‘Oh, let me put on the fire,’ the woman said, scuttling over to the fireplace where a three-bar electric fire stood in the grate. She put in the plug and turned it on, and then hurried to the door. ‘I’ll just fetch Geoff,’ she said, casting them one last anxious glance and then closing the door behind her.

The electric fire began to make ticking sounds and finally glowed with a promising red heat, before infusing the room with that nose-wrinkling scent of burning metal. Clement nevertheless went over to it, took off his gloves, and held his hands gratefully over the bars.

The noise of children abruptly abated, and Trudy could imagine their mother – or possibly she was their grandmother – demanding that they pipe down.

A moment or two later the door opened and a man walked in. He was in his late forties or maybe very early fifties, Clement gauged, around five-feet-ten, with grey hair and eyes. He was starting to thicken around the middle, and was wearing warm tweed trousers and a matching blazer with a knitted V-neck jumper underneath.

‘Hello, this is unexpected,’ the man said, holding out his hand first of all to Clement, then to Trudy. ‘Geoffrey Thorpe. My wife says you need to see me?’

‘Yes, sir, I’m afraid I may have some bad news,’ Trudy said. She saw the man stiffen and his eyes fixed on hers steadily.

‘Oh?’

‘About your business partner. You do own a used car business with a Mr Terrence Parker?’ Trudy lifted her voice at the end, to make it a question. As she did so, an undeniably wary look, perhaps tinged with imminent panic, fleetingly crossed the other man’s face, before it was almost instantly smoothed out again.

‘Terry? Yes? Why, what’s he done?’ Geoffrey Thorpe asked mildly. He looked, in some puzzlement, at Clement.

It was, Trudy thought, an interesting way of putting it. What had he expected the dead man to have done?

‘I’m sorry, I should have introduced myself sooner,’ Trudy apologised. ‘I’m WPC Loveday, and this is Dr Clement Ryder, city coroner.’

‘Coroner?’ Geoffrey echoed, startled. ‘Is Terry dead then?’

‘We believe so, sir,’ Trudy said. ‘A man was found dead in his crashed vehicle early this morning. His wallet had documentation in it, which leads us to believe it was Mr Parker. Naturally, we need a formal identification, and so far we’ve been unable to track down any next of kin. I was wondering if you would mind making your way to the morgue at Floyds Row to view the body?’

Mindful of her need to obey the inspector’s orders to get as much of the preliminary work done as possible, she was relieved to see Geoffrey blink, then nod and mutter abstractly, and a little reluctantly, ‘Yes, of course I can do that. Yes … er …’