At the police station, just two miles away in central Bath, Lorne Wood was all anyone could talk about. A sixteen-year-old pupil of a local private school, Faulkener’s, she was popular – and fairly reliable, according to her parents. From the get-go, Sally’s sister, Detective Inspector Zoë Benedict, hadn’t had even a speck of confidence that Lorne would be seen alive again. Maybe that was just Zoë – too pragmatic by far – but at two o’clock that afternoon, when one of the search team beating the undergrowth next to the Kennet and Avon canal found a body, she wasn’t in the slightest surprised.

‘Not that I’d ever say “I told you so”,’ she murmured to DI Ben Parris, as they walked along the towpath. She kept her hands shoved in the pockets of the black jeans the superintendent was always telling her she shouldn’t wear as a warranted officer with a duty to the image of the force. ‘You’d never hear those words come out of my mouth.’

‘Of course not.’ He didn’t take his eyes off the group of people up ahead. ‘It wouldn’t be in your nature.’

The site had already been cordoned off, with portable screens fixed in place across the path. Hovering outside the screen were ten or twelve people – barge owners, mostly, and already a member of the press, dressed in a black waterproof. As the two DIs pushed their way through, warrant cards held up, he raised his Nikon and fired off a few shots. He was a sure sign that word was getting out faster than the police could keep up with, thought Zoë.