‘Please do.’ He handed her his contact card. ‘And ask around the office. Ask if Norma had any favourite haunts. Please keep our discussion absolutely to yourself and thank you for your co-operation. My colleagues will come in now to search the office.’

***

On the pavement outside Maguire Holdings, Hendricks’ curiosity about Norma Maguire was spiked and he called Riley on his iPhone.

‘How’s it going, Gina?’ asked Hendricks.

‘So far we haven’t found anything in the house to incriminate Norma Maguire. I don’t know what Poppy’s going to pull from the laptop and iPhone that Eve took from her. It’s like an old lady’s house. I can imagine a person dying of boredom between these walls.’

‘Interesting. Anything in the loft?’

‘A box with a couple of old scrapbooks. I haven’t seen it myself, but I heard it’s newspaper cuttings, reviews of plays her mother, Cecily Levin, was in. It’s on its way to Trinity Road, along with boxes of receipts and bills. There’s no evidence of her having relationships with anyone except the people she paid to work for her.’

‘What about the basement?’

‘Two rooms and a massive anomaly. One room’s empty. The next room’s got a huge mirror on the wall. I’ve been in every room in the house, including the bathroom, and that mirror in the basement is the only mirror in the house.’

Hendricks recalled the first time he saw Norma Maguire, when he knocked on her door. She had appeared painfully shy and had physically done everything she could so that he couldn’t see her face.

‘Keep me posted, Gina.’

Hendricks clicked on his Messages icon and picked out Clay on his list of contacts.

Eve, Norma Maguire has massive self-loathing issues. Catoptrophobia. I’ll tell you when I see you.

115

8.35 am

Detective Chief Inspector Eve Clay noticed that as he watched her walk past, the contempt Edgar McKee had worn on his face on their first encounter had returned, but was bigger and deeper than ever.

She maintained eye contact with him as Winters formally opened the interview.

‘Tell me about your mother.’ asked Clay.

‘Jesus, you really are clutching at straws.’

‘Humour me, Mr McKee. I know where this is going.’

McKee looked at his solicitor, who smirked. Go on. Humour her.

‘I never knew my mother. But I know things about her. She was a single mother when she gave birth to me in the 1970s. She had no way of keeping me. She was forced to sign me over for adoption. I was a sickly baby and I grew into a sickly child. So I didn’t get adopted. Everyone wanted a healthy kid. The home I lived in literally couldn’t give me away.’

‘Where was this house?’

‘Russell House. Near Wrexham, in Flintshire. I went looking for her when I was in my thirties but I was too late. She died in 2001.’