Porter stopped, his face a mask of incredulity. ‘You’re telling me I can’t speak to a man suspected of assault at best, and worst case, murder? Who’s going to stop me?’ he snapped as he pushed past her, and headed for the door.

‘Sir!’ she called after him. ‘There’s much more at stake here.’

Porter stopped and turned to face her. ‘More than bringing a murderer to justice?’

‘You said yourself murder is worst case. You don’t even have a body.’

He scowled and looked away, but she pressed on, lowering her tone to take the heat out of the situation. ‘If we go in there now, they’ll know we’re looking at them, or him at the very least. How much more careful do you think he’ll be then?’

He couldn’t decide what pissed him off the most: the fact that he’d lost his cool and let the case get to him, or the fact that she was right. Either way, Bolton would have to wait, but it didn’t stop him from feeling like he was becoming the latest in a long line of people who had let Natasha down.

CHAPTER SIX

Porter drove in silence and mulled things over in his head as Styles chatted to his wife on his mobile. He knew everything Simmons had said made sense, but that did little to gloss over his irritation at having to leave Bolton alone for the time being. The identification of the prints in Leonard’s report was a step forward, though; the first real moment of clarity in an otherwise confusing haze of facts fogging up his mind. It had come as a surprise; his first instinct told him to expect the prints to come from Natasha’s father. Simmons and her series of revelations had made him think she was about to reveal evidence that confirmed Alexander Locke as a suspect as well, but knowing that James Bolton had been inside the flat gave rise to a new spur off from his main theory.

Bolton was Locke’s man, so could as easily have been there carrying out his master’s bidding as being on his own business. Either way, his prints in the flat suggested he had been part of whatever had happened there. His print was the one true connection, stretching back across three decades, that placed anybody in Natasha Barclay’s flat apart from her. That was enough to bring him in for questioning, but they would need more than that to press charges. They would need Natasha, alive or dead, or a confession that he had harmed her, and he didn’t think the latter would exactly be served up on a plate for them.

Porter pulled up outside the Locke house in exactly the same spot they had parked in on their first visit. He waited patiently while Styles finished the call to Emma.