‘Coppell is confident it was a man based on the impressions left by the soles of the shoes. We’ll follow it up though as soon as the SOCOs give us something solid to work with,’ he said. ‘Let’s send photos to the footwear database asap. We also need to get any mobile phones and computers off to the lab and start the process of finding out what all the victims were up to over Christmas. We’ll be able to narrow that down once we have a more accurate time of death. And, of course, we need to trace next of kin. I want to inform close relatives before the media gets wind of this.’

‘Abbott and I explored the farm like you asked, but nothing struck us as unusual except the absence of animals,’ Stevens said. ‘There’s not much in the barn or the outbuildings. And nothing in the Land Rover to point to what might have happened here.’

‘Do we know if the Citroen belongs to the lawyer?’ James asked.

‘Yes, Laura Sheldon,’ Stevens confirmed, and James took this as his cue to go and question her.

The solicitor was standing next to the patrol car smoking a cigarette as James approached. Her hair was covered by a woollen hat, the same dark shade of brown as the overcoat she was wearing, and he judged her to be in her mid-forties.

He introduced himself, and said, ‘I’m sorry you’ve had to hang around, Miss Sheldon. I know you’ve had an awful shock.’

‘You’ve got that right,’ she said, her voice low and hoarse. ‘I still can’t believe what I saw in there.’

The woman’s mouth was pinched and drawn tight, and her eyes were glazed and haunted. James could tell that she was doing her best to suppress her emotions.

‘I’ll be as quick as I can, Miss Sheldon,’ he said. ‘And please bear with me because I’ll be asking some questions that you’ve likely already been asked.’

‘That’s all right. Please just get on with it so that I can go home.’

‘Well, firstly I’d like you to tell me what your relationship was to the Batemans.’

‘I’m a lawyer and I represent them through my company. I came here this morning because I’d arranged to meet with them both.’

‘And when you got no answer you looked through the window and saw one of the bodies. Is that right?’

She nodded. ‘I could only see Mrs Bateman’s legs and it occurred to me that she might have had an accident. I went to the door to ring the bell again and tried the handle and was surprised to discover that the door wasn’t locked. So, I went inside and saw … well, you know what I saw.’

‘And you didn’t touch anything?’

‘Absolutely not. I came back out as quickly as I could.’