Wexford hadn’t spoken for some minutes. Now he said, ‘When Leilie Somers was charged with this baby-battering thing, did she plead guilty or not guilty?’

Rather surprised by the apparent irrelevance of this question, Burden said. ‘Guilty. There wasn’t much evidence offered apart from the doctor’s. Leilie pleaded guilty and said something about being tired and strained and not being able to stand it when the baby cried. Damned disgraceful nonsense.’

‘Yes, it was damned disgraceful nonsense,’ said Wexford quietly, and then he said, ‘The walls in those flats are very thin, aren’t they? So thin that from one side you can hear a pin drop on the other.’ He was silent and meditative for a moment. ‘What was Leilie Somers’s mother’s maiden name?’

‘What?’ said Burden. ‘How on earth do you expect me to know a thing like that?’

‘I just thought you might. I thought it might be an Irish name, you see. Because Leilie is probably short for Eileen, which is an Irish name. I expect she called herself Leilie when she was too young to pronounce her name properly.’

Burden said with an edge of impatience to his voice, ‘Look, do I get to know what all this is leading up to?’

‘Sure you do. The arrest of Paddy and Tony Jasper and Johnny Farrow. You can get down to Roland Road and see to it as soon as you like.’

‘For God’s sake, you know as well as I do we’ll never make it stick. We couldn’t break Monkton and he’ll alibi the lot of them.’

‘That’ll be OK,’ said Wexford laconically. ‘Trust me. Believe me, there is no alibi. And now, Polly, you and I will turn our attention to the matter of young Ginger and the Kingsmarkham Chalk Circle.’

Wexford left Polly sitting outside in the car. It was eight o’clock and still light. He rang the bell that had fetched Leilie down that afternoon, and when she didn’t come he rang the other. Julie Lang appeared.

‘She’s upset. I’ve got her in with me having a cup of tea.’

‘I’d like to see her, Mrs Lang, and I’ll need to see her alone. I’ll go and sit in my car for five minutes and then if she’ll . . .’

Leilie Somers’s voice from the top of the stairs cut off the end of his sentence. ‘You can come up. I’m OK now.’

Wexford climbed the stairs towards her, Julie Lang following him. Leilie stood back to let him pass. She seemed smaller than ever, thinner, meeker, her hennaed hair showing a paler red at the roots, her face white and deeply sad. Julie Lang put her hand on her arm, squeezed it, went off quickly into her own flat. Leilie put the key into the lock of her front door and opened the door and stood looking at the empty neat place, the passage, the open doors into the other rooms, now all made more melancholy by the encroaching twilight. Tears stood in her eyes and she turned her face so that Wexford should not see them fall.