They headed out, as planned, to meet Arthur Clifton at the construction company’s offices — the company which now bore the same name as its owner. There was a different feel around the place compared to their last visit. When they’d come before, there was a sense of suspicion and unease, as if no-one quite knew what was going to happen. This time there was an air of stability, of things getting back to normal.

‘Hello again,’ Sonya Smith, the office manager, said as they pulled up in the yard. She was leaning against the wall of the hut, smoking a cigarette.

‘Morning. How’s it all going?’ Caroline asked.

‘Alright, I think. Looks like we’ve all still got jobs, so that’s the main thing.’

‘Good. Is Arthur in?’

‘In there,’ she said, nodding her head towards the building she was leaning against.

Caroline and Dexter stepped inside, to find an attractive, tanned man hunched over a laptop.

‘Hi,’ Caroline said, jolting him back to reality.

‘Hi, can I help?’

‘You’re Arthur, are you?’

‘Yeah, I am.’

‘DI Caroline Hills. This is DS Dexter Antoine. We’re leading the investigation into your brother’s death. Have you got a few minutes? It’d be good if we could chat.’

‘Well I can’t see it being any more painful than trying to sort out these bloody spreadsheets. Right now I’d take waterboarding over this, so fire away.’

‘Were you and Roger close?’ Caroline asked, sitting down on a spare chair.

‘Not massively, no. I don’t know what you’ve already heard, but I’ve been living in Spain, so obviously we weren’t physically close. If you mean the other sense, let’s just say we were brought up by a traditional sort of father. A stiff handshake counted as intimacy.’

‘So have you moved back to the UK now?’

‘Uh, well I hope not. Obviously I came back when I heard about what happened to Roger and I found out he’d left the company to me. I’m spending a bit of time getting to grips with where it is, what’s going on, then I’ll probably put someone in charge of the day-to-day running of it.’

‘Have you got a business background then?’

‘Yeah, I’ve run a couple of bars and things over in Spain. Totally different kettle of fish to this, though. Construction never really interested me. One of the reasons why I went off and did my own thing instead of getting involved with the family business in the first place.’

‘Someone mentioned to us that you and Roger drifted apart over the years. Would you say that’s the case?’

Arthur shrugged. ‘We lived in different countries. So compared to growing up in the same house, yeah, obviously we were further apart. We didn’t have a falling out or anything like that, though. We were just never close.’