‘Is that what we’re about to do by executing the warrant? If so, we need to tell the team to head to Windermere.’

‘I want to hold fire on that until we get there ourselves,’ James said. ‘Claire Prescott is probably at home by herself now and I don’t think we should spook her by going in mob handed when we can give her fair warning of what to expect before calling in the troops.’

Despite all the points Abbott had raised about Rachel’s WhatsApp message, James was still troubled by it. His copper’s intuition was at work again, and it was telling him not to simply assume that Rachel had made a mistake about what she saw on the path or that she had chosen to lie about it to cause problems for her sister.

James reminded himself of what Rachel wrote: You disgust me, Libby. I’m not going to keep your sordid secret so make the most of today. And tell that slimy bastard Ethan that if he ever lays a hand on me again, I’ll have him put away.

Whatever the truth, James found it hard to believe that Ethan and Libby would choose to ignore the message, as they’d claimed, and though the hotel surveillance footage showed Libby returning to the bar straight after the pathway encounter, there were no clips to prove that Ethan went onto the terrace to be with his mum. They only had Claire’s word for it that he stayed with her and therefore could not have gone looking for Rachel. And that was more than enough to keep the wheels turning in James’s suspicious mind.

They got a surprise when they arrived at the Prescott house in Windermere as Claire wasn’t by herself after all.

There were two cars on the short driveway. One was the Vauxhall Corsa that had been parked there when they last visited, which James had assumed belonged to Ethan. The other was a smart black BMW that was probably Libby Murphy’s.

It was Ethan who opened the door and his face dropped when he saw them.

‘Hello there, Mr Prescott,’ James said. ‘We didn’t expect you to be here.’

A flash of panic passed over the man’s face. ‘Mum needed me so I closed the shop and came home. What do you want?’

‘To have another chat with you. And would I be right in assuming that Mrs Murphy is here?’

A curt nod. ‘She went to see her parents and took Mum with her, then she brought her back. She’ll be leaving soon.’

‘Well then, while we’re here we can update her on the investigation. Can we come in?’

After a brief hesitation, he said, ‘I suppose so.’

Libby was in the living room sitting next to Claire on the sofa. She looked drained, her eyes sunken and shadowed.

It was Claire who spoke first, and the agitation was obvious in the tenor of her voice.

‘Are you here to make more unfounded allegations against my son?’ she said. ‘Or to tell us that you’ve caught Rachel’s killer?’