The Body in the Snow

By Nick Louth

Money, success, family? A deadly combination...

Out for a jog on a snowy winter morning, a young detective witnesses a brutal murder.

The victim is Tanvi Roy, one of the richest women in Britain and a matriarch of a food empire. It's just DCI Craig Gillard's luck that he's on duty.

As he delves deeper into the Roy family, it's soon apparent that not everything is as it seems. But then Gillard realises trouble of a different sort is brewing closer to home...

Perfect for readers of Mark Billingham, The Body in the Snow is a remarkable and gripping crime thriller.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Canelo Digital Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Jan 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781788636971

Nick Louth

Nick Louth is a million-copy bestselling thriller author, and an award-winning journalist. After graduating from the London School of Economics, Nick was a foreign correspondent for Reuters, working in New York, Amsterdam, London and Hong Kong. He has written for the Financial Times, Investors Chronicle, Money Observer and MSN. His debut thriller, Bite, was a Kindle No. 1 bestseller and has been translated into six languages. The DCI Craig Gillard series and DI Jan Talantire series are published by Canelo, and in audio by WF Howes. He is married and lives in Lincolnshire.

Book preview

For Louise, as always

Chapter 1

‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’

Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

Kirsty Mockett knew within a few seconds of waking on that fateful March morning. Even for a Sunday it was quiet. Like the world holding its breath. No traffic noise, not even the faint drone from the main road half a mile away. The gap above the curtains filtered an unusual brightness onto the ceiling, along which soft shadows flitted like ghosts. The room felt chilly. It wasn’t yet seven a.m. and the heating had not kicked in. She slid from the warmth of her bed, excitedly flung apart the curtains, and saw that the forecast had been correct. It was falling still, great fluffy, whirling flakes, blown in on an east wind all the way from Siberia, across the North Sea, beyond London and into Surrey, over the town of Ashtead. It had coated the discarded toys, decorated the broken garden seat and iced the abandoned washing machine which littered the garden of the downstairs flat. The drunken, paling fence, held up only by its wire, looked rustically pretty with each post topped by a dollop of whiteness, and the straggly hawthorn gloried in a piping of icing that balanced on every twisted stem.

Snow!

She grabbed her running gear from the radiator, stripped off her pyjamas, and dressed rapidly. She pulled her wavy chestnut hair into a ponytail, with three rapid and practised hand movements. She cleaned only her teeth. The shower could wait until later. It was less than a mile to the common, and she wanted to be out in this, to feel the childlike joy and the excitement of running in the snow. Kirsty had every reason to be happy that day, the last day before she began her job as a crime scene investigator for Surrey Police. It had taken her two years to qualify, and had allowed her to escape a job she had once thought she loved. But at twenty-five, she knew this was what she wanted to do. Tomorrow, Monday, it was all to begin. A clean start to a new life in the police force.

She was wrong.

Her work would begin today – a day early – unexpectedly. From the first shocking moment it would make extraordinary demands that would have tested the most experienced of investigators. And it was to upend her life, throwing her back into a nightmare she thought she’d left behind years ago.

---

Leaving the terraced house at a jog, clapping her gloved hands together for warmth, she stared up at the drifting flakes which cascaded still from a white-out sky. Picking up the pace, she passed a middle-aged man using an estate agent’s sale board as a shovel to clear the snow outside his home. One or two vehicles crept past, barely a mile an hour faster than she, trundling crunchily in the tracks ahead.

A small suburban park, her usual exercise destination, was only a half mile away, but today she was going to go to the common. It was twice as far away but the combination of woods, rolling hills and open grassland was a far better setting to revel in this wintry weather. She ran up Woodfield Lane, past Ashtead Station to her left, over the level crossing and, where the road swung right past a bungalow, she continued straight on. This was a paved bridleway onto the common. She stopped at the vehicle barrier, breathing heavily, but feeling warmth already seeping into fingers and toes. With no one about, she was able to use the top of the metal gate for her hamstring stretches and warm up routine without self-consciousness. Of the three vehicles parked near the start of the track, one had clearly been there overnight, based on its complete covering of snow. The second, a lightly dusted olive-green Jeep Cherokee, had been parked a few minutes ago, because the flakes landing on its bonnet melted immediately. Only now did she notice the third – a dirty white Toyota estate, windscreen wipers moving, the male driver’s face discernible as shadow within. Two minutes later, at 7.18 a.m., she set off along the snowy path at a gentle pace. With slippery ground this was not a day for breaking records, but merely for enjoying the beauty. Five minutes into her run, Kirsty passed a middle-aged Asian woman, striding along the edge of a brake of coppiced hazel woodland. The woman was using a ball thrower to exercise her energetic boxer dog. The muscular animal, racing for a tennis ball thrown far to her left, tore in front of Kirsty, causing her to check her stride.

‘Oh Bertie, don’t be so rude,’ the woman shouted. Kirsty threw back a smile at the woman. Shortly after, she turned off right to do a woodland loop, and upped the pace. She was only three minutes into her jog, luxuriating in the silent whiteness of the world, and the carpet of untrodden snow ahead.

Her relaxation was torn asunder by a piercing, bloodcurdling shriek followed by the frenzied barking of a dog. She paused for only a second, sweat transmuting into ice. Something terrible had just happened and she knew what she had to do. Pivoting towards the sound of the animal, she exploded into a sprint. There were no more screams, but the first still echoed in her head.

She burst out of the woods and turned left onto the main path, racing towards the noise. She pulled out her mobile from the sleeve pocket. Too busy unlocking the screen, she almost collided with a hooded mountain biker, a whirl of dark colours going full tilt in the opposite direction. The boxer was 200 yards ahead, racing in circles, barking angrily. It rushed towards the edge of the trees and halted, whimpering, before resuming its circuit. As Kirsty approached she could now see the woman was lying on the ground. The dog rounded on her, blocking her approach, snarling. It had blood on its face and head.

‘Good boy, Bertie,’ she said, in as friendly a tone as she could manage, crouching and holding out her hand towards the dog. She hoped its behaviour was born out of loyalty rather than belligerence. The dog eyed her dubiously, then rushed off to challenge a dog walker, a silver-haired gent with a golden labrador on a lead, hurrying from the opposite direction. The boxer’s barking and stance caused the man to stop, and shorten the lead on his own pet.

‘Did the dog attack her? Is she all right?’ he asked.

Kirsty shook her head. It was the answer to both questions. Her last two strides had brought her within three yards and confirmed her worst fears. There was blood everywhere, spattered across the snow, pooling on the path next to the woman. The ball thrower lay to her right, just out of reach of her open hand, while the dog’s leather lead was grasped firmly in her left fist. She had dark red nail varnish, and several rings. But this was no dog attack. The woman was lying face up, her brown eyes wide in shock, her mouth open, unmoving. Snowflakes on her eyelashes. The side of her skull had been smashed in, her hair matted in the contents, a pink slush already forming beneath it. It was clear she had suffered many grievous blows.

‘She’s dead, stay well back,’ Kirsty said, eyeing the dog, which was repeatedly investigating the body of his mistress, its paws making yet another obscuring track across the blood-spattered snow.

‘We better call the police,’ he said.

Of course.

As if to remind her, a ringtone sounded loudly nearby, demanding attention. The dead woman’s phone. Ringing and ringing in insistent jollity. Someone trying to reach her. Too late. Someone who would never get to talk to her, to ask her a question. A humanising reminder that this person had been part of somebody’s life.

And just then, the snow stopped.

---

The dog, having barked at everybody, orbited the body on a fast elliptical run, periodically stopping and scanning the horizon, as if seeking the assailant. On a nearby pass, Kirsty lunged forward and grabbed his collar. The animal looked up at her accusingly, but did not struggle. With a jolt she realised that this snowy tableau, a five yard radius from the body, had captured every clue a crime scene investigator could hope for. A bicycle track within three yards of the body, signs of a dismount, several footprints, all of which were vital though transient clues to what had just occurred. They had to be preserved if at all possible.

She turned to the man. ‘Actually, would you ring?’ The man nodded, and pulled his own dog back just as a Jack Russell terrier bounded over, romped past the boxer and began to sniff the body. ‘For God’s sake,’ Kirsty shouted; she struggled to prevent the boxer tackling the terrier, whose owner, a middle-aged woman with a down gilet and a headscarf, was still a hundred yards away.

‘MADAM!’ Kirsty bellowed in a voice stronger than she had ever believed she possessed. ‘Call your dog back immediately!’

The woman shot back a look of irritation. ‘He’s all right, he won’t bite,’ she brayed back.

‘There is a DEAD BODY here. This is a crime scene.’

It was her very first. All her training had kicked in, and yet she was helpless. The inviolable sanctity of the forensic search area was already being polluted and compromised under her nose, and she could do little about it.

The woman began to call for her animal in a tinny high-pitched entreaty. ‘Binky, come on Binky.’ The animal paid not the slightest bit of notice, so Kirsty threw a stone at it and missed. The stone landed on the hem of the coat of the dead woman, and the Jack Russell sniffed at it.

The male dog walker, phone clamped under his chin, was trying to describe their exact location to the operator, and in response to Kirsty’s gestures led his own animal and the now attendant terrier away from the scene. With the collar of the boxer in one hand, Kirsty whipped out her phone and began to take photographs, trying to capture the bike tracks, the footprints and the blood spattered snow. The first few pictures were spoiled by flash, so she overrode it, but still it was hard to capture the depth and shape of the imprints, especially with the distressed animal in her other hand trying to lunge at any other dogs which approached. She recalled from her course only a few weeks ago that the ideal way to preserve tracks and footprints in muddy ground was take a cast of them. Presumably that would apply to snow too. But that required considerable resources and time. She had neither.

Finally, she was able to pass along the boxer to the male dog walker, who swapped his phone across to her to complete the call to emergency services. Kirsty identified herself, and said she needed CSI assistance as soon as possible. As she waited, the sky cleared and a bright sunshine bathed the common. The temperature had already begun to climb, and droplets were beginning to slide off twigs and branches.

Her first crime scene.

Melting away before her eyes.

Chapter 2

Detective Chief Inspector Craig Gillard got the call at the dog-end of a long night shift. Saturday nights had a habit of sliding well into Sunday. A fight outside the Three Feathers in Epsom at three a.m. had left one man unconscious, and another with a broken jaw. Three men had been detained by venue security staff. Uniformed police had secured the scene; the duty CSI officer was busy elsewhere, so as duty DCI it was up to him to bring some order. The crime scene was easy to map out, with spatterings of blood across thirty yards of pavement. At one edge, he found a pair of broken spectacles and a bloody tooth located in the gutter. Most of the witnesses seemed drunk, as were both victims and the apparent assailants. Luckily, there was good CCTV coverage. Like most brawls, the advent of dispassionate camera surveillance had greatly simplified who said what about who hit whom. He always kept a data stick in his pocket, and had been able to download the relevant footage within half an hour of arrival. That would give enough evidence to hold the alleged attackers overnight. They were taken away in a van, leaving just him and one PC to finish up.

By the time the snow started at around half six, he was on to the paperwork. Silent flakes, drifting through the light of the sodium lamps above him, beginning to cover up the bloodstains, masking the chewing gum stains and dusting the street in a heavenly but misleading innocence.

Gillard was sitting in his unmarked Vauxhall checking the notation on evidence bags which separately contained: one chunky gold-effect chain (male style, broken), one pair of men’s designer spectacles (broken), a double molar, a torn shirt collar (cotton, male), bloodstained on the inside, and a small folding hunting knife, apparently unused. It could have been worse. He finished the form, checked the time (7.27 a.m.) and suddenly began to fantasise about a bacon sandwich. Two rashers – done crispy – with ketchup, in a brown bap. At this time on a Sunday morning he was unlikely to get any of that around here. But with any luck, he could be back at Mount Browne, Surrey Police headquarters, by the time his shift ended at eight.

The phone call from the incident room changed all that.

A body found at Ashtead Common, just a few miles away. Clear evidence of homicide, and CSI trainee, Kirsty Mockett, a witness, trying hard on her own to secure the crime scene. Gillard vaguely recognised the name.

The operator passed on the puzzling message. ‘She’s asking if you have anything to take a cast of footprints and tyre prints in snow, before it melts.’

Gillard was taken aback, and simply muttered his thanks.

‘I’ll leave that one with you then,’ the operator said, before passing on the exact location.

---

Kirsty had been expecting the ambulance first, but it was a grey Vauxhall estate which bumped its way the 200 yards down the bridleway towards her. The vehicle stopped thirty yards away and the man who emerged, tall, well-built and exuding capability, was familiar. She remembered DCI Gillard from the applied forensics module, when he had given a talk about dealing with bloodstains. Then he had been wearing a suit, but now he looked rugged in bomber jacket, jeans and hiking boots. His smile of greeting was just what she wanted to see. Her relief was so intense that her eyes watered, and she let a single sob escape before masking it with her hand.

‘I’m so glad to see you, sir,’ she said.

‘We’ve met, haven’t we?’ Gillard said offering his hand. After a quick introduction she began to tell him of all the difficult issues encountered: the cyclist, the dogs, the snow, and all the damage to the crime scene that she couldn’t prevent. She felt she was babbling, but he listened carefully and nodded before turning to her. ‘I got a big bag of ice in the rucksack, it was the best I could do this time on a Sunday morning. The publican at the last crime scene helped me out.’

Kirsty led Gillard through a small scattering of bystanders and their short-leashed dogs, to within five yards of the body. It had been covered with a plastic dry-cleaning bag, weighted with a couple of stones. There was a small mound of snow nearby. But elsewhere, the underlying green of grass was visible through the slush. Only in the shadow of the trees, ten yards further on, was the snow still an unbroken white.

‘This is the best I could do,’ Kirsty said. ‘There was a tyre track and a partial footprint, which to me indicated someone stepping off the bike, very close to where the body was found.’ She knelt down, and with a gloved hand brushed the top of the snow mound away, revealing a large pizza box.

‘Was this here?’ Gillard asked.

‘No. I found it in the bushes. But with the snow melting so fast, I needed something really well insulated. One of the dog owners grabbed a plasticised notice from the board over there, which was stiff enough to enable me to slide under and lift the whole section of snow into the box. I’ve no idea if it’s retained all the details, but it was the best I could manage under the circumstances.’

‘It’s ingenious,’ Gillard said. ‘I’m impressed.’ He could see that the box lid had been domed, to avoid touching the thick layer of snow within. ‘I’ll not open the lid, but I’ll rest it on the sack of ice until we can get it into somebody’s deep-freeze,’ he said.

‘There is a ranger’s house at the top of the hill,’ said the male dog walker, who was still keeping hold both of his own labrador and the boxer.

‘Has anyone been to the body?’ Gillard asked.

‘No. I thought—’

‘But you are absolutely sure she is dead?’ The question had a scaffolding of blame already built into it.

Kirsty nodded. ‘Her skull is… smashed. It was a savage attack.’ Her own voice seemed high, piping and wholly unconvincing. Gillard made his way over to the victim and knelt. He briefly lifted the edge of the translucent plastic bag, and confirmed what Kirsty had said.

The sound of the ambulance cut across the snowy fields behind them, and with it was a police patrol car. They made their way down the slushy grass towards them.

Kirsty watched as Gillard rapidly briefed the arriving officers and passed across the pizza box and the ice sack on which it was resting. A white police tent was brought from the boot of the patrol car, and two uniformed constables began to screen off the scene of the attack with blue and white tape.

Gillard then turned back to Kirsty. He seemed particularly interested in the cyclist whom Kirsty had described almost knocking her down. ‘Well, we’re still in the golden hour, which I’m sure you remember from your training.’

Kirsty nodded: ‘The first hour after a crime gives the best chance for a quick result.’

‘Particularly now, with all this,’ he said, indicating the slushy coating on the grass.

The detective chief inspector made a couple of quick calls asking for assistance at all exits to the common, particularly looking for bicycle tyre tracks made since the snowfall. Leaving the two newly arrived uniformed officers in charge of the crime scene, Gillard suggested that they both follow the tracks left by the cyclist. ‘You look like you’re kitted out for a run, so shall we?’

---

They jogged easily along the path towards the nature reserve, moving through mixed woodland where in many places the snow had not yet melted. The tracks were easy to follow, and there were several muddy patches where Gillard knelt down to take photographs, placing a coin beside the impression to give a sense of scale. The type of tyre thus recorded, they upped their pace, finding no other bike tracks since the snowfall to confuse the route. It was not yet eight, and Gillard hoped that on a Sunday morning luck might well be on their side.

Finally they emerged by a public footpath sign onto a main road, the A243, close to Leatherhead Golf Club. It was here that the tyre tracks disappeared. There were no parking places or pull-ins designated nearby and no evidence of vehicles parked on the snowy verge. Gillard flagged down a passing patrol car, and got them both a lift back.

Half an hour later, Kirsty was sitting in an interview room in Epsom police station, having given her statement, and now watching DCI Gillard consume an enormous bacon sandwich. ‘Are you sure you don’t want one?’ he asked, as he wiped ketchup from the corner of his mouth with a napkin.

‘I’m a vegan,’ Kirsty said.

‘Then I suppose I’m committing an unforgivable crime against the animal kingdom,’ he said.

‘Look, I’m not a crusader. But you’re not doing yourself any good.’

He nodded and raised his eyebrows, and tossed the napkin into a bin, signalling the end of the conversation.

‘So what happens to Bertie the boxer?’ Kirsty asked.

‘Given that we have a dead body on the slab, I’m interested that’s the first question that you asked. But he’ll be looked after by the local dog handling section.’

‘Have they done a DNA check around his mouth?’

Gillard looked up quizzically.

‘I definitely saw bloodstains around his mouth, as if he had bitten the assailant.’

‘I’ll ask them to do it, but I’m a little dubious that we will get anything. Any human DNA traces may well have been overwhelmed by doggy saliva. On the other hand, we can look out for fragments of clothing, which may contain the cyclist’s DNA.’

‘Do you know who the victim is?’

‘Yes, she’s Mrs Tanvi Roy, quite a notable businesswoman apparently,’ Gillard said. ‘Yaz Quoroshi of CSI say there’s plenty of ID on the body, though no purse. I shall be going round to see her next of kin this evening, though it seems they’ve already picked up the bad news, according to my family liaison officer.’

Kirsty nodded.

‘When is it you are due to start as a CSI?’

‘Tomorrow. Based in Mount Browne to begin with, reporting to Mr Quoroshi.’

Gillard smiled at her. ‘Well, this morning has been quite an induction for you, hasn’t it?’

‘To put it mildly.’

‘I think you should be very pleased with yourself. And I think we should both go over this afternoon and have a look at this snow sample that you collected.’

‘Okay,’ she said and checked the time on her phone. It was almost ten o’clock ‘Can I go now? I’ve hardly got any food in the house, and I haven’t ironed anything for my first day’s work. I’m horribly behind.’

He gave her a steady stare. She had the kind of face that made it easy. ‘Sorry, Kirsty, I need half an hour more of your time. There’s a good chance the murder weapon is somewhere nearby, and having you with me will give me a better chance to find it. So if you don’t mind, I’d like to go back to the scene now and join the half-dozen officers who are already there.’

‘Okay,’ she said quietly.

Gillard smiled. ‘I promise that when we’re done I’ll give you a lift to the supermarket.’

‘And the ironing?’ She grinned.

‘Don’t push your luck.’

She laughed. Gillard decided that he liked her.

---

DCI Gillard wasn’t exaggerating in his praise for the young investigator. There were so many things she could have done wrong, but hadn’t. She hadn’t put her own footprints into the crime scene, she hadn’t touched the body herself, she’d attempted to photograph the tyre tracks and footprints, and she had restrained the dogs. Using the pizza box to hold a crucial sample of snow was an act of genius.

Back at Ashtead Common the corner of Woodfield Lane was a hive of activity. An articulated low loader carrying a large white Portakabin was just reversing in through the open vehicle barrier, guided by one of the Ashtead Common rangers.

‘That’s our mobile incident room, God help us,’ Gillard said to Mockett. ‘It’s universally known as the Khazi because of the smell.’ He recalled many long hours in its stale air, listening to officers come and go through the squeaky plywood door, and trying to make himself heard over the drone of the extractor fans. Black mould grew readily on its institutional off-white paint, however many times it was washed with fungicide.

The crime scene was marked by half a dozen police vehicles, a large white CSI tent, and an encircling loop of crime tape which fluttered in the breeze. Though it was by no means warm, the temperature was several degrees higher than it had been when the body was found and only the vaguest traces of slush could still be seen. Duck boards had been laid across the damp grass to allow vehicles to come and go across the 200 yards to the edge of the tape without churning up the turf. That had been insisted on by the City of London Corporation, owner of this precious piece of green space so close to the metropolis.

Gillard was greeted at the edge of the tape by a uniformed PC, and then by a woman in a crackling plastic Tyvek bodysuit. It was DI Claire Mulholland, Gillard’s protégé. He introduced her to Kirsty Mockett and then asked, ‘Any luck finding the murder weapon?’

‘Not so far. Based on photographs of the wounds, Yaz reckons we’re probably looking for a hammer, or something similar. Certainly something with quite a bit of weight.’

Gillard nodded and turned to Kirsty. ‘Did you see whether the cyclist was carrying anything?’

‘No, like I said I really just saw him from the corner of my eye. I can’t exclude that he was carrying something the size of a hammer. If it was as big as a baseball bat, I guess I would have noticed.’

‘The larger and heavier the weapon, I imagine the more likely an assailant would be to ditch it quickly,’ Claire said.

‘Agreed,’ Gillard replied. ‘I’m going to grab half a dozen of your team and search the bushes of the twenty yards either side of the path that Kirsty here saw the cyclist take.’

‘If you wait five minutes, the ranger and his colleagues should be here,’ Claire said. ‘They’ve offered to help. A sniffer dog is on its way from Crawley too, and should be here any time.’

---

Noon arrived under a glowering, snow-laden sky, as two dozen men and women in wellington boots and rainproofs combed through the undergrowth on either side of the cyclist’s route that Gillard had marked on his map. All sorts of interesting things were found: discarded condoms, a sock, numerous dog toys, chewed tennis balls and fast food polystyrene clamshells. They also found bottles, most plastic but a few glass. The latter, some of them conceivably large and heavy enough to have been the murder weapon, were marked on a map, their locations tagged with either spray paint or labels on the undergrowth, and packed up into evidence envelopes. Snow flurries began again, and the temperature dropped sharply as the sniffer dog, a spaniel called Jimbo, and his male handler went again over the ground that had been covered.

The dog, having been taught the victim’s smell from her clothing, raced around with its nose to the ground in seemingly random loops, going back and forth before plunging off to the right into the woods, and then re-emerging further up the path.

Gillard turned to Kirsty and said: ‘I better get you back now, otherwise you’ll die of starvation. The search will go on all afternoon, and there’s not much else you can do for the moment.’

Following her instruction, he dropped her off at the nearby Sainsbury’s and said: ‘Thank you. You’ve done a really fantastic job giving us a head start on what could be a really difficult case. I’ve already spoken to Yaz to ask him to go easy on you tomorrow. I’ll be in touch. Good luck with the ironing!’

As the grey Vauxhall pulled away, Kirsty gave a brief wave. She was hungry and high on adrenalin. Only then, on her own in a crowded shopping street, did she think about the victim, and that first glimpse of her damaged skull. Those open eyes with snowflakes gathering on the lashes came back to her. The thought of food was suddenly repellent. Shopping would have to wait.

Chapter 3

The inaugural incident room meeting for the case of the murder of Mrs Roy took place at one p.m., just a few hours after the body was found. Crammed into the Khazi with Gillard were DI Claire Mulholland, Research Intelligence Officer Rob Townsend, DCs Colin Hodges and Carl Hoskins, press officer Christina McCafferty, and family liaison officer DC Gabby Underwood.

‘Right, let’s keep this brief,’ Gillard said, pointing to an ordnance survey map that he had taped to a whiteboard. ‘What we know so far is that businesswoman Mrs Tanvi Roy, fifty-seven, was walking her dog on Ashtead Common at around 7.20 a.m. when witnesses heard a scream. The first arrived at the crime scene within three minutes, and could see from the severity of head injuries that the victim was dead. We have been very lucky on this because that first witness was, as you will have heard, Ms Kirsty Mockett, a trainee crime scene investigator. You have her statement in front of you. In the first five minutes and with the snow already melting she managed to secure the scene, keep bystanders and their dogs away, and preserve an impression of a potentially significant cycle tyre imprint and accompanying footprint.’

‘That’s well impressive,’ said Colin Hodges, tucking into a sandwich from a paper plate stacked high beside him. Hodges and his fellow DC Carl Hoskins were almost identical mid-thirties, overweight, working-class detectives, with metal-framed spectacles and close-shaven heads. Known as Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the only easy way to tell the difference between them was Hodges’ newly-grown beard which, to his horror, turned out ginger. ‘I hope she’s coming to work for us,’ he said.

‘She is, starting tomorrow,’ Gillard said.

Claire Mulholland stuck up her hand. ‘Is the cyclist formally a suspect?’

‘Informally, yes. But I think at this stage we should stick to the formula that he is somebody we are anxious to trace. I’ll say more about this when we cover the PR angle because it’s potentially going to be a big story.’ He looked at Christina McCafferty, whose emphatically nodding head signalled agreement.

Claire made some notes, while Gillard continued. ‘I was able to get there by 7.40 a.m. When uniforms arrived five minutes later we were able to try to follow the cycle tracks before the snow melted. We can look at the tyre track images later.’ He turned to the map. ‘We traced the line of tyre marks along a public footpath which exited onto the A243 here,’ he said tapping the map. ‘This is where the track was lost.’

‘She didn’t get much of a description of the cyclist,’ Claire said. ‘Do we have anything from other witnesses?’

‘Not much. Mr Douglas Boyle, a dog walker and the second witness on the scene, said he saw a cyclist in the distance a couple of minutes before he heard the scream. All he could say was the rider was heading down the bridleway from the direction of Ashtead railway station towards the place where Mrs Roy was found. We have a good description