“What next?” Banks asked.

“I’ll go and have a word with him.”

“Want me to come along?”

“No. I think it would work better if I could question him without you there. After all, it might come to an identity parade. If any charges are brought, I want to make sure this is done right.”

“Fair enough,” said Banks. “But he looks like a tough customer.” He rubbed his jaw. “Feels like one, too.”

Michelle tapped her pen against her lips and looked across the office, where DC Collins sat talking on the phone, shirtsleeves rolled up, scribbling on the pad in front of him. She hadn’t let him in on her suspicions about Shaw yet. Could she trust him? He was almost as new as she was, for a start, and that went in his favor. She had never seen him hanging around with Shaw or with any of the other old brigade, either, another plus. In the end, she decided she had to trust someone, and Collins was it.

“I’ll take DC Collins,” she said, then lowered her voice. “Look, there’s a couple of things I need to talk to you about, but not here.”

“After the funeral this afternoon?”

“Okay,” said Michelle, jotting Des Wayman’s address down in her notebook. “I should know a bit more about Mr. Wayman’s activities by then. Oh, and guess where he lives?”

“Where?”

“The Hazels.”

Annie pored over Luke Armitage’s notebooks and computer files in her office that morning. At least she felt a bit better, despite a poor night’s sleep. Eventually, the painkillers had kicked in and she woke up at half past seven in the morning, not even having got around to putting in the second Doctor Zhivago tape. This morning, though her jaw was still throbbing a bit, it didn’t hurt anywhere near as much as it had.

The one thing that intrigued her about Luke’s jottings was the increasing eroticism mixed in with the vague classical references to Persephone, Psyche and Ophelia. Then she remembered that Ophelia wasn’t a character from classical mythology, but Hamlet’s girlfriend, driven mad by his violent rejection of her. She remembered studying the play at school and finding it rather too long and dense for her taste at the time. She had seen several film versions since then, including one with Mel Gibson as Hamlet and another with Marianne Faithfull as Ophelia, and she remembered from somewhere the image of Ophelia floating down a river surrounded by flowers. Did Luke feel guilty about rejecting someone, then? Had he been killed out of revenge, by “a woman scorned”? And if so, who? Liz Palmer? Lauren Anderson? Rose Barlow?

Of course, the repeated references to “sweet white breasts,” “pale cheeks” and “soft white thighs” in Luke’s fragments of songs and poems could have been mere adolescent fantasy. Luke certainly had a romantic imagination and, if Banks was to be believed, adolescent boys thought of nothing but sex. But they could also point to the fact that Luke had been involved in a sexual relationship. Liz Palmer looked like a likely candidate, despite her denials. Annie also shouldn’t forget that according to the head teacher’s daughter, Rose Barlow, there might have been something going on between Luke and Lauren Anderson. Rose was unreliable, but it might be worth talking to Lauren again if she got nowhere with Liz and Ryan. Rose had been involved with Luke, in however slight a way, and she had no doubt felt jilted when he spent more time with Liz or Lauren. Or was there someone else Annie was overlooking, some connection she was missing? She felt that she was, but no matter how she tried, the missing link still eluded her.