‘Tell us why you don’t seem surprised,’ Imogen said.

‘He told me. He told me this might happen the last time I spoke to him.’

‘He told you he might die?’ Imogen asked.

‘Yes. He gave me a letter to give to his sister in case anything happened. He gave me some other stuff to look after, as well. I guess you want it?’

‘Yes, please,’ Adrian said.

He got up and went to his cupboard before pulling out a small correspondence envelope and an A4 Jiffy bag. He handed the envelope to Imogen. She opened it and looked at the letter, though it felt wrong to read it. There were no explanations, just an expression of love from one sibling to another. It was a goodbye letter, but there was nothing sad about it. It certainly didn’t read like a suicide note. Leon then gave Adrian the Jiffy bag.

‘He asked me to hold onto this for him, too. Said he was going to swing by and pick it up on Friday. He was going away for a while.’

‘How do you guys know each other?’ Imogen asked.

‘We work together.’

‘Fiona Merton said you worked together at your last place of employment, too. Is that where you met?’

‘Yes,’ Leon said, shifting his gaze uncomfortably.

‘And where was that?’

‘Corrigan Construction. In Exeter,’ he said quietly, as though he didn’t want to say the words.

The name was familiar. Corrigan was one of the larger construction companies in the town and their vans were everywhere. They handled a lot of the redevelopments in the city and most of the roadworks. It couldn’t be a coincidence that the construction company was in Exeter. Is this a lead?

‘DS Grey,’ Adrian said.

Imogen looked at him. He was holding the contents of the Jiffy bag: two spanking new passports sealed in a vacuum-packed bag. Even without opening them, Imogen knew it was possible one of the passports was Simon’s and the other belonged to Jane Doe; perhaps they were running away together, and from something, judging by what happened to them.

‘Did Simon have any enemies?’

‘No. Not really. Not before working there, anyway.’

What does that mean?

Imogen could sense by Leon’s increasingly agitated manner that they were skating closer to the real issue.

‘How come you both moved from Corrigan Construction? Did you get fired?’ Imogen said.

‘I had to move out of my flat and back in with my parents. My mum’s not been well and I needed a job closer to home, that was all. I was trying to help my parents out a bit. They need some building work doing around the place and I thought it best if I moved in here and did it,’ he said, scrambling for words.

Imogen wondered if any of them were true.

‘And Simon?’