‘Do we know what he was doing here in Hockley?’

‘Making a nuisance of himself in a local pub, by all accounts.’

Ajay watched her snap the elasticated plastic covers over her shoes. His small, perfectly groomed features were already half-hidden by the polyethylene material and his dark hair, combed so immaculately smooth you’d think it was a piece of Lego, was hidden beneath a hood. ‘He became abusive and got thrown out just before closing time.’

‘Ah.’ If Andrew Dean had got himself into a dispute elsewhere that led to his violent death on the tracks, then transport police wouldn’t get involved. ‘And we know this how?’

He gestured towards the knot of onlookers. ‘I spoke to one of the locals and it was the first thing she remembered about last night. There was a guy causing trouble at a local pub, hassling people, getting increasingly intoxicated and lairy, and he was ejected. I showed her his driver’s ID and Bob’s your uncle.’

‘Did he get into a fight with anyone in particular?’

‘He was harassing a young woman, and her boyfriend tried to intervene, but mostly he was obnoxious to everyone.’

‘A pub full of suspects,’ Sasha said. ‘That’s a good start.’

‘Andrew Dean could barely stand when he left the pub. Could be he fell off the platform by accident.’

Sasha took the plastic bag to get a better look at the driving licence with Andrew Dean’s personal details on it. He was a hulking figure in the headshot, bull-necked, with a big square jaw, a broken nose and hooded eyes; he glowered sullenly at the camera.

‘Looks a charmer,’ she said.

‘Ring any bells, Mrs Dawson?’

That caught her attention and she looked up quickly. ‘Should he?’

Ajay’s eyes flashed mischievously. ‘I did a quick search for him on the internet.’

‘I love that about you, Ajay,’ she told him. ‘Your initiative.’

‘Him and a group of other men were questioned about the disappearance of a girl a few years back. One of them was some kind of’ – his nostrils flared, as if the phrase was distasteful – ‘reality star.’

She pulled the hood of the Tyvek suit over her head and they climbed from the van to duck under the crime tape at the inner cordon, established outside the ticket office. Sasha took a moment to notice the black bulb of the CCTV camera in one corner of the room.

The sun was lifting in the blue sky now. The summers were getting hotter and hotter in this part of south Essex, and as they walked along the platform towards the footbridge that crossed the rail track, Sasha was baking in the coveralls.

‘That thing is turned off, right?’ She pointed at the electrified track and he grinned, as if to say, You’d better hope so. ‘Just checking.’

It was disconcerting to see sheets laid along the track to hide a number of different body parts. Sasha had seen numerous corpses in her career as a murder detective. But the effect of a train collision on the human body was catastrophic. The train that mowed down Andrew Dean weighed hundreds of tons and because it wasn’t due to stop at Hockley would have passed through the station at over a hundred miles an hour. At the moment of impact, Andrew Dean would have been killed instantaneously, sustaining massive internal and external injuries. His body would have been thrown in the air like a football, the limbs flying off, or sliced to bits beneath the wheels of the train.