‘If I go in now, I’ll lose it,’ he said. ‘Please try to leave it as you find it.’

‘We will,’ James assured him, before entering the room followed by the forensic officer and constable.

It was a large and tidy room with cinnamon-coloured walls, a double bed and fitted wardrobes. There was also a desk beneath the window, and on top of it a laptop and printer.

As James pulled on a pair of latex gloves, he said, ‘We’re looking for information on Rachel’s boyfriend, Carlo Salvi. Phone number, address, place of work. Also, anything that indicates that she might have been having issues with people other than him.’

The first thing to draw James’s attention was a multiaperture photo frame on the wall above the dressing table. There were pictures of Rachel with her sister and her parents at various stages in her life. And several of the two girls with nanny Claire Prescott when they were quite small. But there were no photos of Rachel with any boyfriends.

The forensic officer quickly established that the laptop was password-protected so would have to be taken to the lab along with Rachel’s phone. The same applied to a Samsung tablet they found in one of the drawers.

One item was of particular interest to James. It was a page torn from a recent edition of Cumbria Life magazine. It contained a feature on a woman James had met a year ago during the investigation into the murder of an entire family on a farm near Kirkby Abbey.

Lisa Doyle was a psychic medium and clairvoyant, and something of a celebrity in the county. She lived in Ravenstonedale and had a popular website through which she carried out online readings and publicised events she held.

The feature profiled her life and work, but what intrigued James was a note that had been scrawled on the page.

December 27 2pm

Did this mean that Rachel had met up with her just four days ago? he wondered. If so, then it struck him as a weird coincidence since one of those murdered in the farm massacre last Christmas had previously attended several seances with the psychic.

Miss Doyle was never implicated in those killings and James could not imagine she’d had anything to do with Rachel’s death, but he would speak to her nonetheless to find out if Rachel did indeed go to her for a reading.

After twenty minutes they’d found Rachel’s passport and a guidebook on Italy but nothing that alluded to Carlo Salvi. There was no diary and no notes with his name on but James wasn’t surprised since most personal information these days was stored on phones, tablets and computers. It meant they would have to wait until the techies had unlocked Rachel’s digital devices to find out what she kept on them.

Just as they were about to call it a day, the constable found a birthday card that had been tucked beneath underwear in a drawer.