DS Malik took a deep breath to steady herself. The truth was that she wouldn’t normally head up a case this serious. After all, she was only a detective sergeant. But her boss, Detective Inspector Gareth Hoskins, had signed himself off work with a stress-related illness three weeks before, and DS Malik was therefore the Acting Senior Investigating Officer. Just as she was the Acting SIO in the Stefan Dunwoody case.

DS Malik had spent the previous three weeks reading and re-reading her copy of Blackstone’s Senior Investigating Officers’ Handbook on the off chance that a big case might land in her lap. But she knew that it was one thing to be ‘book smart’, it was quite another to put her knowledge into practice in the real world.

Just follow the rules and regulations, she said to herself as she approached the front door of the cottage. Just follow the rules and regulations.

‘Good morning, Constable,’ she said with a confidence she didn’t feel. ‘So what have we got?’

The constable explained how the dead man inside the house was called Iqbal Kassam. He lived on his own and was a taxi driver.

‘Who discovered the body?’

The constable said that a young delivery driver had arrived with a package for Mr Kassam, but when he’d got to the door, he’d seen that it was already open. So he’d stepped into the hallway to put the package on the side table, which was when he’d seen into the bedroom where Mr Kassam was lying, blood all over the pillows, stone-cold dead.

‘I see. Tell me about the delivery person who found the body.’

‘He’s pretty shaken up.’

‘Could he be our shooter?’

‘We’ve taken his clothes in for GSR analysis, but I think the body’s been there a few hours.’ He nodded at the van in the driveway. ‘There’s a tracking device in that. He was able to show me his route this morning. He’d been nowhere near Marlow until 12.37 p.m., which is when he found the body and called it in.’

‘See if you can speak to the other people he made deliveries to this morning. Let’s make sure his story stacks up.’

‘Yes, Sarge.’

DS Malik pulled out a pair of crime scene gloves and put them on.

‘What about the scene?’ she asked.

‘No signs of a break-in. No signs of a struggle, either. Or any kind of theft as far as we can tell. The body’s in the bedroom with a bullet through its skull.’

‘Okay,’ she said, ‘let’s see Mr Kassam.’