Mary Raven woke that morning with a hangover to the sound of the independent local radio station on her radio alarm. There was inane music and a breathy reporter talking about the “tragic death of Alice Parry.” She had been out all the day before, drinking with her friends in Newcastle, and it was the first time she had heard the death reported. She switched radio channels for a more detailed review of the local news, then showered and dressed. The flat was a pit. There were unwashed pans in the kitchen and clothes all over the bedroom floor. She had to search through a drawer of laddered tights and single socks to find a clean pair of knickers. But the worst of the hangover seemed to have disappeared and she was left only with a dull, persistent headache.

When she was sitting in her car, trying to coax it to start, she decided not to go into the office immediately. She could not face James until her head was better. Besides, she needed time to work out for herself the implications of Alice Parry’s death. It was the first Monday of the month and the magistrates court would be sitting in Otterbridge. James Laidlaw usually covered the court himself, but Mary thought it unlikely that he would remember it today. It would provide a reasonable excuse for her absence from the office.

The courthouse was a red-brick building between the police station and the cattle market, with the same air of depression as an urban social security office. The waiting room was thick with smoke. There was a queue at the tea bar run by the WRVS and by then she was desperate for coffee. In a corner a well-dressed solicitor was talking to his client for the first time. Occasionally there were shouts of recognition as defendants waiting to go into court called to old friends.

Mary left her coat in the office of a friendly probation officer and slipped into the court, onto the press bench behind the prosecuting solicitor, just as three elderly magistrates came into the room. In the warm, calm, wood-panelled room Mary Raven listened to the cases and dozed until early afternoon. When the court finally rose at two-thirty, she felt she could not put off going to the office any longer. On the way out she was stopped by an anxious businessman who had been convicted of drunk driving and was convinced that he could persuade her to keep his name out of the Express, but she arrived at the High Street at three o’clock.