‘This, we believe, is the reason for London’s reticence on the matter. I must stress here that nothing stated in this room goes any further than here.’ He looked around the assembled officers. ‘Do I make myself clear?’

The murmurs indicated he had.

It was DS Clark up next, looking all the better for her partner being alive. She opened by saying as much, eliciting a cheer.

‘The fingerprint on the credit card found with the burn victim is that of Steven Willis, who has previous convictions for people-trafficking, amongst other things. We are currently looking for him. The victim, as some of you already know, has been identified as Charlotte Weiner, a student from the London School of Economics, who disappeared three weeks ago. We believe Willis was engaged to dispose of Charlotte Weiner in a way that suggested it was Olivia Newton Richardson, who Interpol think may be currently in the south of Spain.’

Rhona could tell by the faces around her that the significance of all of this, especially the Met’s failure to share information, had not been lost on the assembled company, the time wasted over the identification of the fire victim being particularly galling.

The briefing now moved to Orkney, where Erling joined them from the conference room in Kirkwall. Tense and pale, he proceeded to give them an update on the stowaway, Nadia Kowalski, a key witness to what had happened on the Orlova.

For many it was the first time they’d heard of the existence of a witness, then only to hear that she had now gone missing, along with Dougie Clouston, brother of Ava Clouston, who had been working with Mark Sylvester on the exposé of the Go Wild conglomerate.

‘Dougie’s boat has since been found abandoned in the Sound of Hoy, some distance away from his home in Orphir,’ Erling said. ‘There is concern that both he and the girl may have been taken to prevent her from providing evidence of what happened on the Orlova. Or worse, she has already been disposed of.

‘We now know that Ava Clouston recorded the girl’s story while she was hidden on her farm, which also puts her in considerable danger, and she is currently under police protection.’

The last person to speak was McNab. Rhona had expected him to give an account of what had happened since his arrival in London, to include his incarceration. Instead, he said, ‘Run the video back to the killer’s entrance.’

It was well worth a second watch, from a forensic scientist’s point of view. The killer was left-handed, as suspected, the pattern of the cuts in Rhona’s study of the bodies matching what was being played out on the screen.