Meredith just shook her head. ‘Don’t … want … anyone to see me like this,’ she sobbed. ‘Or anyone else seeing … him.’

It was true what they said, he realised. Nothing really prepared you for your first victim of drowning. The shock of seeing the body like that was bad enough when it was a complete stranger; how much worse must it be if you knew the person?

‘I believe you identified him when you rang us?’ he prompted gently. ‘Ralph Allerton? He’s been missing since last Thursday, is that right? Are you absolutely sure it’s him?’

Meredith gave another shuddering sob, managing a nod. ‘He was my friend,’ she whispered. ‘I recognised his shirt; otherwise I wouldn’t have known, not for sure. Seeing him like that … it’s just … How did he get there? I don’t understand it. He was fine…’

The poor woman was burbling with horror.

‘When did you last see him?’

Meredith paused and stared hard at a dandelion that had forced its way through a crack, twisting the tissue round in her fingers. She wore several big chunks of rings, Emad noticed, with a different colourful stone set in each, making the knuckles of her right hand resemble traffic lights. They seemed at odds with her otherwise conservative appearance.

‘Last Thursday afternoon. We’d had our monthly staff lunch. I went back to the shop before they’d all finished – it can drag on a bit sometimes and I don’t like to leave the volunteers on their own for too long.’

‘How was he?’

Meredith shrugged miserably. ‘He seemed absolutely fine. Happy as Larry. Full of beans … Just, he was quite drunk…’ Her voice caught, and two more fat tears rolled over her cheeks and dropped into her lap. The label from her baseball cap was still dangling, but less obtrusively now – she must have turned it round a little.

Emad realised she must have just borrowed it from the shop to wear to lunch – not very professional, or hygienic, for the shop manager, but she obviously didn’t expect to be seen by anybody.

‘Well, we’ll take a full statement in due course,’ he said. ‘But in the meantime I have to inform the duty inspector, see how he wants to proceed. Could you wait here a second while I make a call?’

Meredith nodded again, without looking up. Emad walked away, out of earshot and round the pond to the far side, where Ralph Allerton’s body floated. He rang Mavis, who picked up immediately.

‘DS Davis.’

‘Yes, hi Sarge,’ he said quietly. ‘PC Emad Khan. I’m at Minstead House. There’s a body in the pond, seems that it’s a senior member of staff who went missing last week. Pond’s in an area of the grounds not open to the public. I wasn’t sure whether to tell them to stop admitting visitors to the house. Should we get the place evacuated?’