Time trickled past, but Taylor didn’t reappear. At first, Carol wasn’t concerned. She knew from experience that it could take a while to straighten out a customer’s requirements, especially if several different pieces were being ordered. But after ten minutes, she began to feel uneasy. This wasn’t right.

At last, after twelve minutes had passed, she walked into the timber-cutting area. Behind the counter, a man in company livery was going through a sheaf of paperwork, comparing it to a computer screen. Another assistant leaned against a rack of different woods, deep in conversation with Gareth Taylor. Fuck. Carol crossed to a bin of scrap wood and rummaged through it, as if she were looking for something in particular. She pulled out a piece of plywood, pretended to check something on her phone, tutted and replaced it, then walked out. Fuck.

She returned to the bathroom fittings, cursing herself for her lack of patience. All she’d had to do was wait, but she couldn’t even do that. Tony’s words echoed in her head. ‘We all make mistakes, Carol. Sometimes they’re more expensive than others.’ She pushed him to one side in her head, hoping this wasn’t going to be one of the truly expensive ones.

Another fifteen minutes crawled by. And then the man from behind the counter appeared in the doorway, reaching above his head to grasp a metal shutter. Galvanised, Carol hurried over as he hunkered down to padlock it shut. ‘Are you closed?’

He looked up at her. ‘Aye. We close at half five. If you want some timber cutting, you’ll have to come back in the morning.’

‘Damn,’ she said. ‘I wondered – is there a loading entrance here, so I don’t have to trail my wood through the store?’

The man straightened up. ‘Not officially, like,’ he said. ‘But we’ve got a roller shutter at the rear for deliveries – we let people drive round and load up.’

She turned away, hollow with anger and disappointment. Not only had she made Taylor suspicious, she’d lost him. He’d clocked that she was taking an interest and he’d shaken her off. He could be anywhere now, doing anything. And she had nothing on him except a limp and Tony’s theory based on a dead wife. Even Bronwen Scott would struggle to make something out of that.

Carol trudged to the exit, all her earlier exhilaration gone. Maybe she should call Paula and the pair of them could work out what to do next. But the way things were going, if justice was going to be served, Carol wasn’t going to be the waitress.