“So, you shot her?” Jack asked cautiously, certain there was more.

“Wouldn’t you?” Ester said, as though her reaction of murder had been a perfectly sane one. “No? Well, lucky you to have always had something to live for, Jack. It was the second time in my life that I saw red and thought, ‘Fuck this.’ She betrayed me first, Jack. She screwed me on the money because she knew I was out of options. Dolly Rawlins was a prize bitch. How she’d survived into her forties without being shot by someone is beyond me.”

Jack’s next question was not on his list, but he felt compelled to ask, “When was the first time you saw red and thought, ‘Fuck this’?”

Ester smiled. She didn’t mind Jack’s overly personal question and she even liked the fact that he was brave enough to ask.

“When I was twelve and my uncle Derek forced himself into me for the first time. I thought, ‘Fuck this, Uncle Derek,’ and I stabbed him in the ball sack with a pair of scissors.” Ester howled with laughter. “‘What doesn’t kill you . . .’ as they say.”

“Do you remember the train robbery of ’95, Miss Freeman?”

“If you don’t call me Ester, I shan’t answer another one of your questions.”

“Do you remember the train robbery of ’95, Ester?” Jack repeated obediently.

“I remember your lot tearing The Grange apart at some ungodly hour. We didn’t know what it was about at the time, but I was flattered when I found out! I’ve never been accused of anything so clever before.”

Jack went on to ask a few more questions, but Ester’s recollection aligned with Bill Thorn’s, and the statement she had given back in 1995. He was already getting the feeling that interviewing all of The Grange women was going to be a waste of time, but it had to be done.

“I don’t suppose you know where Julia Lawson, Connie Stephens and Angela Dunn are now, do you?”

“Have you tried prison? They’re probably there. Too stupid to stay out, those three.”

“They’re not in prison.”

“Oh. Well then, Julia will be in a gutter or a mortuary somewhere—just can’t leave the ‘nose candy’ alone or, more accurately, it can’t leave her alone. Connie will be lying on her back underneath some violent, possessive dickhead—it’s all she knows and she’s never had an original thought in her life. And . . . who else?”

“Angela.”

“Oh yes, her. I don’t know. I recall her being a worse maid than Geoffrey, so I doubt she’ll be doing anything that requires intellect. Thick as pig shit, and that’s being rather unfair to pigs.”

Jack sat on the sea wall with fish and chips and a pint. The sea was out and some of the closer boats now lolled on the seabed. He looked at the horizon and tried to imagine where his parents were and what they were doing. He smiled as he pictured his dad losing in the casino, and his mum placating him with a cocktail in her hand that she didn’t even know the contents of. She’d have simply chosen a name she liked—she did exactly the same with the horses in the Grand National.