Markham lifted the briefcase. ‘I’ve brought cuttings. All the articles Jerry wrote since he moved south. Maria kept them. I don’t know how useful they’ll be . . .’ His voice tailed off. ‘I wondered if you had any information, if Annabel and her father had thrown any light on the investigation. It was hard to tell when they came to visit us. It was all rather awkward.’ The man pulled up the collar of his waxed jacket. ‘Look, could we get a coffee? I can’t face going back to Maria yet. Not without something to tell her.’

And Perez couldn’t hurry away from him. He understood the man’s desperation.

They sat upstairs in the Peerie Shop cafe. Downstairs there were two young women with toddlers in buggies. The weather had kept everyone else away.

‘I have nothing to tell you,’ Perez said. He wanted to be on the road to Aith and resented this interruption. His first wife had talked about his ‘emotional incontinence’ and his inability to turn away anybody requesting his help. He’d thought he’d become harder, but some habits were hard to give up.

‘But you will find him, Jimmy, won’t you? You will find the person who killed my son?’

‘Yes,’ Perez said. ‘We will find him.’ He paused before continuing. ‘Have you received a postcard recently? A reproduction of a painting. Three fiddle players.’

Peter Markham looked at him as if he were mad. ‘No. Barbara in the office opens all the mail, but if it was personal she’d pass it on to us.’

‘This might not have a message on the back,’ Perez said. ‘Just the picture on one side and the address on the other. Will you check when you get back? Ask Barbara if she’s seen anything like that?’

Markham went off then, pleased that he had something to do, feeling that his trip into town hadn’t been entirely wasted. Perez left with the man’s briefcase. He’d tried to persuade Markham to drop the cuttings into the police station, but he’d refused. ‘You take it, Jimmy. I won’t need the case. And I trust you to make good use of them.’

Now Perez climbed up the narrow lane back to his car. The path was steep and he felt exhausted and unfit. I’m not sure I can do this. There had been talk when he was at his most depressed that he might take early retirement on health grounds, but he hadn’t wanted Cassie to see him as an old and broken man. Now he wondered if he had rejected the idea too quickly.