‘That’ll teach us, won’t it?’ Marie said. ‘Remind me not to tell Uniform to alert us to these calls in future.’

‘Well, think of it this way, at least we are in at the beginning.’ Gary released his seat belt. ‘And that must be Mrs Miles.’

They both looked at the woman waiting at the gate, a dressing gown held close around her.

They introduced themselves. She looked slightly surprised when they said they were with CID but she didn’t question it. She told them she was waiting outside because she’d been too frightened to stay inside the house.

Gently, Gary took her arm. ‘Don’t you worry, Mrs Miles, we’ll check the house right through. Come and sit in the kitchen, you look frozen.’

‘I can’t stop shivering. I don’t understand how he got in. I shut all the windows before I went to bed and locked the doors.’

Gary drew out a kitchen chair for her. ‘You sit there. We’ll take a look around and then tell you what we think, okay?’

They removed themselves to the hall. ‘He’ll be long gone,’ Marie whispered.

‘Oh yes,’ said Gary, ‘and most likely with a child’s photograph clutched in his sticky little mitt.’

They walked slowly through the whole house, Marie stopping to pet the gorgeous long-haired tabby cat that had sidled up to her, purring contentedly.

They finished up in the lounge, where they stopped and stared at the vast array of photos, hunting for a telltale space. ‘Ah, got it,’ Marie said. ‘Look, Gary.’ She pointed to two small, framed photographs on top of a bookshelf. Between them was a slim, clean line in the dust. They asked Mrs Miles if she remembered what had stood there.

‘It was a picture of my nephew, Davy, and it was in a silver frame. Where’s it gone?’ Natalie looked utterly confused.

‘Mrs Miles,’ said Marie softly, ‘you are the fifth person this week to have had a photograph stolen. We still don’t know why this man is doing it.’

‘But you can rest assured that he isn’t here, Mrs Miles. I just have to check the garage, then we’ll be done. He’s a long way from here by now, I promise you.’ Gary went back into the kitchen and opened the door to the integral garage. The place clearly wasn’t used for a car, housing instead a chest freezer, garden tools, a mower, several stepladders and a pile of boxes all marked ‘Xmas Decs’.

The main garage door was locked fast, and there was no personnel door. You accessed it either from the main door or the kitchen. It was chock full of stuff, but there was nowhere to hide a man. Gary went back into the kitchen.

‘Is the door from the kitchen normally locked, Mrs Miles?’ he asked.

‘No, the garage is a handy dumping ground — as you probably noticed,’ she said. ‘I’m always in and out to the freezer. No one could get through the outer door without a key and it sticks dreadfully, you’d hear anyone who tried.’