‘This looks like a diary of some kind,’ he said. ‘Or a journal.’

‘Is it Crew’s diary? We haven’t found one yet.’

‘No. It’s just some times and places, almost an itinerary. It’s from somebody called Eve. Who’s Eve?’

‘I don’t know.’

Cooper stopped and stared at the page. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Grosvenor Avenue, Edendale. But that’s –’

‘Mm?’

‘So who’s Eve?’ repeated Cooper.

‘No idea. A friend of hers?’

‘There’s a phone number, anyway. It’s a local number.’

‘Try it then,’ said Hitchens.

Cooper looked uncertain. What he had read had thrown him. It wasn’t what he had been expecting. ‘What do I say?’

‘You can think of something, Cooper. Just ask for Eve and play it by ear.’

Still he hesitated, reading and rereading the bit about Grosvenor Avenue. ‘Shall I, sir?’

‘Go ahead.’

Cooper dialled. ‘I’ll tell her I’m selling something. Nobody thinks there’s anything unusual about that.’

‘That’s a good idea. So what are you selling?’ said Hitchens as the phone began to ring.

‘Soffits.’

‘What the hell are soffits?’

‘Exactly. Nobody knows. You can tell them any old rubbish.’

Then the ringing stopped, and a voice answered. But Cooper was speechless. He seemed to have forgotten he was a salesperson. His opening line had gone right out of his head.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Wrong number.’ And he put the phone down.

‘Was it?’ said Hitchens.

‘What?’

‘A wrong number?’

‘Not at all. Very much the right number, I think.’

‘You didn’t try to sell them any soffits.’

‘No,’ said Cooper. ‘They didn’t need any.’

Maggie Crew seemed almost at home in the interview room. Its sparseness suited her. She was able to live with her own thoughts, staring at a blank wall as she tried to recapture the elusive memories. Ben Cooper listened, fascinated, as she talked about the triggers that had achieved what nothing else could do.

‘It was the sounds and the smells that suddenly brought it back to me,’ she said. ‘You could have sent people to talk to me endlessly and you would never have achieved that. The voices, the way the men smelled of animals. And there were dogs barking somewhere, but I couldn’t see them . . .’ Maggie shuddered. ‘And then somebody screamed. One of the animal rights women.’

‘And you’d just had it confirmed that Rosalind Daniels was dead,’ said DCI Tailby.

She nodded. ‘It was like something physical hitting me. The memories poured over me. It was as if I was existing in two places at once, at two different moments. The sounds and the smells connected them. And I knew what had happened to Ros.’

Maggie put her hands on the table and looked at them. Her long fingers were very still, her nails blunt and pale.