‘Literally?’ Perez asked. ‘You mean he would have wanted to watch?’

I shrugged. ‘Perhaps. Yes, I think that would have excited him. But perhaps he just wanted to keep her sweet.’

‘Why would he want to do that?’

‘Come on, Jimmy, you’re the detective, not me. I’d only be guessing.’

‘Guess away then,’ Perez said, with the smile that made me jealous of his woman still lying in her bed. ‘You’ve seen them together; I haven’t. Detection is all about what if.’

‘Maybe she knew something about him, about his business practice.’

‘Blackmail, you mean,’ Perez said. ‘Aye, maybe. This looks like a crime of desperation.’ He paused. ‘Whatever the men had planned between them, she never did get to her bed, did she? She’s still dressed. It looks like they left her here with her bottle of wine, the fire low. They escaped whatever it was she wanted from them.’

‘Then one of them came down and killed her.’

He didn’t answer that. Perhaps it was so obvious that it needed no answer. Perhaps.

‘So,’ he said at last. ‘Let’s play the game again. What if. We have a woman who drinks too much, who needs comfort at the end of a working day. Not so unusual. But why might she be unhappy? Maybe there’s something on her conscience, something that haunts her, so she hates being alone after dark.’ He looked up at me and his voice took on a sharper edge. ‘You can tell where I’m going with this?’

I nodded. He must have worked it out already.

‘You tell it then, Margaret. You tell the rest of the story.’

So I told it, the words cold and hard. Perhaps, from the start, all I’d wanted was to be listened to. ‘They were in Shetland on business a year ago. They weren’t staying here, but they came for early dinner. Paid by cash, and I never knew their names. Drank too much, especially the woman, and she insisted on driving back to the airport. My daughter had been out with her friends in Lerwick, got the bus back, started walking from the main road. She never arrived home. I found her body by the side of the road. Hit-and-run.’

‘We investigated.’ Perez’s voice was quiet. ‘Checked all the hire cars. Everything was clean. It could have been a Shetland boy. They do drink-driving too.’

I shook my head. ‘Mel was sitting on her own by the fire after the men had gone to their beds. She thought sex would make her forget; when that wasn’t on offer, she was glad of someone to talk to. She told me what happened.’

‘Mel. So you were on first-name terms.’

‘I gave birth to Edie,’ I said. ‘That woman killed her. It made us kind of intimate.’ I paused. I had to be fair to the woman. I owed her that. ‘She wanted to stop after she hit my girl, but the men made her drive on. In a couple of hours we’ll be away from the place.’