Vera would have continued searching Malcolm’s yard all night, would have been there on her own with only a torch and the street lights to illuminate the scene, if she hadn’t realized that it would look ridiculous. They’d already gathered an audience. Teenage kids and workers on their way from the Metro to the Coble for a drink before heading home. Staff from the fisheries on their fag breaks. Malcolm wasn’t there. He was at home, sitting in the bleak living room in the house on Percy Street, with Charlie to keep an eye on him. She felt a moment of guilt about Malcolm, a moment of self-doubt. She didn’t have enough evidence to charge him, but the locals would all have him down as the murderer now, even if the search team didn’t find anything in the yard. The press had turned out big-style, before the team gave up the operation for the night, and there would be lurid pictures in the papers the next day. His ex-wife had already done an exclusive with a tabloid, telling them that Malcolm had once battered her.

When the search team pulled out they left a PC to secure the yard and another outside Malcolm Kerr’s place. She gave Charlie a lift home and they sat for a moment outside his house. There was a light on inside and the curtains were shut. So Charlie had found another woman then. Vera thought that maybe she wasn’t such a bad detective after all.

‘Who is she?’ She nodded towards the house. Then, when he didn’t reply immediately: ‘You’re a bit of a dark horse, keeping quiet about a new woman in your life.’

‘It’s not a new woman. At least, not how you mean.’

‘What then?’

‘It’s my daughter. She finished uni in the summer and couldn’t get a job. Couldn’t get on with her mother, either. So she’s back with me.’ He grinned despite himself.

‘It’s working out okay?’ Vera supposed she must have known that Charlie had a daughter, but couldn’t remember anything about her.

‘Champion!’ He grinned again. ‘She’s doing work experience with an engineering company in Blyth, thinks she might get a real job at the end of it.’ He couldn’t keep the pride from his voice.

‘Good for your lass.’ Meaning it really. But Charlie had been a loner like her since his wife had left, and now it seemed that Vera was the only oddball in the team. She couldn’t help feeling she’d been deserted, that he’d let her down.