Fleet had moved closer in, too. He’d removed a photograph of the boy from his jacket pocket, and he was trying to reconcile the image with all that was left of Ben now. The photo was the one that had been released to the press at the time of Ben’s disappearance. The boy wasn’t smiling. Not in the full, sparkly-eyed manner most newspaper editors favoured when it came to missing persons. There was only a slight curl to his thin lips, a tightness around his sea-grey eyes that could have been either wary or disdainful. It was only a headshot, but the boy’s school uniform was just about visible: the lapels of his navy-blue blazer with their gold edging, and the strange, high-collared white shirt, reminding Fleet of a priest’s attire. He was a good-looking kid, if not conventionally so. With his pale skin and high cheekbones, and his foppish hair almost curtaining one of his eyes, he could have grown up to be a lead singer in a nineties indie rock band. Which was doubtless the look he’d been going for, given the date the photograph would have been taken.

‘How the hell did you end up with this one, Rob?’

Randy was looking over Fleet’s shoulder. His voice was unexpectedly kind, as though for once he wasn’t probing for information but was simply asking as a friend. Fleet didn’t have many – most of the people he and Holly had spent time with had been Holly’s mates and their partners, and other than Nicky there were few people Fleet was close to on the force – and he found himself oddly moved by Randy’s concern. He showed the man half a smile.

‘Luck,’ he said. ‘Misfortune. I’m still trying to decide which. But there was an anonymous email to Crimestoppers, purporting to give details of where Ben’s body was hidden. Eventually it worked its way to us – and needless to say, it checked out.’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ said Randy. ‘What I meant was, what are you doing with this case in the first place? The last I heard, after that business in the woods, you’d been …’ Randy paused, clearly searching for a term that would tactfully describe what had happened to Fleet since the Sadie Saunders case just over a year earlier. ‘Seconded,’ Randy settled on.