Officers shifted the search to a building site near Sevenoaks where Mark Brown was working, and discovered he’d asked permission to dump a burned-out oil drum on a skip there.

In the bottom of it, they found fragments of incinerated bone, teeth, hair straighteners, jewellery and a handbag. Forensic odontologists used dental records to confirm Alex Morgan’s identity.

Mark Brown was arrested for murder, but this time said Alex had died in a tragic accident at the container: “She slipped on some tools on the floor and flew through the air like a cartoon character on a banana skin. She hit her head as she landed. I panicked. Burned her in an oil drum.”

Brown described himself as “a psychopath with a conscience” but in the case of victims Leah Ware and Alex Morgan, he proved himself a cold-blooded murderer…