The room was packed, the atmosphere charged, and as James spoke every nerve in his body was buzzing. This was the first time the whole team had got together since the murder investigation began and now that the holiday weekend was behind them, he was hoping they’d start to make real progress.

He moved on to Rachel’s boyfriend, Carlo Salvi. The word had already spread that the Met had collared him at Heathrow.

‘He became our prime suspect because they were seen to have had an argument of some sort during the wedding reception and he subsequently disappeared from the hotel. It’s clear now that he was trying to flee the country and so I’m cautiously optimistic that he is our man. That said, there’s always still a chance that he isn’t, which means we have to continue pursuing other leads.’

He got DC Sharma to run through what they knew about Salvi and how they had managed to track him to London.

‘It seems he was popular among the local women while he lived here,’ Sharma said. ‘Rachel Elliott met him when he became a customer in the café where she worked and she was one of several different women who his landlady saw stay over in his flat. We don’t know if Rachel knew about the others but it is possible that she found out about them during her sister’s wedding and that’s why they argued.’

This was James’s cue to explain for those who didn’t know that it was DC Abbott who saw Salvi storm out of Rachel’s room.

‘We also have hotel surveillance footage showing Salvi going off on his own after leaving the room. Following this, it appears that Rachel tried to drown her sorrows and got a bit drunk. This apparently upset the groom, Greg Murphy, who told his new wife to sort her sister out. However, it served to make things worse after Libby confronted her as they had words and Rachel rushed off. That was the last time Rachel was seen in the hall with the rest of the guests.’

James tilted his head towards the whiteboards, which were dominated by photographs of the victim. They showed Rachel in her maid-of-honour dress at the marriage ceremony and posing with others in the garden. The bright, cheerful images were in stark contrast to the shots of her body taken from various angles after it had been hauled out of the lake.

James mentioned the sibling rivalry between the sisters and how Rachel had been jealous of Libby’s success with men and in her career.

‘As you should all now be aware, our victim was not happy that Libby’s wedding was taking place at The Fells Hotel because she had been due to get married there herself early last year,’ James said. ‘However, the wedding was called off by the groom, Douglas Hannigan, who dumped Rachel and broke her heart.

‘Rachel sought revenge against Hannigan by handing photos of him snorting cocaine to the Cumbria Gazette. Her objective was to stop him becoming a local MP and she succeeded. Hannigan guessed it was her and he retaliated by sending her a birthday card with a threatening message inside. It initially made him a suspect in our eyes but he has since provided us with a solid alibi for New Year’s Eve. He didn’t go to the hotel and he didn’t kill Rachel.’