Jenny looked at the board again. Hannah had added Faisal McNish and Darren Grant to it. ‘All these guys circling around Mel. I’ll never understand men.’

‘Me neither.’

Jenny gave a rueful smile. ‘As my own failed marriage demonstrates.’

She wondered where Schrödinger was, maybe out trying to mate or hunting birds. Something macho, anyway.

‘What Dad did to you was shit,’ Hannah said. ‘I’m not stupid, I don’t worship him.’

Jenny looked out of the window at the new buildings of Quartermile glinting in the sun.

‘Women have strange relationships with their fathers,’ she said. She reached out and held Hannah’s hand. ‘Your gran is convinced my dad was lying to her for years.’

‘But there’s no proof apart from the money, right?’

Jenny remembered Dorothy in a spotlight, standing in a grave, 258sifting through bones to get to the truth. But there was no truth, at least not the kind she was looking for. ‘No, there isn’t.’

‘Well, then.’

Jenny sipped her tea. ‘We think our dads are perfect but we know what men are like in the real world. And dads are just men, after all.’ She looked at Hannah. ‘You made the right choice with Indy.’

Hannah frowned. ‘It’s not any different. Men and women, straight and gay, we’re just trying to get along, not hurt anyone, but it doesn’t always work like that.’

Jenny smiled. ‘How did I have a daughter so wise?’

Hannah got up and looked at the whiteboards. They were updated, new lines drawn, names scored out, funerals conducted, suspects added.

‘What about your adultery case?’ Hannah said.

Part of Jenny couldn’t believe the world was still turning after last night. She’d presumed they would get caught. How can you just walk into a cemetery and dig someone up and no one even notice? The way they’d left the grave would be noticeable if anyone paid close attention. They’d cut the turf and laid it to the side first, then when they’d filled the hole back in they’d stamped it back down over the earth, but the cuts in the sod were easy to see. Maybe it was only a matter of time until someone saw it and twigged, the groundskeeper or a relative. Then there would be an appeal for information in the local paper, a disgusted husband or brother standing next to the grave. Maybe they would dig it up again to make sure she was still in there. Maybe there was CCTV they hadn’t spotted. Maybe that bloody owl would blab to the world about what it saw.

She realised she hadn’t answered Hannah again.

‘He’s innocent,’ she said.

‘Really?’

‘I think so.’

‘Some men are OK, then.’259

Jenny shrugged, thinking of Liam’s eyes, those paintings. ‘Maybe.’

‘So is the case closed?’