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‘You think we’re looking for a vigilante?’

Nightingale shrugged. ‘I’m not prepared to rule anything out.’

CSI had put anti-contamination stepping plates down. They were transparent plastic with a slip-resistant tread. The rubber pads on the bottom of each foot would be removed and bagged as evidence when CSI had finished.

Poe took his time and followed Nightingale into Teasdale’s dining room. Flynn trailed after them both. He was surprised. It was one thing to insist she was fit to work while heavily pregnant to make a point, another thing entirely to fall off a footplate because she was less certain on her feet.

‘See what I mean about it being different?’ Nightingale said.

Poe did.

Teasdale had been secured to a wooden chair with zip-ties. He had been a fat man – the kind who could have used a sports bra – and the ties had dug into his fleshy wrists and ankles. One of his hands was clenched into a fist, as if he’d been in pain when he died. The other was open. It was missing two fingers.

His mouth was partially open, his lips were covered in shiny cold sores. His T-shirt was stained red. A pair of bloodied kitchen scissors rested in his lap. Poe wasn’t surprised to learn that Doyle had been right about the method of amputation.

Flynn retched. She rushed out before she could contaminate anything.

‘Women, eh?’ a CSI man laughed.

‘It’s pregnancy-related chronic indigestion,’ Poe said, ‘and if your face is still here in ten seconds I’m punching it.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘You heard.’

Nightingale gave Poe an appraising look.

‘I’d leave if I were you, Andrews,’ she said. ‘Apologise to DI Flynn on your way out, then go back to Carleton Hall and wait for me.’

After the CSI tech had left, Poe said, ‘I can’t see the wound that killed him.’

Nightingale gently lifted Teasdale’s head and showed him a thin ligature wound around his neck. It had cut through the skin, hence the blood-stained T-shirt.

‘Looks like he’s been strangled,’ she said.

‘Garrotted more like,’ Poe grunted.

‘You think?’

‘Estelle Doyle will be able to confirm it.’

He studied Teasdale’s bedsit, looking for inconsistencies. It was filled with the debris of a lonely life. Takeaway containers, pizza boxes and empty energy drinks were piled on the kitchen counter. Coffee mugs with green mould at the bottom had been abandoned in the sink. The bin was overflowing and smelly. The tiling at the back of the cooker was covered in grime.

The only things Teasdale appeared to care about were his video games. He had hundreds of them. They were neatly stacked on two bookcases. A third bookcase held his controllers. Poe looked for the consoles and found them. A PS4 and an Xbox.

‘He was in breach of his SOPO just by having these,’ Nightingale said. ‘They’re both internet-enabled. Anything?’

‘Maybe,’ Poe said.

‘What?’

‘The smell, it’s unusual.’

‘Why?’

‘What’s the dominant one?’

Nightingale sniffed the air the same way Edgar did.