‘There’s some evidence that Christina Chorley might have been a practitioner,’ I said and explained Dr Walid and Vaughan’s findings, which led to Stephanopoulos asking the same questions I had. So I shared the same lack of answers that Dr Walid and Vaughan had given me – this is known in the police as intelligence focusing. First you identify what you don’t know. The next step is to go and find some likely sod and question them until they give you some answers. In the old days we weren’t that bothered whether the answers had anything to do with the facts, but these days we’re much more picky.

Stephanopoulos sent us over to Seawoll’s office.

‘Yeah, okay,’ he said. ‘But this had better be done with some fucking tact and diplomacy.’

*

Martin Chorley didn’t actually live in London, but out beyond the M25 in a two million quid eighteenth century rectory near High Wycombe. Fortunately me and Guleed were saved a schlepp up the M40 because Mr Chorley, having formally identified his daughter that morning, had moved on to his place of work in the City. He’d outright refused a Family Liaison Officer – plenty do – but had already been statemented as soon as he’d made the identification. Because, for police officers, ‘close relative’ frequently rhymes with ‘prime suspect’, Mr Chorley had already accumulated quite a large section in HOLMES. From that me and Guleed got all the salient details — birth, school, degree, work history, the big family home and the complimentary chairman’s flat above the office in Little Britain.

‘What, no villa in Tuscany?’ I asked.

‘He prefers America,’ said Guleed, who was going through twenty years’ worth of travel documentation. ‘Washington, New York, Miami, couple of trips to Atlanta – most of these are going to be work related.’

As were the trips to Berlin, Paris and Geneva – in his capacity as chairman of something called the Public Policy Foundation. There’d been a helpful note from whoever had run the initial check – Influential think tank, watch it. I checked the address and me and Guleed headed off to put our sensitivity training to the test.

The wind had picked up by the afternoon and on Ludgate Hill the tea-break smokers were huddled under the inadequate awnings – designed that way on modern buildings to discourage rough sleepers – trying to get their nicotine fix before hypothermia set in.

City traffic is always grumpy in the rain, and so was Guleed when my shortcut to avoid St Paul’s put us behind an Ocado delivery van for twenty minutes. Fortunately it peeled off before we hit the Rotunda and we did a quick spin around the Museum of London and into the bit of Little Britain that runs beside Postman’s Park.