Scowling around the room, Eileen announced that a woman’s body had been pulled out of the river. The consensus among the police officers present was that the woman had probably been drunk when she had stumbled into the river, while making her way home.

‘Even sober you could trip on the towpath in the dark and fall in,’ Eileen agreed, her large square jaw set in a determined line. ‘She might even have been unconscious when she fell in the water.’

‘That would have been a kindness,’ Geraldine murmured to herself. ‘Drowning must be a terrifying way to die.’

Although they had not yet determined that the woman’s death had been anything other than an unfortunate accident, several unusual features at the scene meant that it was being treated as possibly suspicious.

‘Until we know more, we have to remain open minded about the cause of death,’ Eileen said.

‘It’s odd that no bag or purse has been found,’ a constable said.

‘And she had no keys or money on her,’ someone else added.

‘All of that could be lying on the river bed,’ Ian said.

A search was under way along the river bank for the dead woman’s bag, but it might have sunk without trace, weighted down with coins and keys. Leaving the room, Geraldine smiled at Ariadne, who sat opposite her. As detective sergeants working on a murder team, they were both accustomed to answering the summons to work at any time

‘At least this report came in the morning when we were already at work,’ Geraldine said as they walked along the corridor together. ‘The older I get, the less I appreciate receiving a summons in the middle of the night.’

‘It must be particularly annoying to be disturbed at night if you’re sleeping with someone else,’ Ariadne replied pointedly.

Geraldine did not answer. She and her colleague, Detective Inspector Ian Peterson, had so far held back from announcing to their colleagues at the police station that he was living with her. They had not yet admitted to anyone else that, after many years of friendship, they were now romantically involved. Since he had moved in with her, she had been trying to see as little of him as possible at work. When he smiled at her, she sometimes had to look away, afraid that her face would betray her emotions. A few of her colleagues must have noticed that neither she nor Ian went to the pub in the evening any more, but no one had commented on their absence, at least not to their faces.

Ariadne’s eyes were as bright and black as Geraldine’s and now they gleamed with barely suppressed curiosity.

‘So tell me, what’s going on with Ian?’

‘I don’t know what you mean. Nothing’s going on.’

‘Listen, I won’t tell anyone if you’d rather it wasn’t common knowledge, but I thought you two were –’

‘Were what?’