Three items of interest this morning: photos of the Razorback with its spine of snow; reports of a pair of Irish roof repairers floating around the district—A con?—and an anonymous query regarding Quinlan Stock and Station, a Redruth agency that specialised in the buying and selling of land, livestock, wool, agri chemicals and equipment: Anyone find this mob to be slow payers?

The desk phone rang. ‘Paul?’

Hirsch didn’t recognise the voice. ‘Speaking.’

‘It’s Clara.’

Hirsch assumed he should recognise the name and voice; knew it wasn’t his strong suit. Not a good look in a country policeman: the job description included friend and counsellor, as well as law enforcer, to everyone. The name Clara was a wisp of smoke in his mind, sent up by something remote in time and place.

‘Hi.’

She read him. ‘Clara Ogilvie.’

Nothing. ‘How are you?’ he asked, concentrating madly.

‘Caledonian Dreaming?’

Ah. A loose group of fiddlers, guitarists, pipers, tin-whistlers and singers—border ballads, edgy folk, Appalachian mountain music, anything vaguely Celtic. Once a month in an upstairs room of the Woolpack, in Redruth, half an hour down the highway. Hirsch had gone twice, dragged along by Wendy Street and her daughter. His second time there, back in June, he’d closed his eyes against every penetrating eye in the room and given a short, deeply self-conscious vocal performance of ‘Dirty Old Town’, from an old Pogues LP his parents had owned when he was a kid. He had the words in his head; what he didn’t have was a rasp in his voice from whisky and cigarettes.

And suddenly he was able to place Clara Ogilvie. Mid-forties, slender, vivid, the kind with a permanent current buzzing inside her. She’d touched his forearm afterwards—Wendy looking on with a sleepy half-smile—and told him he had a lovely tenor voice. In a small community that was code for passably pleasant.

‘Clara, right. What can I do for you?’

‘I’m ringing because…’ She trailed away. ‘Have you got a minute?’

‘I have.’

‘It’s not one of your patrol days?’

Hirsch would have been on the road by 7.30 a.m. if it was.

‘You’re good,’ he said, and a corner of his soul tensed. She wanted him to sing again, maybe in the concert mooted for the Redruth Show in September.

‘I’m calling because…Look, it’s complicated.’

‘Take your time.’

‘I’m concerned for someone’s welfare.’

The last time Hirsch made a welfare check, he’d stumbled on a mother and son shot dead in a home invasion. The blood, the bodies: instantly there in his head again. ‘Uh-huh. Who?’

‘Background,’ Clara Ogilvie said. ‘I teach English at Redruth High—that’s how I know Wendy. She said I should talk to you rather than bring in Child Protection just yet.’