in a row between the Birleys, but he’s been pulled in and questioned by us on suspicion of a serious crime that he didn’t commit.’

Fry remembered the snatch of CCTV footage from the camera in New Street, the two figures walking towards Ian Todd’s car. She recalled a brief struggle, a woman apparently trying to break free from the grasp of a man much bigger and stronger than she was.

‘It won’t do him any harm,’ she said.

Fry had been away from the DI’s office for only a few minutes when Hitchens threw open the door again and shouted for her. When she went back in, he was on the phone. He talked to her while holding the phone to his ear.

‘What’s happened, sir?’

‘There’s been another call.’

‘From the same man?’

‘Sounds like it.’

‘Have you got a trace on it?’

‘What do you think I’m doing?’

Fry folded her arms and waited.