It was a ten-minute drive to Batley. He glanced at his messages. The teams had been out all afternoon, and Gwyn Merchant was now busy relaying the results, which were mainly that no one in West Yorkshire knew anything about Craig Shaw. All the individuals even remotely identified as potential suspects had been traced, interviewed and eliminated from the inquiry. Nothing was getting flagged up for further investigation. Gwyn was certainly efficient. No sooner had a new line of enquiry been identified, it seemed, than the lead had been followed up and discounted.

They passed the Batley Variety Club, the most famous cabaret venue in the North. He remembered the stories from when he was a kid. Every local musician that his parents knew claimed to have been in the house band when Louis Armstrong had played at the Varieties, and for Tom Jones, Roy Orbison, Neil Sedaka… Tony and him used to joke that if they’d all really been there when Armstrong came, there’d have been enough musicians to fill the club, never mind the orchestra pit.

He slowed down to see what had become of it.

‘A bloody gym!’

A mile or two further and Rita took a sharp left at twenty miles per hour. They entered a housing estate, the main avenue curving gradually up the valley side. It was the kind of council estate where he’d spent many hours as a copper: door-to-doors, domestic disputes, chasing up likely suspects, most of whom lived in places exactly like this. He remembered the sofas on the front lawns, the odd car on bricks, scary young kids with red faces waiting to cheek you off.

There were no cars on bricks here, though. Lots of cars, but good, solid stuff, decent family motors, right up to the odd Merc.

Rita came to an abrupt stop. By the time he’d parked behind her and got out, she was already leaning against the Land Rover, rolling a cigarette.

‘Need a quick smoke.’

‘Really?’ He looked around. ‘That bad, is it?’

‘This estate? Nah, one of the good ones. And the jewel in the crown,’ she added, nodding over her shoulder, then cupping her hands against the wind as she flicked her lighter, ‘is the Brown Cow. Ironic, eh?’

‘Is it?’

She took a long draw on her cigarette. They both watched as the smoke descended in a loose cloud around them, then disappeared in a single gust of wind.

‘The Brown Cow. It’s what the Cullens call me.’

‘Famous in these parts, are they?’

‘You might say that. Hold on.’

She took a long, long drag.

‘I dunno about threatening Lisa Cullen’s boyfriend, but I wouldn’t go round threatening Ma and Pa Cullen without a bloody good reason,’ she said, before tossing the cigarette into the gutter with disgust.

With that she turned and marched towards the pub, the movement of her shoulders now just a little exaggerated.