She heard Nikki humming. ‘O’Connor? That’s Irish isn’t it? Only the travellers have names like that. I’d watch it if I were you, they’re fucking brutal. Wasn’t it the O’Connors who were involved in the scraps with police up at Birkett Mire? Years ago, it was. They’re always being moved on, fucking pikeys. Never clear up after themselves. It’s the poor kids I feel sorry for: never washed or sent to school.’

‘Thanks, Nikki. Let me know about Ria’s birthday.’

‘I will. You still see that old bloke who fancied Mum?’

‘Ted?’

‘Yeah, that’s the one.’

‘I do.’

‘Why? He’s odd.’

‘I’ll tell you all about it one day.’ She hung up.

Birkett Mire again. She prepared a bowl of salad and made a quick dressing in a small jar, and set it on the side. She got the cheese selection, bought from Keswick market by Johnny, out of the fridge and placed it on a board for later. The tarts would take half an hour in the oven. She went back to join Demi and Johnny, and found them laughing together.

‘Demi, let’s show Johnny the star.’

‘The star?’ Johnny asked.

‘The pentagram I made from spaghetti. Someone at work is much cleverer than me and has made an app to impose it over the Lake District, come on, we’ll show you. I need your local knowledge.’

‘Kelly tells me that she’s quite the artist with a bit of dried pasta. It did make me chuckle at first but I reckon she’s on to something.’

‘Kelly told me you profile criminals for the police. That must be a brilliant job. All that psycho stuff makes me wish I’d done it. I watch some of the crime programmes on CSI. Kelly hates it, she watches cookery shows instead.’

‘I’m not surprised, busman’s holiday and all that. Besides, cookery shows are safer.’

They went inside and Kelly powered on her iPad. HOLMES came up on the screen and she quickly read it for any updates. The dynamic reasoning engine was a godsend when her team was tired. Weary human eyes easily missed something, and before the programme had been invented, she reckoned that thousands of criminals must have walked free. Including the most famous of them all, Jack the Ripper himself. The case was every detective’s wet dream: to be there in 1888, armed with today’s technology… Now that would be something.

‘Demi, you know you said the five victims of Jack the Ripper were located in a pentagram? Was that ever used in an investigation?’