Past Rita’s Rest-Up was some wasteland, and then a crossroads with traffic lights. To the left was a furniture warehouse. I looked down to the right and saw the sign I wanted. It said Antiques in large white letters on a black background, and there was the mandatory, rotting, wooden cartwheel, bolted to the front wall of the building. I drove onto the patch of snow in front, which I presumed was the place referred to in a smaller sign which said Patrons’ Car Park, and switched off the ignition. Before getting out of the car, I reached my hand inside the breast pocket of my jacket, unclipped the top of my holster, and switched the safety catch on my Beretta to the off position. Then I went into the shop.

It was dark, and piled high with the usual paraphernalia to be found in the type of shop that keeps itself one rung above the category of junk shop, not by the quality of its merchandize, but keeping its merchandize in some semblance of order and cleanliness. Anything that could be dusted had been dusted, and anything that could be polished had been polished, and anything that could be included had been included. There were bottles, jars, china with willow patterns, china with floral patterns, china with geometric patterns, Coronation mugs, a porcelain ashtray in the school of late twentieth-century Frank J. Woolworth, a chipped jardinière, a fading reproduction of a portrait of Lester Pearson, a former Prime Minister of Canada of whom Winston Churchill once asked, ‘Who is that funny Canadian with the squeaky voice?’; a small paper-roll organ stood out from the rest of the artefacts as actually being quite old and quite pretty.

There was no one in the shop although a bell had pinged as I walked in. After some moments a woman appeared and stood in the doorway, watching me idly. She was in her late thirties, but looked older. She was underweight and had no make-up on her face; she wore a cheap cotton dress with a thin, badly worn cardigan over it. Her skin was pale with thick wrinkles, and there were dark rings around her eyes. She might once have been very pretty, but now she was wracked with misery and more than a little trace of fear.

I turned the handle of the organ and a few tinny strands of ‘Silent Night’ twanged out. I looked over towards the woman. ‘How much is this?’

‘Isn’t there a price ticket?’ She had an English accent, North Country, probably Yorkshire.

‘No,’ I said.

‘I don’t know, I’m afraid – I can find out later for you.’

‘Is the boss out?’

‘No – he’s asleep upstairs.’

‘I can wait.’

‘He won’t be up until after midday.’ She looked at a clock on the wall. It said ten fifty.

‘Are you Mrs Sparrow?’