“We are,” Hunter said angrily, “but there are always a few loose ends. You know how it is.”

“No,” she said, “ I’m not sure that I do. But if you’re going to disturb me anyway you can buy me another coffee.” She waited while Ramsay bought coffee from the counter. “ Who are you?” she asked. “ His sidekick?”

“Something like that,” Ramsay murmured. He sat back in his chair, out of her line of vision, and watched her, while Hunter asked his questions.

“You met Mrs. Parry on the afternoon of her death?”

“Yes,” she said. She lit a cigarette. Ramsay thought she looked very tense, very tired. His optimism increased.

“Why did you go to Brinkbonnie?”

“You must know that already,” she said. “ To cover the residents’ meeting about the proposed new development.”

“But Mr. Laidlaw had made it clear that he did not want to follow the story any further.”

“Yes,” she said. “Well. Perhaps James has too many scruples.” She spoke with a bitterness that surprised Ramsay. “Perhaps he could never had made it in Fleet Street, after all.”

“What do you mean?”

“He once had an offer of a job in London on a daily,” she said, “but he turned it down. He claimed it was because his wife wouldn’t want to move, but I’m not so sure. I don’t think he could have handled it. He’s been a big fish in a little pond for too long.” I must be tired, she thought, I’m just being bitchy.

“But you could handle it?” Hunter asked.

“Yes,” she said. “ Why not? I need a break. I don’t want to stay on the Otterbridge Express for the rest of my career.”

“And that’s why you went to Brinkbonnie?”

“Partly,” she said. “I do stuff sometimes for one of the Newcastle papers. Henshaw’s got planning applications outstanding all over the county. I thought it might make a feature. And no-one had done an interview with Mrs. Parry.”

“And she agreed to speak to you?”

“Yes. She was really nice.”

“What did you talk about?”

“The development at first. The meeting had upset her. She wasn’t the sort of rich outsider who moves into a village and takes no part in its affairs. She’d lived there for twenty years. Her husband died there. She thought they were all her friends, then they turned against her. That hurt her.”

“What else did she talk about?”

“All sorts of things. Her family. She showed me photographs of her great-niece and nephews. Then I talked to her about my problems. She was dead easy to talk to.”

“Oh.” Hunter was all charm and flattery. “What problems could you possibly have?”

“I don’t think,” she said, “ that’s anything to do with you.”

He shrugged and smiled. “She didn’t say anything that you feel might have a bearing on her murder?”

“No,” she said. “Nothing at all.”