She and Dabs thanked PC Turner for his help. As he left, the low-loader turned up to take the burnt-out Cortina to the car pound. While Dabs spoke to the truck driver, Jane decided to have a look in Selsdon and Felstead Road, to see if there were any parking restrictions and if the robbers could have parked a changeover car there.

As she walked off the estate into Blake Hall Road she noticed a block of four-storey flats opposite, called the Mallards, of which at least forty overlooked the entrance to Edgar House. Similarly, there was also Harley Court, next to the Mallards, which was a three-storey block of about forty flats on the corner of Blake Hall Road and Selsdon Road. She could see that some of the flats also overlooked part of Felstead Road and realised that the house-to-house enquiries would have to be widened, in case anyone in the other flats had seen the two men with a holdall or anything suspicious that might help the investigation. She made some notes in her pocket notebook to give PC Murray, beginning to wonder why he had been told by Kingston to organise the house-to-house enquiries.

Jane crossed over into Selsdon Road and saw there were fourteen garages at the rear of Harley Court, and none of them were numbered. She spoke to a middle-aged male resident she saw coming out of the rear of the flats, who said the council owned the garages and rented them out, some to people who didn’t even live in Harley Court. Jane made another note in her pocket notebook that this would also need to be followed up with the council, as any changeover car could have been left in one of these garages.

As Jane crossed Blake Hall Road towards Felstead Road she noticed the position of the bus stop, and an island in the middle of the road. She thought to herself that if the two men had parked a changeover car at the rear of Harley Court, they would have crossed the road before passing the bus stop and not been in the position they were when the elderly lady saw them. The first five metres on either side of Felstead Road had double yellow lines and then the parking was unrestricted. The sides and back garden fences of numbers 21 and 23 Blake Hall Road ran along Felstead Road for about thirty metres on either side, which meant that stretch of the road was not really overlooked, other than through a couple of side windows at 21 and 23 Blake Hall Road. Jane thought it seemed a likely place to leave a changeover car inconspicuously parked, as a short distance up the road there were rows of large semi-detached Edwardian style houses with driveways and street parking that was overlooked by the residents.