Joe stood dead still and watched. After a brief pause, she turned to her right and made her way to the corner of the building. As she went, she got out a phone and pressed it to her ear. Her movements were careful, alert. She ignored the two besuited men crouched over a bike. Up the drive she came, towards him, moving fast now, her strides long and deliberate. She’d seen him.

‘Joe? Are you skulking in the shadows?’

Her tone was friendly but forced. Her smile was painfully unconvincing, anxious, her eyes just a touch red, he thought.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m… working.’

As he spoke, he realized that he was also tense. When they’d met in the pub yesterday, they’d kissed each other spontaneously. Now it felt like one of those ghastly social niceties you’d do anything to avoid.

Meanwhile, the two detectives disappeared into a car a little way beyond the bike and drove off.

‘Could you wait just a minute? I need to check something.’

He left her there, unkissed, and walked down the drive, taking photos of the bike as he went, the flash from his phone lighting up the near side of the library building, turning it a sickly, anaemic yellow.

The bike was similar to the one he’d seen on Saturday morning, chained up in exactly the same place. The same bike? He couldn’t be sure, but it certainly looked similar, a racer, but slightly sturdier than a speed bike, more of a general-purpose model.

He took a few close-ups, as many angles of the back view as he could.

‘Do you mind? That’s private property.’

He didn’t need to look up. He carried on, took one final shot, then slipped his phone into his jacket pocket.

‘You mean this,’ he said, pointing to the bike.

He ran his finger very lightly over the crossbar, failing to find any tell-tale signs of where plastic tape might have been stuck.

‘Keen cyclist, Mr Sugden?’

‘Don’t you lot ever leave folk alone?’

‘I’m sure my colleagues have already asked you, but last Tuesday evening, were you here when the Lobster Pot group met? Were you the one who locked up after they finished?’

‘Am I being questioned again?’

‘Well, it is a question. And as you can see I’m waiting for an answer.’

‘I was here on Tuesday ’til about nine. We open late on Tuesdays.’

‘And you came by bike?’

Sugden shifted on his feet. Joe could imagine the clichés that were now swirling about in the young man’s mind: the police state, the repressive forces of power, smash the status quo with a big bowl of hummus.

‘Do you really need to ask? Again? I thought you’d got CCTV cameras everywhere.’