It would never happen. It couldn’t happen if Simon didn’t let it, and he wouldn’t. He’d stand firm against the threat. Thankfully, Dorset was nowhere near the Culver Valley. Soon as they’d caught Billy, Wing would be out of Simon’s life, which was as it should be. Agreeing about a couple of things didn’t mean anything; it wasn’t a sign that you were on the same wavelength. More likely to be coincidence.

It was nothing personal against long-legged, curly-haired James Wing, who was more intelligent than many even if he did have the irritating habit of rolling his eyes when he spoke, like a thwarted teenager. Simon simply wasn’t the sort who allowed people to latch onto him.

The couple of things that he and James Wing had agreed on so far had first been mooted by Wing. On both occasions, Simon was put out to find himself in the position of seconder. If they were good ideas, he ought to have had them first.

Not that anyone apart from him and Wing thought they were valid points. Of the six officers in the sterile, green-walled room at Paddington Green police station in London, representing three Major Crime teams from different parts of the UK, only Simon had supported Wing when he’d opened today’s meeting by saying it was stupid that they were calling the killer Billy Dead Mates.

‘Because it might be a woman, you mean?’ DS Sam Kombothekra, Simon’s sergeant and line manager, had asked.

‘No.’ Major eye-rolling from Wing. ‘Some women are Billies, usually with “ie” at the end.’

‘Billie Piper, Billie Jean King, Billie Holiday,’ DS Neil Dunning, their host for the day, chipped in quickly. Of course – it would matter to a man as petty as Dunning that he should list all the female Billies before anyone else did. Simon had worked with him before, hampered by a marked lack of cooperation and good faith on both sides. He’d wondered, before his first encounter with Dunning on the Billy case, if there might be some scope for burying hatchets. Seconds after walking into the room – in Bournemouth on that occasion, with pockmarked white walls and a faint smell of cauliflower cheese – Simon had known there was no chance. How had Dunning managed to get all his hard feelings to that initial briefing without the help of a suitcase on wheels?