When Harper ended the call, she still had no firm idea what kind of “drink” Amy was talking about, but she did know that she was going to go through with it this time, if only to find out. She sometimes wished she wasn’t attracted to women at all; they were so confusing. Men were a lot easier to deal with, and usually a lot easier to forget about. Forgetting about Amy was proving quite a challenge.

Work always helped with that, and right now she had a new lead to follow. She lifted the internal phone and arranged for the witness to be brought in immediately.

*   *   *

Jimmy Durrell was small, his face rodentish. He worked shifts at the petrol station near the big supermarket, lived on a housing estate about a mile up the Bishop Valley, and he liked to cycle to work along the river. Amy had tracked him down at work, goodness knows how—it was more than Harper’s own officers had managed. Durrell remembered the bright green stroller, the woman pushing it, and how, now that he thought about it, it hadn’t seemed right at the time.

“I was cycling along the river, going to work. I had to swerve around this woman pushing this big green double stroller, and I said, ‘Sorry love,’ but she didn’t even look at me. I thought she was very rude.”

“Which direction was she going?”

“Upriver, away from town. And she was in a hurry, which I thought was odd, because there’s nothing to hurry up there for. Makes sense now, of course. Bitch were taking them.”

“All right, Mr Durrell. I’m going to read out your description of the woman, as given to my constable when you came in, and you can tell me if you have anything to add.” Harper looked at the paper in front of her. “Dark clothes, dark hair, ugly face.”

“Yes.”

“Is that all?”

“Short. She looked like a gyppo. But your officer said she couldn’t write that down.”

“Quite right,” said Harper. “It’s not terribly specific, for a start.”

“Well, I know what I mean.”

“Did she have trousers? A dress? What kind of dark clothing?”

“Beyond that she was wearing black, I don’t know—I was looking at the ground, trying not to run the stupid trout into the river. I only saw her for a second.”

“Right. Well, that’s useful. We can rule out anyone in light-coloured clothing.”

“Ugly, too, and filthy. Child-stealing gyppo, that’s what she were.”

Harper flinched at the repeat of the racist term. It was a double disappointment: apart from her personal distaste for such attitudes, someone so prejudiced rarely made a reliable witness.

“Can you be more specific? Ugly isn’t very descriptive. Can you describe the shape of her nose, eyes, ears perhaps?”

“Not exactly. She smelled terrible, that I do remember. I got a right whiff as I went by.”