While I was talking to Reynard the Unreliable, Nightingale had popped out with Guleed to extend Jeremy Beaumont-Jones, and his lovely daughter Phoebe, an invitation to help the police with their inquiries. That way they could run the whole Trace Implicate or Eliminate routine free from the fear that he’d turn up and drop another building on us. And, should that or any other equally gruesome thing happen elsewhere while he was with us, we could safely eliminate him from our inquiries.

By agreement we all paused for coffee and scheming, and I asked Guleed what she thought of Phoebe’s father.

‘Actually he comes across as a bit dim,’ said Guleed

‘A perfectly pleasant fellow,’ said Nightingale. ‘But not what you’d call a world-class brain.’

Which just goes to show that all a degree from Oxford guarantees is that the recipient went to Oxford and turned up for some lessons.

‘And it was a rather poor second at that,’ said Nightingale.

It seemed that our Mr Beaumont-Jones had been more interested in the Oxford Revue than his Philosophy, Politics and Economics, although he’d also failed to generate a career in cutting topical satire.

By the end of the morning, while we’d confirmed that he’d been booked in at an exclusive West End hotel at the time the Faceless Man was subjecting me to an involuntary swimming lesson with the Americans, we couldn’t confirm that he’d actually been in the hotel. Not only did the hotel in question not CCTV its visitors going in and out, discretion being part of the service, but we also hadn’t managed to track down ‘Anna’ the ‘open minded blonde’ that Jeremy Beaumont-Jones claimed to have bunged a grand to for a night of if not passion then a really good simulation of it. It didn’t help that he couldn’t remember which escort agency she’d come from, and had paid in cash so there was no electronic record. He hadn’t booked this young woman of negotiable affection on his own phone, and there was no record of his making an outside call from the phone in his room.

It was a fair bet that someone at the hotel knew exactly which agency represented the young women who came and went, and David Carey had been actioned to take ‘statements’ from the staff until such time as someone coughed. Once that happened, Carey had declared, he was willing to work all hours tracking down escort agencies and taking statements from ‘the girls’.

‘That’s just how dedicated I am to this job,’ he’d said.

‘Rather him than me,’ said Guleed. ‘That’s a dreary job.’

Jeremy Beaumont-Jones’ alibi for this Monday afternoon’s dismemberment in the park was equally porous. But walking around without an alibi was not sufficient grounds to charge either father or daughter. Or at least, it isn’t if the suspect has a decent lawyer.