“While we’re gone, how about talking to that vicar, get a statement off him?”

Daley screws his face up like the toddler that he is. “I’m not your fuckin’ gofer, Tyler!”

The DS’s nostrils flare and for a moment Rabbani thinks he’s going to explode, but then he visibly takes a deep breath and swallows whatever he was going to say. “It’s up to you, mate, obviously. But you heard the DI just now; maybe you could do worse than try to impress the man.”

“He’s already given me my job.” Daley sneers and waves the notebook page Doggett gave him earlier. “I’m watching the kid. Guess he wants someone who knows what they’re doing looking at the real suspects. Why don’t you stick to the old dears?”

She’s sure Tyler’s going to react to that one, but he just smiles slightly and turns back to her. Rabbani quickly jots down the address for Joe Wentworth and passes it across to him.

“Set up that interview with Sophie Denham,” he tells her.

She watches him leave. There’s an edge to him since they talked to the old woman. Like he’s grown even colder somehow. As if that were possible. The door clatters closed behind him and she turns to see Daley watching her.

“You’re barking up the wrong tree with that one, love,” he says.

This time she decides to stare him out.

—

As an excuse to pass the Old Vicarage, Lily takes the long way round to the village rather than using the shortcut through the churchyard. It is unbearably hot; the weak breeze that followed her from the garden didn’t even make it up the path to the gate. She wants to stop, to put down her basket for a moment on the far side of the road and watch the hubbub of activity. She dares not. Instead she slows to a snail’s pace. There are numerous cars and vans parked on the gravel driveway and a cluster of people at the gates, a mixture of faces she recognizes and many others she doesn’t. The sense of urgency—of a normality interrupted and a great rush to set things right—is palpable; but for all of that, none of these people seem to be getting anything done. It reminds her of the wasps buzzing both furiously and lazily round the jars under the apple tree.

“Rather unsettling, isn’t it?”

The voice comes from behind her and makes her jump. She turns to find the solicitor, Michael Denham, smiling at her with his wolfish grin.

“I do apologize, Miss Bainbridge. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Oh, yes, no . . . that’s quite all right.”

“Yes, a terrible thing. A body, they’re saying. In the cellar, of all places. It does make you think, doesn’t it?”

The sun is reflecting off his glasses, and Lily can’t tell if the man is looking at her or the house or something else entirely.

“Anyway,” he goes on, “I understand from Sophie your Oscar is back?”