As he walked back to his office, however, fighting his way through the snow and other pedestrians, he began thinking up ways to persuade her to go out for that drink. After all, in his opinion, she owed him that much. Hadn’t he all but saved her life not so long ago?

So it was that when his piece appeared in the local paper later that afternoon, the newspaper’s readers were asked to contact WPC Trudy Loveday with any information on the case, giving her desk telephone number. Usually he would have given the police station contact details only, and it would have been the job of the desk sergeant to filter out nuisance callers. But this way, she would find herself pestered with interested curiosity seekers for some time to come, and if he knew human nature, (and he prided himself that he did) the vast majority of them wouldn’t have any useful information at all. They would simply be calling to try and get more juicy details from her, exasperating her beyond endurance.

That would teach her to play hard to get! It would also, with a bit of luck, prompt her to get in touch with him, if only to vent her spleen. Giving him the perfect opportunity to soothe her ruffled feathers and persuade her to come out with him for that drink.

And who knew where that might lead?

*

But as it happened, one of the first calls Trudy received that afternoon wasn’t from one of the newspaper’s readers at all, but from her colleague in Birmingham, who not only surprised her by diligently dealing with her request for information on Terrence James Parker, but obviously doing so in double quick time.

In the course of the conversation she learned, however, that the constable given the task had made it a priority only as it involved a trip to a warm records office, as opposed to a call-out to a break-in at a draughty knacker’s yard!

Nevertheless, despite such unexpected cooperation, the news from up north turned out to be negative. Wherever their victim had grown up, it appeared that he had not done so in the environs of Birmingham.

Sighing over another dead end, she thanked her colleague warmly and hung up, only for the telephone to ring again immediately.

It was some old lady wanting to know if the dead man in the car had red hair. She had just reassured the old dear that he hadn’t, and hung up, when somebody else rang, demanding to know where exactly the crash had occurred.

It didn’t take her very long, after questioning her callers as to why they had contacted her, to find out exactly what Duncan Gillingham had done.

Damn the man!

When her telephone rang for about the tenth time in so many minutes, she almost snarled her name into the instrument.

‘Is that Constable Loveday?’ a cultured male voice asked politely.