Coppell shook his head. ‘Again, we only found a couple of her own prints and the handle was badly smeared with blood where she probably held onto it as she struggled to remove it. That doesn’t mean she stabbed herself, of course. And it could be that someone else’s prints got smudged. We also found Charlotte’s prints on some of the fragments of glass that were scattered across the floor around the bodies. As you may already know, they were from a broken wine bottle. But there were other prints on the glass as well and these belong to her boyfriend, Neil Savage. He’s been arrested a number of times and his prints are in the system so we were able to match them quite quickly.’

‘So that’s further confirmation that he was there,’ James said. ‘Are you sure his prints weren’t also on the weapons?’

‘I’m sure,’ Coppell said. ‘But he could have wiped them off, of course.’

He answered a few more questions from the other detectives and then moved on to the bloody shoeprints, sharing that his team had managed to identify the type of shoe that left them.

He moved nearer to the whiteboard and put a finger on one of the photos showing the impressions.

‘These are most definitely a size ten, which as you might know is the average size for males in the UK,’ he said. ‘They’re known as Commando style shoes or boots and they’re perfect for hiking and climbing. They’re thick and waterproof, and this particular design is called Vibram Roccia. It’s very common in this part of the country because of its rugged, outdoorsy profile.’

James was disappointed to realise it wasn’t going to be easy to trace the wearer through local retailers or the manufacturer.

‘But I’ve got more positive news from the mobile phones,’ Coppell went on. ‘We only found two phones in the house and they belonged to Mr Bateman and his daughter. I’ll start with Charlotte’s.’ He looked down at another document. ‘She received a call at five minutes past seven on Christmas Eve from someone named Heather Redgrave who appears in her contacts list. The call lasted for four minutes. Charlotte then called her back fifteen minutes later and that call lasted five minutes.

‘Now just after that second call ended Charlotte sent a message to Neil Savage saying: How could you do this to me? I should have known not to trust you. I’ll come get my things after Christmas. You’re dead to me.’

‘We need to speak to this Heather Redgrave,’ James said. ‘I want to know what prompted Charlotte to send that message to her boyfriend. Remind me when that accident that Savage may have been involved in was reported?’ James said.

‘Just after twenty past seven on Christmas Eve,’ Stevens answered. ‘I read it in the notes a little while ago.’