Turner was being questioned now. Had he manufactured the whole thing? The first kill might have been opportunistic, but the second one chimed pretty well with Turner and his half-arsed vigilantes. Or a more sinister version of them. Could Turner have provoked it, or somehow encouraged it? Was it the kind of murder a lawyer might devise, a lawyer motivated by rage? Rage or indignation? Hatred? Loathing?

His mind slipped a gear. Two killers? The thought had been dancing around at the back of his mind all day. He hadn’t allowed himself to think about it too much. But now it felt right, and Rita was sure to have considered the possibility as well. Where did that leave Megan’s suggestion that there’d be a third kill, and soon?

He looked up the street at the butcher’s window, perhaps hoping that the neat rows of pies would give him a clue. The siren call of hog-soaked piecrust was strong, but the knowledge that he was so close to the site of Craig Shaw’s murder took the edge off his appetite.

‘Great White Male?’ he said, turning on his heels. ‘Perhaps it’s a not-so-great white male I need to talk to.’

The light was just beginning to fade when he got up to the library. He was about to drive into the car park when he saw two youngish men in suits coming out of the building. He pulled up at the side of the road and watched them. The main doors were about twenty yards away, but even at that distance he could tell they were coppers.

They walked as far as the corner of the building, then stopped. Joe got out of the car and leant on the wall, phone pressed to his ear, shielding his face as best he could, pretending to talk. There was a bicycle against the side of the library building. The officers were giving it a pretty good going-over, taking pictures, heads nodding as they spoke. They examined the crossbar in detail, bending down until their noses almost touched it.

Then his attention was taken by a subtle shift in the light reflected off the main doors. The young librarian poked his head out of the entrance. Joe couldn’t make out whether there was a scowl on his face or something more troubled. Whichever it was, he dithered in the doorway, not sure what to do, before eventually disappearing back inside.

‘Mark Sugden,’ he whispered.