Hirsch almost wrote it. ‘They like witness statements to be, ah, neutral. Just the facts.’ In the face of Martin’s faintly affronted air he added, ‘Unadorned language. How about you say this: “I pulled Constable Hirschhausen out of the path of Mrs Flann’s car”?’

Gwynne considered the rewording and seemed to find it wanting. ‘You know best, Paul. But the fact is clear, if I hadn’t been there, you might have been killed.’

Bridling a little at Martin Gwynne’s neediness, Hirsch nodded his head at the many fickle ways of chance. ‘Damn right,’ he said, still amiable. ‘Makes my skin crawl to think of it.’

Gwynne, satisfied, went on with his narrative, which Hirsch copied word for word since Martin would read it back before signing.

Then, a shorter account of the pub incident. When it was done, Gwynne clapped his hands together. ‘I think we could both do with a restorative cup of tea. Come around to my place for a quick cuppa, and you can collect the Santa suit while you’re about it.’

Hirsch visualised it: the dire sitting room; Martin telling him what was wrong with the world; Mother hovering.

‘Raincheck? I still need to gather other statements, write up reports, let Brenda’s sons know what happened.’

A brief tightening of Gwynne’s features, a glint of suppressed disappointment. ‘Fair enough. Dinner?’

‘The Christmas lights, remember?’ Hirsch babbled, ‘Maybe the weekend?’

‘Sunday, six-thirty,’ Martin Gwynne said, turning on his heel.

Hirsch took statements from an out-of-work shearer who’d reflexively spilled his beer when Brenda mounted the veranda next to him, the publican, and an elderly woman deadheading her roses on the other side of the road. Their accounts varied little, although the gardener believed that Mr Gwynne had been unnecessarily rough with Mrs Flann. Then Hirsch headed to the shop for a word with Ed Tennant.

Stepping from sunlight into dimness, he blinked to adjust. A woman from an outlying farm was browsing with a shopping basket in the crook of her arm. Gemma Pitcher, the young woman who occasionally worked the cash register and stacked the shelves, was flipping through a catalogue. Otherwise the shop was a silent place frozen in time. Along from the cash register was the post office counter, and beyond that a case of books that constituted the Tiverton branch of the Redruth Library Service, half an hour down the highway. On the far wall, rubber boots, work overalls, tools, trays of nuts and bolts, fuel cans, an aluminium ladder. And, massed in the centre, everyday household goods on rows of metal shelves: breakfast cereals, tinned peaches, laundry detergent, tampons, aspirin, shampoo.

Hirsch stalked through to the rear. He found Tennant in his office, a small space crammed with filing cabinets, desk, chair and a boxy old computer.

Ed, tidy, precise and middle-aged, said, ‘Heard what nearly happened to you.’