“So you had a few run-ins with her?”

“Yes. But that’s not why I’m here. That’s not why I’m telling you what I know.”

“I’m sure it’s not, Rose, but you have to admit it does give you a bit of a motive to cause trouble for Miss Anderson, especially if you also tried to get Luke to be your boyfriend.”

Rose jumped to her feet. “Why are you being so horrible to me? I come here to help you and give you important information and you treat me like a criminal. I’m going to tell my father about you.”

Banks couldn’t help smiling. “It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been reported to the head teacher,” he said.

Before Rose could respond, two things happened in quick succession. First, there came an urgent tap at his door and Annie Cabbot walked in, a handkerchief to her mouth covered with what looked like blood. But before Annie could speak, Kevin Templeton poked his head around the door behind her, his gaze resting on Rose for a few seconds too long for her comfort, and said to Banks, “Sorry to interrupt you, sir, but we think we’ve got a positive ID on you know who.”

Banks knew who he meant. The mystery girl. So she did exist.

“Better than that,” Templeton went on. “We’ve got an address.”

Michelle discovered from DC Collins that Shaw had gone home after lunch, complaining of a stomach upset. Collins’s tone was such as to suggest it might be more a matter of the number of whiskeys Shaw had downed at lunch. He had been taking quite a lot of time off lately. At least that left the coast clear for Michelle. She didn’t want to see Shaw, especially after what had happened in her flat on Saturday. Sometimes, when she let her guard down, it was him she saw in her imagination, going through her bedside drawers, cutting Melissa’s dress in half. It wasn’t such a stretch to imagine him driving the beige van that bore down on her as she crossed the road earlier, either; he had been out of the station at the time. And the whiskeys? Dutch courage?

It was time to stop idle speculation and follow up on what she had discovered from Mrs. Walker. Michelle picked up the telephone and an hour or so later, after a lot of false trails and time wasted on hold, she managed to reach one of the retired Carlisle police officers who had looked into Donald Bradford’s death: Ex-Detective Sergeant Raymond Scholes, now living out his retirement on the Cumbrian coast.

“I don’t know what I can tell you after all this time,” Scholes said. “Donald Bradford was just unlucky.”

“What happened?”

“Surprised a burglar. Someone broke into his house, and before Bradford could do anything he got beaten so badly he died of his injuries.”

Michelle felt a chill. The same thing might have happened to her on Saturday, if she’d been home earlier. “Ever catch the burglar?” she asked.