“I’ve got standards!” she cried. Her face was flushed and he thought she looked like a moody teenager. He did not know how old she was. She had worked for him for five years and had seemed no younger then than she did now. He knew very little about what she did when she was on her own. She had kept her student friends and her social life seemed to consist of wild, alcoholic parties and evenings in smoky pubs.

“I thought it was a good story,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “ I didn’t mean to snap. I’m upset.” He looked at her. “She didn’t say anything that might help the police find out who killed her? They’ll want to talk to you, anyway.”

She shook her head. “We ended up talking about personal things,” she said. “She was so easy to confide in.”

“I’ll miss her,” he said, and returned to his desk to work.

They left the office together at five o’clock. He wondered if he should phone Stella to tell her that he was on his way home but decided against it. He had been half expecting her to ring him, to demand his presence back at the house, but there had been no call and that was a good sign. He pulled the glass door tightly shut behind them, then went down the stairs into the street. There was a smell of stale beer from the pub next door.

“Where are you off to tonight?” he asked, as he walked her to her car.

“Home,” she said bitterly. “ To an empty flat.”

He waited until she got into the Mini and revved it into life, then with grating and erratic lurches drove it away up the street. By now it was very cold. With the darkness the temperature had dropped. He thought for a moment of the plight of the swan on the river, trapped as the ice spread, then started quickly home, resisting the temptation to go into the Blue Anchor for a drink to warm him up first.

Chapter Twelve

As Mary Raven drove from the Express office to her flat, the depression that she had kept at bay with alcohol and frantic activity since Saturday night returned. Persistent and awkward questions repeated themselves in her mind, and she was very tired. She saw the lights of a large supermarket that stayed open late in the evening and realised she was hungry and that there was no food in the house. She turned sharply into the carpark. The motorist behind her hit his horn and she mouthed obscenities to him in her mirror.