But the text wasn’t from Holly, it was from Randy, letting Fleet know that he would be submitting his autopsy report on Lance Wheeler later today. His opinion hadn’t changed, he said, but more had come to light that Fleet would probably want to discuss. He’d be at the school all day if Fleet wanted to meet him there.

‘Send the techies a copy anyway,’ Fleet instructed Nicky. ‘You never know, we might get lucky. But my hunch is we’ve got as much from the footage as we’re going to, at least in terms of making a definitive ID.’

He moved towards the window, leaving Nicky staring at the screen. Fleet’s office was on the first floor of the building, six storeys below Superintendent Burton’s. While Burton enjoyed a view across the city, with a corridor between the buildings all the way to the docks, Fleet’s panorama extended approximately twenty feet, as far as the rusting fire escape of the apartment block next door. But that was fine by Fleet – he knew Burton had probably assigned him the office as further punishment for what had happened during the Sadie Saunders affair, but the superintendent didn’t know about Fleet’s less than cosy relationship with heights. It wasn’t something Fleet tended to advertise, as – for the most part – it didn’t affect his ability to do his job. And anyway, there was nothing he could do to change it. He’d been afraid of heights for as long as he could remember.

‘Tell me again what Callum Richardson said about Melissa?’ Nicky said.

Fleet turned to face her. ‘He said she wasn’t stable. And that when she was at Beaconsfield, she and Lance Wheeler were obsessed with trying to get the school shut down. That they would have burned it to the ground if they could have. And he intimated that it had been more than just talk.’

Nicky stood up straighter and folded her arms. ‘He didn’t just come out and say it? Why not, I wonder? If there was something he wanted you to know, why bother playing games?’

‘That seems to be a bit of a pattern,’ said Fleet grimly. ‘Don’t you think? And besides, since when have you known a politician to talk plainly about anything? Particularly one as slippery as Callum Richardson.’

Nicky gave a sniff.

‘So what do you think?’ she said, after a pause. ‘Forget what Richardson told you for the moment. Just in terms of Melissa. She was friends with Ben. She was one of the last three people to see him alive …’

‘That we know about.’