‘As I understand it,’ she began mildly, ‘you were apprehended a short while ago, breaking into the car in which Mr Parker died. Is that true, sir?’

She had no idea if that was the right question – or even the first question – that the sarge would have asked, and didn’t dare look at him in case she saw disapproval in his face.

‘I didn’t break in,’ Geoffrey denied at once. ‘I had a key. It’s one of a set of master keys that we keep at the car showroom. It allows us access to all vehicles. Obviously, we have to have one.’

‘I think that’s rather splitting hairs, Mr Thorpe, don’t you?’ Trudy chided him gently. She might not be conducting the interview in the same way as the sarge would, but she had the distinct advantage of having met this man before. She’d talked to him in his own home, and had seen him in a family setting. She’d heard his grandchildren playing in the next room, and believed he was basically a good man at heart, who’d probably just been caught up in a bad situation. And she believed he wanted to confess to whatever it was he needed to confess to, if she just helped him along a bit.

‘You must have known you were entering an unauthorised police facility, Mr Thorpe,’ she insisted softly, and saw him flush guiltily.

She leaned slightly forward and laid her hand on the table not far from his own. She didn’t touch him, but it was enough of a gesture to suggest support and encouragement. ‘Don’t you think it would just be easier if you told us what you were doing? Why did you want to see the crashed car, sir? Did you want to make sure that whatever sabotages you’d committed on it had been destroyed in the accident, perhaps?’

Geoffrey Thorpe who’d begun to feel slightly more comfortable with Trudy’s presence and her softer voice, suddenly went white and sat bolt upright.

‘What? What sabotage? What do you mean?’ he squeaked. He looked appalled – first at Trudy and then at the large sergeant, as if to silently ask the other man if he too had heard the same thing. But the sergeant, with his quiff of sandy-coloured hair and pale blue eyes merely returned his look with a blank, apparently uninterested gaze.

‘Did you tamper with your business partner’s car, sir?’ Trudy persisted gently but firmly. ‘We know that he had already stolen a significant sum from your partnership, so it’s understandable that you were angry with him.’