‘I’m now the SIO on this, so, for those who don’t know the details, I’ll fill you in. Thursday, fourteenth of June, PCs Khan and Jackman here were called to Minstead House, where the shop manager, Meredith Vincent, had been on her lunch break by the pond and had found Ralph Allerton’s body in the pond. He’d been reported as a misper the previous Thursday after not returning from work. Two days later, Ms Vincent was also at the scene of discovery of a second body: Andrea Horvath, a Hungarian national who’d lived in the UK for ten years. She worked as a hairdresser off her boat at the Wey Wharf, next to Meredith Vincent’s twin brother’s boat. Meredith had been staying with her twin, Pete, the night before and found Andrea’s body in the water when she left for a run in the morning. We’ve now had PM results in on both vics, which has ruled out accidental deaths, definitely on Allerton, who’d been strangled, and probably on Andrea Horvath, who suffered a blow to the head before she went into the river. It’s possible that she banged her head and fell in, but unlikely – the severity of the blow and shape of the wound indicates something like a baseball bat. Seems a bit of a coincidence that Ms Vincent finds two bodies in the same week, wouldn’t you agree?’

Nods from around the room.

‘So obviously she’s the primary focus of our investigations. Her brother’s the alibi for both occasions, and there are no motives for either death – vics were her friends – and she seems genuinely distraught. But we need to look at both twins, check out their relationships with the deceased.’

Gemma put up her hand.

‘Yes? You’re DC McMeekin, correct?’

Lincoln did the weird coughing thing, so Gemma nodded and waited till he’d finished barking. ‘Sir, I’m wondering if someone is after Meredith herself, trying to hurt her. I think there’s something she’s not telling us, maybe from years ago. You know she was the lead singer in the band Cohen? They were big in the eighties and nineties.’

This information elicited a ripple of excited murmurs from around the room, particularly from the personnel who were in the forty-plus age bracket.

‘Davis did mention this, yes,’ Lincoln said, scratching his ear. ‘But I’m not sure that—’