To aid concentration, Jude made green tea. Then she sat down on the sofa, which was covered by a variegation of throws. She took up a cross-legged yoga position and focused her mind on Bill Shefford’s death.

Jude felt as she did when there was a tune she couldn’t quite remember. All its elements were there, every note and phrase. She just had to join the fragments of memory together in the right order. Then all would be complete. And it would sing in her mind.

She thought of the various people who had surrounded Bill Shefford. Malee, Billy, Shannon, Rhona, Frankie. All with their own agendas. Was it one of them who was being paid from his secret bank account? What secret did they know that he would be so desperate to keep hidden?

She extended the range of characters. Not people who’d had direct contact with Bill Shefford, but people she had seen over the previous weeks who had discussed the death. She felt sure things had been said which were relevant if only she could work out why. She scoured her memory for snatches of conversation in the Crown and Anchor, observations from Ted Crisp or even the odious Barney Poulton. She tried to read between the lines of Tom Kendrick’s responses.

Then of course there were the people who she hadn’t seen much of but Carole had. That bizarre couple, Adrian and Gwyneth Greenford. There was enough going on in their lives, Jude felt certain, to fill a good few psychological case studies. But could any connection be made between them and Bill Shefford?

Thinking of the Greenfords made her also remember Karen and Chrissie and the Ilkley tie-in. She was sure something pertinent had been said that Saturday evening in Leeds, but again she couldn’t drag it up to the surface of her recollections.

And then, of course, there were a couple of other names in the equation. Was it possible that Jeremiah had had anything to do with Bill Shefford? He certainly knew Dr Rawley, the man who Carole had met and Jude hadn’t. The man who had apparently been treating the garage owner, and who had signed his death certificate.

Jude decided it was time to take a closer look at the battered green diary.