“Well? What’s so odd about that? It’s what the evidence pointed to.”

“Just seems a bit of a coincidence, that’s all, that some pervert should happen to be driving by a quiet street at that hour in the morning, just as Graham’s doing his paper rounds.”

“Wrong place at the wrong time. Happens often enough. Besides, do you think perverts don’t know about paper rounds? Don’t you think someone could have been watching, studying, stalking the Marshall kid, the way such perverts often do? Or didn’t they teach you that at Bramshill?”

“It’s possible, sir.”

“You think you can do better than us, do you?” said Shaw, his face turning red again. “Think you can out-detect Jet Harris?”

“I didn’t say that, sir. It’s just the advantage of hindsight, that’s all. A long perspective.”

“Look, we worked our bollocks off on that case, Jet Harris, Reg Proctor and me, not to mention dozens more DCs and uniforms. Have you any idea what that sort of investigation is like? The scope of it? How wide a net we cast? We were getting a hundred sightings a day from as far afield as Penzance and the Mull of fucking Kintyre. Now you come along with your fancy education and your Bramshill courses and you have the gall to tell me we were wrong.”

Michelle took a deep breath. “I’m not saying you were wrong, sir. Only you didn’t solve the case, did you? You didn’t even find a body. Look, I know you came up the hard way, and I respect that, but there are advantages to an education.”

“Yes. Accelerated promotion. They let you buggers run before you can toddle.”

“Policing has changed, sir, as you pointed out not so long ago. And crime has changed, too.”

“Sod that for a theory. Don’t spout your book-learning at me. A criminal’s a criminal. Only the coppers have got softer. Especially the ones at the top.”

Michelle sighed. Time to change tack. “You were a DC on the Graham Marshall investigation, sir. Can you tell me anything at all?”

“Look, if I’d known anything we’d have solved the bloody case, wouldn’t we, instead of having you point out how stupid we were?”

“I’m not trying to make anyone look stupid.”

“Aren’t you? That’s how it sounds to me. It’s easy to second-guess, given twenty-twenty hindsight. If Bill Marshall had anything to do with his son’s disappearance, believe me, we’d have had him. In the first place, he had an alibi—”

“Who, sir?”

“His wife.”

“Not the most reliable of alibis, is it?”

“She’d hardly give him an alibi for doing in her own son, now, would she? Tell me even you aren’t so twisted as to think Mrs. Marshall was involved.”

“We don’t know, sir, do we?” But Michelle remembered Mrs. Marshall, her sincerity and dignity, the need to bury her son after all these years. Certainly it was possible she was lying. Some criminals are very good actors. But Michelle didn’t think so. And she wouldn’t be getting any answers out of Bill Marshall. “Did the Marshalls own a car?”