‘I was half tempted to ask for a reading,’ confides Mrs Dash, dropping her voice. ‘I don’t know what I believe, but it’s exciting, isn’t it? A Lottery win, or a tall handsome stranger – they’re something worth getting up for, and even if it’s nonsense then it’s the kind of nonsense you don’t mind hearing.’

McAvoy smiles. Gestures at himself. ‘Tall and strange,’ he says. ‘And I can’t promise a Lottery win.’

She nods, grateful that he’s being gentle. Refills the kettle, just for something to do.

‘You haven’t seen anybody coming and going, then?’ asks McAvoy, softly. ‘Any visitors. Nothing to alarm you?’

‘I take no notice,’ she says, apologetically. ‘I’ve heard the cats, of course. Sound carries. But if I’d thought there was something horrible going on, well …’

McAvoy turns as the door opens and Pharaoh clatters in, flicking her cigarette butt into the back garden. Her hair is damp and plastered to one side of her face. She’s got the arm of her sunglasses down her blouse. She gives McAvoy a glare. ‘Sergeant. When you’ve finished eating poor Mrs Dash out of house and home I could use a moment, yes?’

McAvoy feels his cheeks begin to burn. He doesn’t know whether she’s doing the thing she does to amuse herself by pretending to be mad with him, or whether she really is. He raises his eyebrows, quizzically. She winks, and sits down opposite him, kicking him in the shin.

‘You’re sure she’s not Spanish?’ asks Mrs Dash, holding the teapot, somewhat defensively.

‘Might be,’ says Pharaoh. ‘Dark nights in Mexborough. You can only hope the person in the bed next to you is who they say they are. I’d love to learn I was from matador stock. Although I’d have to change the way I have my coffee.’

She looks at her, blankly.

‘Ole,’ she says, smiling. She sags, when nobody responds. ‘Au lait …’

‘Oh, right, yes, I can make some, there’s a nice box upstairs I was sending our Mandy in a hamper …’

Pharaoh watches her bustle from the room then leans over to McAvoy. ‘You need to speak to Roisin. Or I do. Similarities between next door and what happened in Scunthorpe … not just similar, a bloody mirror.’

McAvoy nods. His chest tightens as the here and now blurs with memories, visions, snapshots of recollection bright as wet paint.

‘He died,’ says McAvoy, to himself. He knows he has to hang on to this thought; this hope. The alternative is too horrible to contemplate.

‘And you saw that, did you? Saw a body, felt for a pulse …’

McAvoy shakes his head. He’d taken them at their word. It was over. The bad man was in the ground. Roisin was safe. And he, drunk on love, had shushed every dissenting voice in his head.

‘It’s been twelve years,’ he says. ‘Where would he have been? And why her? She’s not connected. If he were here for revenge, why some fortune teller in the middle of nowhere? He’d come for a Teague, wouldn’t he? He’d come for …’