‘If you say so.’

‘Anyway, young Sean is going to get a shock when he realizes his mum knew what he was up to all along.’

‘But why didn’t she call as soon as she saw the appeals?’ asked Fry.

‘Well, being of a suspicious nature but not wanting to think the worst of her beloved son without proof, she waited until he was out of the house and took a gander in his room. And she turned up the wallet in his underwear drawer.’

Fry looked at the plastic evidence bag. ‘Patrick Rawson’s wallet?’

‘Yes. And here are his credit and debit cards. Golf club membership. A pocket full of business cards – there might be some useful contacts there that we haven’t spoken to yet. Oh, and just under five hundred pounds in cash.’

‘Five hundred?’

‘For those last-minute cash deals, I suppose.’

‘I wonder if Crabbe spent any?’

‘Impossible to tell. We’ll have to ask him. We can’t find any record of him attempting to use the cards, so maybe he had the sense to hang on to the cash until things died down.’

‘If he had that amount of sense, why didn’t he get rid of the wallet?’ said Fry.

Hitchens shook his head. ‘No idea. We’ve seized the clothes Sean was wearing on Tuesday morning, and they’ve gone for forensics. Mum says he changed as soon as he came home that day, and showered. If we find Patrick Rawson’s blood on his clothes, it will look very bad for him.’

‘Does he have any previous?’

‘No, he’s clean. Not even a bit of juvenile on his record. Actually, he doesn’t seem the type from what I saw of him. Long hair, and a bit dreamy looking. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wrote poetry. You know the sort of kid.’

‘An emo?’

‘Is that what they call them?’

‘Emos are more likely to kill themselves than anybody else,’ said Fry. ‘Did Mrs Crabbe understand what she was implicating him in?’

‘She must have done, surely?’ said Hitchens. ‘Here’s his custody record anyway, Diane. The name is Sean Crabbe, aged twenty, student. He’s local, too – so his voice could well match the 999 call.’

Fry sat up straighter. ‘You want me to do the interview, sir?’

‘Well, why not?’

SEAN CRABBE SAT in Interview Room One, a desperately hangdog expression on his face. He was staring down at his hands, which gripped the edge of the table. His knuckles were white, a sign of the tension he was under.

If he’d been in any doubt about the seriousness of the charges he might face, he had been enlightened by his brief, who looked almost as anxious as Crabbe.

‘It wasn’t me who killed him,’ was the young man’s first sentence when Fry sat down opposite him and started the tapes.

‘Killed who, Sean?’ asked Fry, hoping this was going to be an easy one.

‘The man in the hut. The dead man.’