That was what we were driving to deliver at Mary Griffin’s house the Monday morning he quoted Ecclesiastes at me. The bed lay in flat-pack form, covered with a blanket in the back of his van, ready to be assembled when we got there.

He took the makings of the bed upstairs while Mary and I lingered over coffee in the kitchen. With my help and encouragement, she had managed to get all the furniture into the right rooms. The plumber and electrician I’d organized had fixed her a working kitchen. There was still plenty left to do – pegged-up sheets substituted for curtains and so on – but the place was beginning to look like a home again.

So much so that Mary had taken the decision to bring Amy back that afternoon and was clearly worried about the likely response. The little girl had witnessed many traumatic scenes in the house and its new improvised furnishings would be unfamiliar to her.

I was about to reassure Mary when we heard a cough and turned to see the tall figure of Dodge in the doorway. Needless to say, he didn’t look at either of us as he mumbled that, if we wanted to come upstairs, the bed was ready for inspection.

It was his masterwork. Solid, very definitely grown-up, and painted pink. A little girl’s dream – and with a refinement to warm Amy’s heart.

I must have mentioned the movie Frozen to Dodge because I’m sure he’d never heard of it before. His spartan living quarters did not contain a television and he never mentioned going out to the cinema. Nor do I think he ever bought newspapers or magazines.

But somehow, he’d known what was needed. On the bed’s headboard was a row of Frozen stickers.

‘Oh!’ exclaimed Mary, tears glinting in her tired eyes. ‘That is so fabulous! Oh, I must give you a hug!’

But, intuitively recognizing Dodge’s uneasiness about human contact, she didn’t carry out her intention.

‘No worries,’ he mumbled in his awkward, privately schooled accent. ‘I’ll make some more stuff for her, dressing table and what-have-you.’

Turning to me, Mary said, ‘Amy will be over the moon about the bed. I can’t thank you – I can’t thank both of you enough!’

A shadow of doubt crossed her face. ‘I hope it’ll be all right,’ she said. ‘I just hope to God it’ll be all right.’

I saw the fear in her eye. Sentences for the kind of crimes her husband committed can sometimes be excessively lenient. Whether she and Amy would be allowed to continue to live peacefully in their house once Craig had been released … well, no one could predict that.

I had a feeling Mary Griffin might be on my unpaid books for quite a time to come.

I’d left the Yeti at Dodge’s. He was silent as we drove back. ‘Everything all right?’ I asked.

‘Yes, yes,’ he replied vaguely. And I realized the limitations of my knowledge of him. There were substantial areas of his past and his current life which he never talked about. I respected that and never probed. If he wanted to share something with me, that was his decision.