In plain sight. McNab remembered someone else from his past who had been hiding in plain sight during the Stone-warrior case. Eventually McNab had realized that, but it had taken too long and cost more than one life.

‘You’re telling me Karen Marshall is alive?’ he checked.

‘She was alive until late afternoon yesterday.’

‘Nothing from last night or today?’

‘Not so far.’ Ollie took a bite from the iced doughnut McNab had brought him.

So Karen Marshall wasn’t dead or in the hands of a kidnapper after the scene at Rowan Cottage. At least until twelve or so hours ago. McNab tried to take this as a positive, though a lot could have happened in those missing hours.

Ollie continued, ‘Also, I think there’s something wrong with her left arm. Look –’ he pointed again to the screen – ‘she’s holding it oddly.’

‘We think she was injured in the cottage,’ McNab said. ‘A knife wound, perhaps self-inflicted.’

Ollie nodded. ‘That could be it. But there’s something else about these images.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Both in the queue and the cafe, there’s a guy, the same guy, in the background of the footage.’

‘Show me,’ McNab demanded.

‘He has his back to us, so I can’t show you his face, but I can recognize, as you know, more than just faces.’ Ollie indicated who he was on about, prompting McNab to go through his peering routine again.

‘His stance is the same.’ Ollie endeavoured to explain his reasoning. ‘The set of his shoulders, the form of what we can see of his body. He’s tall, maybe close to six feet, and he’s not young, not by the clothes he wears and the way he moves.’

‘What age?’ McNab said, desirous of something more concrete.

‘Over fifty,’ was all that Ollie would offer.

‘Where were these sightings?’

Ollie showed him the locations on the street map.

‘So he could just live or shop in that area?’

‘He could,’ Ollie agreed, ‘but . . .’

‘But what?’

‘I spend a lot of my time “recognizing” people. I can tell if they’re in the scene for a purpose. Stalkers in particular.’

‘And you think the purpose here may have been Karen Marshall?’

‘I do.’

‘And we have no shots of his face at all?’

Ollie shook his head. ‘I’ve gone through a lot of footage of the city centre and found none.’

As a detective, McNab would have called it a hunch. In Ollie’s case, it was something more. As a super recognizer, he was rarely wrong, but without a face that folk could identify, it didn’t really help them.

Still, the guy in the images might just be an ordinary punter whose interest in Karen came from seeing her on the police appeal.

Or something more threatening than that, a small voice told him.

‘So we keep checking for Karen from last night and throughout today. And for her stalker.’

Ollie nodded his agreement. ‘Now for the lorry guy,’ he said.

They’d tried the mobile number Eleanor Jackson had given them, to no avail. Mrs Jackson could have messed up the number. Perhaps even on purpose, by switching a couple of digits. After all, she’d been pretty pissed off by the end of the interview.