‘Domestic incident. The lads were telling me this morning. A couple of PCs came out here following a 999 call. From over there.’

Easton pointed to the house opposite.

‘The call was anonymous but the house is being rented to an Ed Francis.’

‘Rented?’

Easton shrugged.

‘So what happened?’ Dani asked.

‘No arrests made. Seems the PCs believed Grant was beating up his wife initially. She’s got a right shiner, apparently. The Grants both denied it was the professor, claimed the disturbance was down to their son, but that they didn’t want to press charges. The PCs didn’t believe that to start with, but felt there wasn’t much else they could do. The son by then was nowhere to be seen.’

Easton had certainly been doing his homework. Even though she hadn’t said it to his face, she was becoming more and more impressed with his ongoing diligence.

‘Ok. Let’s see who’s home. Go up onto the drive.’

Easton drove through the already open gates and parked the car up on the gravel driveway. They stepped from the car and made their way to the wide front door of the house. Dani rang the bell then knocked and waited.

Nothing.

She heard Easton stepping back and crunching across the gravel. She turned and saw he was looking up and across the house for signs of life. He shrugged.

Dani rang and knocked again. They stood and waited but there was still silence from inside the house. Dani was about to turn to head back to the car when she heard the lock on the door release, the door opened and she was looking into the eyes of a woman.

‘Mrs Grant?’ Dani asked.

The woman looked Dani up and down. In her late forties or early fifties, she was about the same height as Dani with wavy blonde hair, blue eyes and a light dusting of make-up that didn’t do a very good job of hiding the black and purple flesh around her eye.

‘Yes, I’m Mrs Grant.’

‘I’m DI Stephens, and this is DS Easton, from West Midlands Police. Is your son, Ethan, home? We’d like to speak to him.’

‘What on earth has he done now?’

‘Is he home?’

‘No. He’s not. He doesn’t live here anymore.’

‘Oh,’ Dani said. She turned to Easton but he just looked back at her blankly.

‘This is the address he gave on his arrest forms,’ Easton said to Dani.

‘Arrest forms?’ Mrs Grant said. ‘Can you please tell me what’s going on here, detectives?’

‘Do you think we could come in to talk?’ Dani said. Chances were that Mary Grant had nothing of use to add to the whole situation, but they’d made the trip, so they may as well make the most of it. ‘We shouldn’t take much of your time.’