The warder who brought McKinney told them there was a call from the station for them. Tennison asked Amson to take it, then offered the tall, skeletal prisoner a seat.

He was suffering from a migraine, and had come from the hospital ward. One of his eyes watered and his face was twisted in pain. “We’ll try and keep this short, Reg. Now, you shared a cell with George Marlow in Durham, that right?”

“That is correct.”

His eyes were crossing, it was like putting questions to a demented squirrel. “You told your probation officer that you had met Marlow after your release.”

“That is correct.”

“And you were living in a halfway hostel in Camberwell then, yes? So where did you meet?”

McKinney looked up as Amson returned. He kept his back to McKinney and leaned over to whisper to Tennison.

“There’s a buzz on, looks like another one in Warrington. They’ll get back to me when they’ve finished checking.”

Feeling a bit perkier, Tennison turned back to Reg. He said, “I’ve forgotten what you asked me . . . I’ve got a migraine.”

“Where did you and Marlow meet?”

“Oh, yeah . . . Kilburn. We went for a curry, then he drove me back to my place. Bit of a schlepp, an’ I offered to get the tube, but he said it was OK. He wanted to do some work on his motor, in his lock-up.”

Tennison was careful not to show the excitement she was feeling. “Lock-up—you mean a garage?”

“I dunno . . .” He stopped a moment and rubbed his head, in obvious agony. “The car was, like, an obsession with ’im.”

“He never mentioned where this lock-up was?”

“No . . . I got a terrible headache.”

A prison warder put his head round the door. “Urgent call for DCI Tennison.”

Tennison took the call. The team were doing a good job; the Warrington murder had checked out, plus another one, in Southport. Both victims had identical marks on their arms.

George Marlow hung around the garages chatting and joking with Rosper and Lillie until dark. They got on well together, and had done a fair bit of painting, but the two DCs were beginning to wonder when he was going to go home—they couldn’t paint all night. The floodlights had come on around the estate and were just enough to work by, but it wasn’t easy.

“Bit late to be painting, isn’t it?” Marlow enquired.

“We’re on bonus, mate,” Rosper told him. “Never know what’s gonna happen with all this council privatization, so we gotta make the cash while we can.”

Marlow sympathized with them, then launched into a story about a bet he’d had with someone at the gym where he worked out when they heard sirens coming close.

All three turned to watch the cars drive onto the estate. In the first one were DI Muddyman with DC Jones, behind them Tennison and Amson. They had barely come to a halt when Tennison leaped out and ran to catch up with Muddyman.