‘That’d be very useful,’ Caroline replied, even though it was something she had intended to request anyway. ‘Thank you. And what about family? What do you know about the situation there?

Sonya thought for a moment, then shook her head. ‘As far as I know, he’s lived on his own since his marriage broke down. His wife lives in Empingham with their daughter. He’s got a brother in Spain, I think, but he doesn’t really talk about family stuff all that much.’

Bit strange, considering it was meant to be a family business, Caroline thought to herself. ‘A brother?’ she asked.

Sonya raised her hands in mock surrender. ‘Don’t ask me any more than that. Honestly, that’s literally all I know. Just something he mentioned in passing once. I don’t know any more than that.’

Caroline and Dexter shared a look. Both seemed to realise the same thing at the same time. If the family business had passed down from Arthur to Roger Clifton, might this mysterious missing brother have had an interest? In any case, it was a new connection — one they’d only discovered by speaking to Sonya Smith.

‘You don’t happen to remember the brother’s name, I suppose?’ Caroline asked.

Sonya screwed up her face and slowly shook her head. ‘I don’t, no. I’ve never met him and Roger never talked much about him. Sorry. I genuinely wish I could be more help.’

Caroline and Dexter stayed at the site for another forty minutes, trying to extract as much information from Sonya as they could. But it seemed information was a scarce resource. It appeared Roger Clifton had run the company almost single-handed, with Sonya handling invoices, payments, rotas and the like. She claimed never to have been involved with any of the company administration, and that anything more than mild bookkeeping was handled by Roger and his accountant.

‘We’ll need to look deeper into the financial affairs of the company,’ Caroline said as they left the site and got back into the car. ‘There’s always a good chance money’s at the root of this. It tends to be, more often than not.’

Dexter wanted to point out that EMSOU had dedicated financial analysis units which could look into precisely that sort of thing, but decided against it. He didn’t know a huge amount about Caroline, but he did pride himself on being a good judge of character. And he’d judged that once Caroline made her mind up about something, there would be no consideration of turning round or going back.

He felt he got on with her, but he was aware this was probably more down to his own relaxed attitude and people skills than hers. He could see she wasn’t a bad person; she just had a lot to learn if she was going to get on in a place like Rutland.