‘I don’t know about cars,’ said Carole, with some pride. There were some areas of life where she felt it was permissible – even admirable – to admit ignorance.

‘But you must have noticed,’ Jude insisted. ‘You saw the car that was over the inspection pit, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, of course I did.’

‘Then what make was it?’

‘As I told you, I don’t know about cars. But someone told me’ – she was still circumspect about mentioning Adrian to Jude – ‘that it was a Triumph.’

‘What kind of Triumph?’

‘I can’t remember.’

Jude sighed with exasperation, sat back in their Crown and Anchor alcove and produced her mobile from a pocket. Her fingers flew over the tiny keyboard.

Carole watched with suspicion and a tinge of jealousy. She distrusted the fluency with which some people conducted their whole lives on mobile phones. Rather in the way her neighbour was doing at that moment. It couldn’t be healthy. It was part of some Faustian pact. What would happen if all of the mobile networks in the world ceased to function simultaneously? Carole Seddon was big on apocalypse scenarios.

But then she reminded herself she must be on top of the video-making capacity of her new phone before her granddaughters arrived in March. All that WhatsAppery, she must get it right.

Jude found what she was looking for and thrust the screen towards her friend. ‘There! That is a Triumph Tr6. Was the car whose gearbox killed Bill Shefford a Triumph Tr6?’

‘It does look quite like it,’ Carole admitted. But she wasn’t going to give up her treasured ignorance so easily. ‘But I don’t really know about cars.’

‘You have made that point,’ said Jude, with a rare flash of asperity. ‘At least I presume you can tell me what colour it was.’

‘Red,’ said Carole penitently. It was so unusual for her neighbour to snap at her that she felt a little subdued.

‘Then,’ said Jude triumphantly, ‘I’m pretty sure I know who owns it. And I also think that we may have to reconsider our conclusion about Bill Shefford’s death being an accident.’

Excitement sparkled in the pale blue eyes behind Carole’s rimless glasses. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked breathlessly.

So, Jude told her about seeing Tom Kendrick’s Triumph Tr6 at Troubadours. This obviously led to questions from her neighbour about what had taken her to the Shorelands Estate. And her answer prompted the entirely predictable response of a sniff and ‘Oh, one of your healing things.’

‘As it turned out, it wasn’t “one of my healing things”.’

‘Oh?’

‘I didn’t reckon he needed healing. Tom Kendrick is just a lazy young man who has his mother entirely wrapped around his little finger.’

‘Really?’

‘And if I was doing any healing there, I certainly wouldn’t be talking about him.’

‘Oh yes, of course. Your precious client confidentiality.’