‘Yes, ma’am,’ Easton said, his voice sullen but stern, his face just starting to crease with anger. She hadn’t intended her words to come out quite so coldly, and inwardly she cringed at her own brusqueness, but she said nothing of it. ‘I don’t think they’ve got anything to do with this. I’ve spoken to them, I saw how shaken they were. Unless you’re trying to tell me otherwise.’

Dani held his eye for a few seconds. ‘Ok. Good. So what else?’

‘The body is still in there.’ Easton indicated to the tent. ‘The pathologist too.’

Dani nodded. Although a pathologist would perform a forensic post-mortem on every murder victim, there generally wasn’t a need for one to be called to a scene. Not unless there were particularly unusual circumstances – a badly decomposed body, for example. That call was the Senior Investigating Officer’s to make. As SIO on this case, Dani, perhaps feeling rusty after so long on the sidelines, had wanted to err on the side of caution for this one, particularly given some of the details relayed to her earlier.

‘Who’s the pathologist?’ she asked.

‘Jack Ledford.’

Dani groaned inwardly. Well, perhaps her decision to call out a pathologist was about to come back to bite her. He was sure to tell her straight if he felt his time was being wasted unnecessarily.

‘Ok, so tell me what you know so far.’

‘The victim was stabbed twice,’ Easton said. ‘Both times in the torso. Looks like she was first attacked out on the street.’

Easton pointed over to a small pool of dried blood on the pavement slabs, from which a thin streak of blood wormed away through the gate to where the white tent was erected.

‘And what does that tell you?’ Dani asked.

‘The blood trail?’

Dani nodded.

‘It’s not massive. Perhaps she wasn’t stabbed there, but there was some sort of attack or fight. She’s got a nasty gash on her head which maybe explains the blood on the street. Then either she was dragged from that spot by the attacker or she crawled from there into the garden herself.’

‘Which do you think?’

‘I’d say she was dragged there.’

‘Why?’

‘Because of the grazes on her back. It looks like the two stab wounds were then delivered in the garden, given the amount of blood there.’

Dani nodded and tried to show no reaction to the grim words. His instincts seemed sound enough at least.

‘Let’s go and see what Ledford has for us then.’

They headed to the white tent and Dani discreetly pulled across the opening, trying not to let the gawkers by the police tape get a view of the inside.