At least, that was what Fleet tried to tell himself. The truth was, Holly’s opinion remained the standard by which he judged almost everything, even if these days he had to imagine what her opinion might be.

He focused on the tip of his cigarette, and turned his thoughts back to the case. He thought of Ben, and the way his body had been hidden, and the anonymous tip-off Fleet had mentioned to Randy. Unusually for the pathologist, he’d failed to ask the most pertinent question: why had they taken the tip seriously in the first place? Sure, it had taken a couple of weeks to work its way through the system, and for a young DC to finally bring it to Fleet’s desk, but when it had, and Fleet had looked back at the original file, a single line had convinced him it was worth following up. Six words, in fact, to do with the game of hide-and-seek Ben and his friends had reportedly been playing at the time of his disappearance.

It was never really a game, the sender had said.

Just that.

The message had contained directions to Ben’s body, and that single, one-line postscript. Perhaps if the sender had gone into more detail, Fleet might have written it off as a hoax. Lord knew plenty of those had accumulated in the file over the years as well, and most had heavy-handedly regurgitated details that had obviously been gleaned from the press.

But this note had struck Fleet as different. Something about the message had chimed with his own natural scepticism that a group of fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds would have been playing anything as innocent as hide-and-seek. As such, he had sent a couple of uniforms he trusted out to the school. Randy and his team had quickly been required to follow.

‘Boss?’

Fleet raised his head. Nicky had finished her phone call and was walking towards the car.

‘That was Callum Richardson’s personal assistant,’ she said. ‘How would you feel about a trip to London?’

‘About the same as I’d feel about a trip to the dentist,’ Fleet replied, as he ground his cigarette underfoot.

‘Oh, come on, boss. It’ll be fun. If there’s time I’ll take you to the zoo. And who knows? You might even get to see the Queen!’

‘Why? Is she mates with Callum Richardson, too?’

By all accounts, Richardson had more connections these days than a telephone junction box. And now it seemed that, even though he was a person of interest in an investigation into the murder of a teenage boy, Fleet and Nicky were being obliged to go to him.