When Jack entered Audrey’s lounge, she was seated in exactly the same position as when he left. He sat on the edge of the sofa, his body turned toward her, leaning forward into her eyeline—whether she acknowledged him or not, he wanted to be sure that she could actually see him.

“I wanted to make sure you’re OK,” he lied. “I don’t like the idea of you being on your own. Mrs. Withey, I came back because, well, I wanted to assure you that this is a murder investigation and all we want is to find out who took your son from you. Of course we need to delve into his past, but not to discredit him in any way. We just need to track his associates, his friends . . . Barry Cooper?”

Without looking up, Audrey spoke.

“How did he die?”

“Mike suffered a blow on the head. He would have died instantly, before the fire started, and wouldn’t have suffered.”

“Barry wouldn’t do that to Mike. Brothers in arms, they were.”

Audrey looked like a wrung-out rag, used up and ready to be thrown away. She was a sorry sight, but Jack knew that this new vulnerability would make her more likely to talk to him. He continued to play it as though he was on her side, by handing her the brandy he’d poured earlier on. This time, Audrey took the drink and downed it in one.

“He felt so guilty for being abroad when Shirl got killed. By the time he got home, Greg was back inside an’ all. How come the wrong people always get away with it, eh? And decent people are left to suffer.” She handed him the empty glass and he got up to refill it. “Dolly said she’d ‘do ten’ for me. When she got out after blowing her husband to smithereens, she come round to my home and threatened to kill me too. That’s the sort of animal she was.”

“Why on earth would Dolly want to kill you?” Jack asked.

“I dunno . . . People like Dolly don’t need an excuse to threaten and terrorize. It was just power games to keep people in their place.”

Audrey spluttered nervously. There was clearly more to this slip of the tongue, as Jack knew that Dolly was wily enough not to make idle threats. He left it alone for now and changed the subject.

“Do you know where Barry is? Only he may have been the last person to see Mike, so we’d like to speak to him.”

“I take it you know where he lives?”

Even now, amid so much grief, Audrey maintained her ingrained instinct to answer coppers’ questions with another question, to make sure she wasn’t giving away any secrets.

“He’s not there. Barry’s not in any trouble as far as we can make out—he may be able to help us, that’s all.”

Audrey necked the second glass of brandy as quickly as the first and said that she had no clue where Barry was. She also denied knowing Norma Walker, claimed to have never been to The Grange and to have only learned about the train robbery from the newspapers. When Jack took the conversation back a decade further, to 1984, her demeanor changed—she become nervous, evasive and she developed that very familiar look of a criminal desperately trying to accurately recall an old lie. Jack asked about the Strand underpass robberies, one and two. He asked about the diamond robbery—and he mentioned the names Terry Miller, Joe Pirelli, Jimmy Nunn and Harry Rawlins. Audrey leapt onto the defensive, saying that Mike was in the army when all of that went down, so why was Jack asking about them in relation to her boy’s murder?