Alison made a noise of disgust. ‘Jesus, Tom, this is a crime scene. Someone’s dead.’

‘I’ll be dead too if I don’t get some lunch. Share with me, Hegarty? You’ll hardly eat all your vegan hummus with cucumber anyway.’

‘You must be joking. Come on, let’s try this posh one first.’

They crunched up the paved path to what had once been an ordinary labourer’s cottage, now mushroomed out with an extension out the back and a heavy sealed door, tinted windows. Kind of a cross between a rustic bolthole and a bank vault. Alison noted that the path had not been swept of snow in some time, and she concentrated on not falling over. Tom needed no more ammunition to take the piss out of her.

‘Don’t think they’re in,’ he observed needlessly. The house was in darkness, and peering through the letter box showed a heap of envelopes on the mat. What looked like Christmas cards, even – they’d been gone for a while.

‘Top marks, Sherlock.’ Alison pulled out her phone and checked the info they had on the occupants. A Nicholas and Suzanne Thomas. ‘That’s weird.’

‘Huh?’ Tom held up his hands, trying to peer through the windows; he was leaving smears on the glass.

‘We’ve been out to this address twice in the last few months.’

‘Which teams?’

‘Traffic – there was an accident over on the slip road round September time – and then . . . Surrey Major Crimes.’

‘What were they doing here?’ Tom scowled; territorialism was fierce between the forces.

‘You remember there was that gas fire thing over in Guildford, a death? Just an accident if you ask me, but someone was a keen bean, looked into it.’

‘Lucky them to have the time. What did this lot have to do with it?’ He jerked his head towards the house. You could see it had been expensive. It was a shame to gut an old place like that, but on the other hand it did look cosy inside, with red LEDs glowing from various devices and panels, and the snow had now reached Alison’s socks.

‘Dunno. I’ll have to check.’

Tom was stamping his feet. ‘How about we do the other place, then sod off back to the station? I’m freezing my balls off here.’

Alison did not want to think about Tom’s balls. ‘Alright then.’ Likely the couple were off on some Christmas break, the Caribbean maybe, lucky bastards.

Since December though?

Maybe.

‘Bit of a dump,’ observed Tom, as they stepped carefully down the icy path of the other cottage. ‘The one across the road is well nicer.’

‘They’ve got the cash, I suppose.’ This one was called Ivy Cottage. Slightly better than the derelict one next door, but not much. She rang the bell.

Loudly, Tom commented, ‘Bloody hell, my bits feel like frozen Quorn sausage.’