She nodded towards the stereo. A CD of Tales from the Vienna Woods lay on the top, the one case out of place from the neat racks. It was a rare splash of colour in the dark corner.

The light dipped slightly. Maggie’s outline began to come back into focus as Fry blinked and her eyes readjusted to the darkness.

‘Somebody loaned it to me,’ said Maggie. ‘I haven’t listened to it.’

‘Jenny bought her clothes at Marks & Spencer and Next, where she had store cards. She banked with the NatWest, but transferred her credit card account to one that supported Greenpeace. She was a big animal lover. She was a member of lots of societies, including the RSPCA, and she helped out as a volunteer for the local Cats Protection League. She had her own cat called Nelson. Do you know why she called him that? Because when she took him in as a stray he had an infection that made him keep one eye closed. Have you ever had a cat, Maggie?’

Maggie maintained the stare. Fry had no idea whether she was getting through to her.

‘We know a lot more about Jenny. We know she borrowed show business biographies and Maeve Binchy novels from her local library. She drove a blue Fiat Cinquecento, but she didn’t wash it very often. On the back seat were her spare shoes, an orange and her mobile phone. When we rang the number, it played “The William Tell Overture”.’

Maggie’s eyes were expressionless and unblinking, though her hands fidgeted restlessly and her shoulders were tense.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t listen to Rossini, either.’

Fry had all the details of Jenny’s life at her fingertips. Yet they knew almost nothing about the young woman who had stayed with her in Totley several weeks ago. Ros Daniels had disappeared as mysteriously as she had come, as far as Jenny’s neighbours were concerned. She had been seen walking up The Quadrant one day with a rucksack on her back, and she had knocked at Jenny’s door. Her hair was described as being ‘in tangles’ by an old man who had passed her on his way to the post office and who had noticed her heavy boots and the rings in her nose. He was seventy-five years old and not well up on modern fashions, but he was quite an observant old man. He had given it as his opinion that she hadn’t been wearing a bra, either.

But it was only from a colleague at the Global Assurance call centre that the police had learned the young woman’s name. The colleague had visited Jenny’s home, and had been introduced. The miracle was that she had remembered Ros’s name at all.