‘Fine. Sorry, and thanks, Martin.’

‘Bye, Jazz.’ Chapman ambled away and Jazz made her way back inside. She walked towards the interview room, peered through the window and saw Patrick was alone, speaking on his mobile. He waved her in and indicated ‘two minutes’ as he finished his conversation.

‘Yes, Sir, I will. I’ll see you later.’ He ended the call and smiled at Jazz. ‘You okay? You look tired.’

‘I’m fine,’ she answered brusquely. ‘I hear you’ve already interviewed David Millar.’

‘So I have. He’d sobered up enough last night to talk, so I grilled him for a couple of hours, then, when I got the new information from Chapman, gave him another go this morning.’

Jazz slammed her briefcase down on the table. ‘Patrick! We’d agreed we’d interview him together!’

‘Keep your hair on, Jazz. I thought I’d be doing you a favour. You were exhausted last night. I wanted to give you a good night’s sleep without disturbing you and—’

‘Patrick! This is my case! How dare you presume what I wanted?!’

‘Look now, Jazz, surely it hardly matters who interviewed him? The good news is, we have our murderer under lock and key downstairs. I arrested David Millar ten minutes ago and charged him with the murders of Charlie Cavendish and Julian Forbes.’

Jazz stared at Patrick with a mixture of horror and disbelief.

‘You’ve done what?!’

‘Oh, come now, Jazz, you yourself had him arrested a few days ago.’

‘No I didn’t! I interviewed him when he’d walked into a police station to give himself up. He was here of his own free will. At no point did I arrest him.’

‘Well, he told me last night he murdered Charlie Cavendish.’

Jazz put her hands on her hips and raised her eyebrows. ‘Yup.’ She nodded. ‘When he was still half-cut and under pressure and—’

‘New evidence has come to light this morning, so it has. Chapman found Millar’s fingerprints all over the trunk in which Forbes’s body was found. That’s pretty conclusive, so.’ Patrick looked suitably smug.

‘Not if the trunk belonged to his son, then no it isn’t!’ she shouted. ‘For Christ’s sake, that was Rory’s trunk! Of course his father, aka David Millar’s fingerprints would be all over it! It proves nothing and it certainly wouldn’t stand up in court. You know it wouldn’t!’

Patrick said nothing. And Jazz realised he hadn’t known about the trunk being Rory’s.

‘So.’ Jazz tried to calm down. She paced up and down in front of Patrick’s desk. ‘Has Millar confessed to the murder of Julian Forbes?’

‘No, not yet, but come on now, he admitted telling Julian he’d “kill him” a week ago or so . . .’

‘If Julian ever laid a finger on Rory, which would be really quite hard, as he’d never even met the boy. Christ, Patrick!’ Jazz finally flopped into a chair. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t wait until I was here to make the arrest.’

‘I’m sorry, Jazz, so I am, but everyone is keen on solving this as soon as possible. I’ve just spoken to the headmaster, who’s mighty relieved an arrest has been made. Norton thinks we can probably control the media, keep it very low-key, a “domestic” incident that got out of hand and—’