‘And it would be helpful to have an itinerary of your movements for the past week. If it’s not too much trouble.’

This time Richardson narrowed his eyes slightly, as though puzzled by the request. But once again he didn’t demur. ‘I’ll ask my assistant to print it out for you.’

Richardson’s solicitor glanced ostentatiously at his watch. ‘As you know, Detective Inspector, my client has other appointments he needs to get to, but there is one final matter we would like to raise before we wrap things up.’ Lawe reached below the table. He produced a laptop and set it on the surface, opening the screen and angling it towards Fleet. The computer whirred into life, and an image became visible of what looked like CCTV footage on pause.

The solicitor set the video playing, and Fleet leaned closer. The footage was low-quality but full-colour, and showed what appeared to be somebody’s lounge. There was a large sofa wrapped around a coffee table, and a pale, thick-piled rug on the dark wood floor. The camera had been set high in a corner, so that most of the room was visible. The time on the screen showed 01.43, and the date was 5 October.

‘What am I looking at?’ said Fleet, as the time continued to tick by.

Even as he spoke, a figure entered the room through a door in the top left corner of the screen. Their face was covered by a balaclava, and they were dressed all in black.

‘My client’s sitting room,’ said Lawe, in answer to Fleet’s question. ‘Mr Richardson was travelling at the time, and there were contractors carrying out renovations, meaning security wasn’t as tight as it would normally be.’

‘If you want proof that someone is out to get me, Detective Inspector, then here it is,’ put in Richardson. He sounded angry, just as he had when he’d spoken shortly after Fleet first entered the room.

Fleet watched as the figure in black slowly circled Richardson’s living room. They were taking their time – as though they were looking, but not for anything in particular. Nothing was disturbed, nothing touched. The figure moved with an eerie calm, as though it was their own room they were surveying, not somebody else’s.

Fleet’s eyes flicked again to the date stamp in the corner. Ben’s body was discovered on 18 October, but the 5th felt significant in Fleet’s mind for some reason, too. And then he remembered: it was the date the anonymous tip about the location of Ben’s body had been received. The information had taken almost two weeks to work its way through the system.