“Because I don’t have any clothes on, that’s why.”

Peter lifted the duvet on his side. “Come on, get in . . .”

As he snuggled down, Joey demanded in his piped voice, “Tell me a story, about bums and titties!”

“Where did you learn those words?” Peter tried to sound angry, but Jane’s sniggers didn’t help.

“At school. My mummy goes to bed without any clothes on, sometimes, but sometimes she . . .”

He fell asleep mid-sentence. Peter lifted him into his arms. “I’ll just carry him back to his own bed. Jane? Jane . . . ?”

All he could see was the top of her head, but he knew she was asleep. He sighed; the pair of them were out cold, but he was wide awake . . . Wide awake and thinking about Marianne, naked, in bed with his ex-best friend.

Chapter 8

8

Maureen Havers was complaining bitterly to Sergeant Otley. It was the third Sunday she had worked in a row, and she didn’t like it. She dumped a pile of boxes on the desk.

“These are unsolved murders from the entire Manchester area, every location visited by George Marlow since nineteen eighty-bloody-four!”

Otley was unraveling a huge computer print-out from the paint factory. Its end trailed in a heap on the floor.

“Ma’am needs her rest, Maureen! You got anythin’ from Oldham?”

She pointed across the room. “It’s on your desk, Skipper. Want some coffee?”

Otley grinned. “Do I! And keep it comin’, it looks like we got a real workload.”

The rest of the team began to appear in dribs and drabs, looking pretty unenthusiastic about being there. Then Burkin came racing in, the only one who seemed to have any life in him. Grinning, he waved a copy of the News of the World under Otley’s nose.

“Wait till you see this! All is avenged!”

The two sisters didn’t resemble each other in any way. Jane, older by three years, was a nightmare in the kitchen. She had chosen woodwork at school instead of domestic science, and actually preferred M&S ready-to-serve dinners to anything she attempted herself.