Beth fired up her computer and grabbed a notebook. O’Dowd had listened to her findings and theories, given a curt nod of appreciation and then issued a set of orders about what she wanted them to do.

Across the room, Unthank kept his head down and carried on with his work. O’Dowd had laid into him for something minor, and it was clear he was smarting from the insults she’d hurled his way.

Once she’d logged onto the computer, Beth went online and started the task O’Dowd had given her – which was to research Arthuret Hall. It wasn’t what she wanted to investigate, but she knew she had to follow orders.

It only took her a few minutes to learn the history of the grand house. Built in the seventeenth century by the Appleby family, it had been in the ownership of the Dacre-Applebys for almost two hundred years. The next owner had taken Arthuret for a surname and, the estate remained in the family’s hands until the 1940s when the building was requisitioned by the RAF as an officer’s mess, and during the later war years, it was home to evacuees from Rossall School in Lancashire. After the war, it was converted into flats for servicemen working at the MOD depot at Longtown.

Its next reincarnation was as a casino; The Borders Country Club was run by a man who was alleged to have gangland connections. When the licensing laws changed, the hall was abandoned to the whims of weather and vandals. By the early seventies it was a roofless, ruined shell. Only since early the previous year had it come back into use, as a bohemian venue for weddings, its still-beautiful and incredibly grand entrance hall an ideal place for a civil ceremony with enough room to accommodate up to a hundred guests.

The history of Arthuret Hall was fascinating and the more Beth read, the more she wondered if it had been chosen as the deposit site for a significant reason, or selected at random by someone who knew nothing of its history.

She wondered if Angus had a connection. Maybe he was descended from an evacuee, or an airman who’d lived there. Or maybe it was the killer whose ancestors had once inhabited the house. Or perhaps he’d been executed for non-payment of gambling debts, and his body had been dumped in the way it had in a former casino as a warning to others with outstanding debts.

It crossed Beth’s mind that the killing could be connected in some way to the weddings that took place at the venue, but she couldn’t figure out how beyond Angus Keane knowing someone who’d married there. According to O’Dowd’s notes, Suzy hadn’t known of a connection between her husband and Arthuret Hall, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one.

Whichever way she looked at it, there was a shedload of possibilities to consider and she was grateful the burden of decision about which avenues they explored would fall on O’Dowd’s shoulders rather than her own. Not only were there so many strands to investigate, each one was fraught with difficulties. It would be straightforward enough to find out if Angus was a gambler, but locating the records that listed the evacuees and the RAF men who lived there could prove to be a nightmare. Plus there were all the men who’d lived there when working at the MOD depot to consider.

There would be dozens if not hundreds of people to identify. Some of the house’s occupants may still be alive, though even the youngest of the evacuees would be pushing seventy-five at best. To add to all that, there was the former owner who’d turned the house into a casino, with his shady past. Was it possible that a criminal empire had been passed down and Angus had been murdered by the owner’s sons’ or grandsons’ henchmen?

Regardless of all these possibilities, there was every chance the house’s history had no bearing on the case, and Beth was convinced their best chance of getting a result was to identify the reason Angus was killed.

She got Unthank’s attention. ‘Paul, have you got a minute?’

‘Yeah, what is it?’

Beth outlined her findings and the various ideas she’d had to Unthank.

‘Sounds like a right nightmare. It’ll take us weeks to work our way through that many folk.’

‘Any ideas on ways to hurry the process up?’

Unthank wagged a finger in front of his shaking head.

Beth got his meaning at once. Some things couldn’t be hurried up and there were no shortcuts in a murder investigation. She was glad she hadn’t voiced the same sentiment in front of Thompson or O’Dowd.

To change the subject, Beth asked Unthank how he’d got on with his own tasks.

‘I’ve got the request in for Angus Keane’s phone records and I have also asked for its geopositioning for the last week. I’m now on with running both his and his wife’s family through the system to see what pops up.’

‘Found anything?’

‘Suzy’s brother Peter has a couple of arrests for assault in his past and he was bound over for ABH about five years ago.’

‘Sounds like he has a big temper for a little man. Do you think O’Dowd will pull him in?’

‘Damn right she will.’

Beth’s head snapped round at the DI’s voice. She hadn’t heard O’Dowd enter the room and she was glad she’d used the right terminology and hadn’t prefixed the name with the insulting nickname that she was increasingly aware others used.