‘We’ll see. What’s the betting there are a few more little details Mr Mullen hasn’t paid enough attention to?’

‘You’ve given him a chance to work out his story now, though. You warned him you were going to ask for more names.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Well, if Mr Mullen wasn’t at the Broken Wheel that night, he wouldn’t be able to make up names off the top of his head, would he? So shouldn’t we have asked him right there and then?’

‘My guess is he’d have said he couldn’t remember. And if I tried pushing him, I’d look like a heartless bitch.’

‘True.’

‘And Mr Mullen would have got all stressed, and a doctor would have come and kicked us out.’

‘So . . . ?’

‘So this way, I’ve done the caring and considerate bit and given him time to think about it while he’s recovering from his injuries. If I’ve judged him right, the longer he has to think about it, the more anxious he’ll get. Then he’ll start trying to think up something to give us when we come back. That’s where he’ll go wrong.’

‘Diane, I wouldn’t have believed it possible, but I think you’re getting more devious than ever.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You really think these tactics will work on Brian Mullen?’

‘Yes. Don’t you?’

‘Only if he’s guilty.’

For once, Keith Wade wasn’t out in his garden supervising operations in Darwin Street. Not that there was much to see now, apart from the tent, a few metres of tape outside number 32, and a different member of the chorus from Pirates rehearsing his act at the gate.

Cooper had to ring the bell of Wade’s house for several minutes before there was a thumping on the stairs in the hallway and the door opened. Wade glared at Cooper, then recognized Fry standing behind him.

‘What’s happened?’ he said. ‘What’s the panic?’

He was unshaven and bleary-eyed, dressed in tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt that looked as though it had just been thrown on. Well, at least he didn’t sleep in the woolly sweater. And he hadn’t said ‘where’s the fire?’, which might have seemed tasteless.

‘Sorry, did we wake you up, sir?’ said Fry.

‘Yes, I told you – I do late shifts.’

‘We won’t keep you long. This is my colleague, DC Cooper.’

Wade glanced up and down the street. ‘You’d better come in a minute.’

His house was pretty much what she would have expected from a divorced man living on his own. Stale smells of cooking and body odour, mingling with cigarette smoke. He had to move piles of newspapers off chairs to let them sit down, and one glimpse of the kitchen told Fry that its condition wouldn’t compare to Lindsay Mullen’s, even after a disastrous fire.