But he could tell that she was thinking about something else and hadn’t put any thought into the answer.

When he knocked on the door of the guest house he wasn’t sure how he’d explain their presence. It was opened by Chloe, Kate’s daughter. She stared out at them, her arms wrapped round her bony body to keep out the cold. She had big fluffy slippers, just like Jessie’s.

‘Mum’s out with Stuart,’ she said. ‘I’m the only one here.’

‘Susan used to live in Harbour Street in the old days.’ Joe found himself talking gently, as if to an invalid. Something about this child was so fragile that he felt she needed careful handling. ‘She’d like to see Margaret’s room. I’ve got a key. Is it okay if we go on up?’

‘Yeah, fine.’ She didn’t seem at all curious about the strange woman turning up on her doorstep. Joe supposed that strangers must turn up there all the time, as they did at the Haven. It must be an odd way to live. He thought of his home as being safe from intrusion. Even Vera knew better than to turn up there unannounced.

Susan climbed the stairs to the attic with some difficulty. She was younger than Margaret, but unfit and heavy. At the top there was a sheen on her skin despite the cold.

‘The house must look very different,’ he said. ‘But Margaret always lived up here, didn’t she?’

‘Aye. She liked to look out to the sea.’ A brief pause, then that old spark of humour. ‘And she said that if a man couldn’t make it up the stairs he was no use to her.’

‘She enjoyed her work then?’ Joe couldn’t get that. A woman as bright and well brought up as Margaret Krukowski enjoying life as a sex worker. Vera always said he should have been born in the nineteenth century, and there was something of the Victorian about him. But deep down he knew that if he’d been around at the time, he’d have been tempted to run up the stairs and knock at her door. He’d probably have paid to spend time with her, to touch her. As he put the key in the lock he almost imagined her inside, ready for him.

Again he stood aside to let Susan in. This time he needed a moment to compose himself. ‘Is this what it was like in your day?’ He’d arrested prostitutes, but they’d been working out of scuzzy massage parlours, or rundown houses in faded seaside towns. Pimps on the pavements watching from a distance, a perpetual threat to their women not to talk. Those girls had been addicts, rattling for a fix, lank-haired and sharp-featured. Nothing soft or inviting about their bodies or their beds.