‘Treatable?’ Vera wasn’t sure how that could possibly be relevant. The woman hadn’t stabbed herself in the back. This hadn’t been a desperate and very public suicide.

‘Perhaps. No sign that it has been, though.’

‘Maybe she’d only just been diagnosed.’ Vera was talking to herself, running through the possibilities. More scenarios. More stories. ‘I’ll need to trace her GP.’ Thinking it was unlikely that Margaret had been visiting an outpatient clinic the afternoon of her death. There were no major hospitals close to Gosforth Metro station.

Outside, the sun was shining, but it was still very cold. Kids had made a slide of the pavement and Vera nearly went arse over tit. She checked her phone, wondering if she’d missed anything important during the post-mortem, and immediately it began to ring. She didn’t recognize the voice at first and it was only a few seconds into the conversation that she realized she was speaking to Kate Dewar. Vera listened as the woman described the arrival at the guest house of Malcolm Kerr.

‘He ran the bird trips out to Coquet Island.’ Vera remembered a thin young man, gauche ashore, but agile on the boat. ‘With his dad.’

Kate was obviously surprised by the interruption. ‘His father died years ago.’

‘And he seemed in a bit of a state?’

‘The way he talked about Margaret,’ Kate said, ‘I had the feeling that they were more than friends.’

Parking the Land Rover in Harbour Street, Vera almost felt as if she were coming home. Kate must have been looking out for her, because the door was opened immediately. ‘You don’t mind if we chat in the kitchen?’ she asked. ‘Only I’ve got baking in the oven.’

Vera followed her down to the basement, pleased that they wouldn’t be sitting in the highly polished lounge, which reminded her, she suddenly realized, of a funeral parlour or an elaborate chapel.

‘He’d been drinking,’ Kate said. ‘Last night, if not this morning. I could smell it on him. Everyone knows he likes a pint in the Coble of an evening, and a couple of cans if he’s working in his shed, but I’ve never known him drunk. Not even when Deborah left.’

She’d switched on the filter coffee machine and the water was dripping through the grounds, filling the kitchen with its smell.

‘Deborah?’

‘His ex-wife.’ Kate opened the oven and pulled out a tray of shortbread. ‘This won’t be as good as Margaret’s.’

‘Maybe you won’t have to bother with baking, if you hit the big time with the music again.’ Vera squinted across at her. She couldn’t understand what was going on with this music thing. Was it just a dream, encouraged by Stuart Booth, or were there concrete plans?