A high-profile murder like this came with a wave of adrenaline for Gabriel – usually followed by an even bigger backwash of guilt that the excitement came at the expense of other people’s misery. Three years earlier, a colleague had returned from a trip to Chicago with a T-shirt for Gabriel depicting a corpse and the slogan: When your life ends, our work begins. It was crass, but lurking beneath the joke was an irrefutable truth.

As their journey from London had progressed, Gabriel had been conscious of a growing thrill; a sensation she had missed during these last few weeks trapped behind her desk. Crime scene visits were rare now for Gabriel and she had grabbed the opportunity to travel to Chilton Park with almost indecent relish.

Being at the park would make it easier for her to visualise the crime scene as she directed the investigation in the days to follow. She had googled Chilton Park as she waited for Campbell to pick her up. It had emerged thirty years ago on a former gasworks in the shadow of the Dartford Crossing thanks to a healthy sprinkling of European regeneration cash and was the UK’s fourth most popular theme park. It was handy for the M25 and good for the day trippers from East London and Kent, but, as Gabriel had discovered that morning, a pain to reach from the centre of the city. Even with a blue light, the drive had taken a frustrating fifty minutes. She had used the journey to make calls – getting updates from Kent Police control room and the duty detective inspector at the scene, discussing lines to take for the ravenous press and ensuring that the manhunt for this Fletcher was underway.

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Campbell pulled up in the staff car park in a gap between a dirt-streaked van and an oversized SUV. Gabriel clambered out, twisting her body to negotiate the gap between the vehicles and stepping in a puddle, which seeped ooze over her left shoe.

Thirty to forty cars were squeezed into a scrappy patch of ground hidden from visitors. Behind her was the security barrier and hut, next to that a pole concreted into the ground and topped with a CCTV camera. Behind the barrier, another TV van had pulled up, the driver arguing with the security man who was still refusing to let the press through. The journalists shouted again to Gabriel, but she chose to ignore them. There was nothing to say yet that had not been in the press release issued half an hour earlier by Kent. She recognised a bulbous reporter as the crime specialist for the local news agency, probably sent down by one of the nationals, who had doorstepped her repeatedly during the Abu Mujahid business two years earlier. He was the last person she wanted to speak to now.

Their destination was at the end of a roughly asphalted path, bounded by a metal wire fence decorated with faded bindweed, a cruel echo of the summer on this stinging January day. Gabriel placed a hand against the rusting wires while she pulled off her shoe and rubbed at the grit clinging to her sodden tights. The fence had stained her hand and she carelessly brushed it clean against her jacket, realising too late that it had left a mark. One shoe down. One jacket down. At least the trousers were still in one piece, she thought.