‘Yes,’ she said gently. ‘And you were very helpful. I was just hoping to get a few more details from you though. About the person you saw. The bomber.’

‘I didn’t see anything,’ he said. ‘It was too dark. And it was too cold.’

‘The bomber was wearing a hat, right?’ she pressed.

Dave nodded. ‘That’s right. That’s why I couldn’t see his face.’

Taking out her phone, she opened the search engine and tapped in ‘fedora hat’, and showed Dave the resultant gallery of images.

‘Was it a hat like one of these, in this kind of style?’

He squinted at the small screen. She watched him intently, anxiously awaiting his response.

He rubbed his beard and then nodded slowly. ‘Yeah… yeah it was. One of them ones. Just like that.’

She felt a burst of elation. A breakthrough. Finally.

‘Are you sure?’ she whispered.

‘Yeah. I’m sure. I remember now. It was definitely one of them.’ He grinned at her. ‘Did you say you had any spare change?’

She nodded to herself with interest as she absorbed the ramifications of what he’d told her. If what he was saying was true, then it presented the tantalising possibility that Mister Snigiss himself had personally planted the car bomb.

Putting her phone away, she reached into her trouser pocket to see if she had any spare coins. As she did so, she noticed, hanging around his neck from a shoelace, the pink manga-style kitten keyring she’d seen him wearing in the police interview room.

She paused a moment. The hungry look in his eyes started to change to one of dismay.

‘Just a moment,’ she said. She nodded at the keyring. ‘What’s that around your neck?’

Dave frowned and looked down at it. ‘It’s a kitten, innit?’

She recalled his instinctive protection of it back in the interview room when the detectives had been grilling him about his watch. And looking closer now, she could see that the plastic did bear faint scorch marks and was slightly melted around the edges.

‘You got that from the car bomb, didn’t you?’ she asked.

‘No!’ he said, shaking his head a little too vehemently. He was a poor liar.

Up close to it now, getting a better look, she started to get an idea of what it actually was. And if she wasn’t wrong, it was more than just a keyring. Hmm… Interesting.

‘That was in the man’s hand, wasn’t it?’ said Bailey.

Dave eyed her mutely, not denying it, and Bailey knew her supposition had been correct.

‘You took the Rolex off his wrist,’ she said. ‘And you took that kitten out of his hand.’

His eyes flickered shiftily from side to side as if searching for an escape route.

‘Look, I’m not going to arrest you,’ she said. ‘And you can keep the watch because I’m not interested in it. But that…’

She reached gently for the keyring, but Dave snatched it away, clutching it close to his chest.

‘It’s my little kitten,’ he whispered.