Hansen was still looking at his phone. ‘That’s about it.’

‘Nothing to explain why he’s here? Links to Mrs Rennie?’

‘Nothing so far. He worked in the Compliance Audits Unit. They check that tax invoices don’t understate the value of imported goods, so…no obvious reason why he was here carrying a false ID.’

‘We’re going to need anything and everything you can give us on Lavau,’ Dock said, addressing Roesch and Hansen. ‘We’ve got bodies piling up and two kids missing, presumed dead. He’s the only one in the frame, so who was he working for? Or with? Who knows him? Et cetera.’

Good on you, thought Hirsch.

Roesch said, ‘I’m afraid I can’t—’

Dock cut her off. ‘The Passat you were tracking—it was driven by Lavau, right?’

‘I can’t really say.’

Hirsch pitied Dock. He could keep pushing but Roesch would just keep stonewalling.

Just then his phone buzzed. A text from Nan Washburn: Can I please take you up on your kind offer, take Craig back to his camp tomorrow?

Hirsch felt flattened with weariness, and the day wasn’t done. He’d have to drop his tyre off at Redruth Motors, reassure the Dunners, reassure Whiteman the wildlife photographer, drive home…

‘If no one minds, I’m knocking off. I’ve been at it all day and I’ll be on all day tomorrow.’

New Year’s Eve: drunks on the road, tempers unleashed in kitchens and bedrooms.

Roesch gave him a look. He could feel it digging around in his head and soul.

‘You may go,’ she said. Imperious—as if she wasn’t a mere visitor but in charge of the investigation.

27

27

TUESDAY MORNING, NEW Year’s Eve. A cool, cloudy start to the day.

Old-timers had assured Hirsch they could recall temperatures below twenty degrees in the Christmas and New Year period, thunder clouds bunching, teeming rain: ‘We even had to light the fire!’ So it wasn’t unheard of, a cool change this time of the year. Hirsch walked the streets as he always did, and the town slumbered, except that Martin Gwynne was standing on the other side of his neat hedge, sprinkling his roses with a craft-shop watering can—a pastel blue thing with yellow flowers that Hirsch wanted to boot into oblivion.

‘Martin, I—’

‘Paul!’ cried Gwynne, as if Hirsch had never been known to walk the town at dawn.

‘Look, Martin, I—’

‘I expect you’re on duty all day, not to mention tonight, what with drunken idiots on the roads, but Mother and I were wondering if you’d care to have a bite to eat this evening? Earlyish, around six?’

‘That—’

‘Strictly no wine, of course, wouldn’t want to get you into trouble.’