Estate agents don’t usually buy houses in the names of their girl friends without telling them, nor do they generally keep a quantity of drugs in the office safe. But such an estate agent was Lionel Webb.

A passer-by who knew him saw him sitting in his Stoke Newington, London, office at about 5 p.m. on Monday December 11th, 1989, and then dead on the floor about half an hour later. One theory about his death was that he was undercutting some rivals in overseas property transactions, but a drug connection seems a more likely explanation.