Perez woke the next morning to the sound of his phone ringing. Again his first thought was of Fran and Cassie and their safety in London. The voice was English and female, and at first he didn’t recognize it. Suddenly he lost control of his imagination; gothic images of spilled blood and smashed limbs flashed into his head. The woman was a nurse in accident and emergency, he thought. Or a cop, specially trained to break bad news.

‘Inspector Perez, I’m sorry to call you so early.’

He struggled to sit upright in the bed and to clear the nightmare pictures from his mind.

‘This is Gwen James, inspector. You asked me to contact you if Hattie had been in touch with the psychiatric nurse who looked after her when she was ill at university.’

At last he felt he had a grip on the conversation. ‘And had she?’

‘Not recently, I’m afraid, but the nurse thought you’d find it interesting to talk to him. He didn’t feel he could discuss Hattie’s case with me.’ Her voice was tight, clipped. Perez thought she’d had a battle over that. She’d demanded information and the nurse had stood up to her. A brave man.

She waited impatiently while he found paper and pencil to write down the man’s number. The bedroom was cold. He’d found it stuffy and airless after his discussion with Berglund the night before and had switched the heating off. Shivering, he got back into bed to complete the call. Despite her apparent impatience, in the end Gwen was reluctant to end the conversation.

‘Did you find Hattie’s letters useful, inspector?’

‘Thank you. Very. We will get them back to you as soon as we can.’

‘When you have news about the circumstances of Hattie’s death, you will tell me?’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course.’ He switched off the phone before she could ask any more questions.

It was too early to contact the nurse. He’d wait at least until nine o’clock. In the dining room Jean was just laying the tables for breakfast. ‘Could you not sleep?’ she said as she snipped the top from a carton of juice and poured it into a jug. He wondered when she had the chance to rest. She was still behind the bar when the last customer left at night and the place always looked clean in the morning. ‘Cedric is still in his bed. He stayed up last night drinking to Mima. He was always very fond of her.’

‘Did he ever go to visit her at Setter?’

‘Aye, every Thursday afternoon. To talk over old times, he said. To flirt, more like. Mima was a dreadful old flirt.’ She hurried away to make his coffee.

Cedric appeared just as Perez was finishing the meal. He looked bleary-eyed and grey.