‘I found that bleach bottle in the bin. It looks like it might have a blood smear on it. One of the residents told me the bins are emptied every Tuesday morning at around ten.’

‘Which means the bottle could only have been put in the bin on Tuesday after ten or today,’ Lloyd remarked as he put on protective gloves and placed the bottle in an exhibits bag.

‘The uniformed lads helped me search the other bins. There were no blood-stained items in them,’ the dog handler said.

‘He probably burned any towels or cloths he used to clean up . . . or dumped them with Becky’s body,’ Lloyd said.

‘How quickly can you test that bleach bottle for fingerprints?’ Jane asked Lloyd.

‘Is there any rush with Durham being in hospital?’ Lloyd asked.

‘If a doctor says he’s fit to be interviewed, I’ll do it by his bedside. I want as much evidence against him as possible.’

‘I’ll take the bottle back to the lab and get to work on it first thing in the morning. Has Thomas Durham ever been arrested?’

‘Not as far as I know – unfortunately,’ Jane replied.

‘No problem. I can use the coffee mug he drank out of earlier for comparison to any marks on the bleach bottle. I’ll also take lifts off other items likely to have his prints on them.’

‘If Becky was murdered here, Durham must have disposed of her car as well. It’s possible he put her body in the boot and used the car to transport it. If that was the case, he’d need to hide the car, which isn’t easy,’ Jane said.

‘He could have set light to it with her body inside,’ Lloyd suggested.

‘Possibly, but I’d have thought someone would have seen the fire or found it burnt out by now. It’s also a big risk to drive a car a long distance with a body in the boot. Do you know if the underwater search unit work at night?’ she asked.

‘They come out at any time if it’s an emergency. Why do you ask?’

‘There is a small lake down by the woods. He might have weighted Becky down and dumped her body in it, then hidden the car elsewhere,’ Jane said.

Jane rang Stanley while Lloyd took some fingerprint lifts from the coffee cup and other items in Thomas Durham’s house. Jane asked Stanley for permission to call out the underwater search unit. He said he would call them and come down to the scene.

As they waited for the underwater search unit, Jane and other officers went down to the lake with seek-and-search torches. One of the officers found some narrow tyre marks leading from the building-site track to the edge of the lake and down into the water. Jane was certain the marks were from Becky’s car and her body would be in it.