‘It’s a chap by the name of Eric Grice, who seems to be some kind of handyman. He doesn’t live in Foxlow, but apparently he did occasional work at Bain House. So he’s actually spoken to the victim.’

‘Perhaps he can tell us why she hardly ever left the house.’

‘One suggestion is that she might have been suffering from agoraphobia. An irrational fear of open spaces.’

‘But she went into Matlock Bath, didn’t she?’ said Cooper.

‘Yes, and nobody reported her in any distress at being outdoors. We’ve spoken to her GP’s surgery, and she only ever consulted her doctor for insomnia. She seemed to be in good health otherwise, but she hadn’t been on his list for very long. Also, the surgery don’t have access to her previous medical records. Miss Shepherd told them she’d been living abroad . . .’ Hitchens paused. ‘Besides, whatever Rose Shepherd was afraid of, it wasn’t an irrational fear. The bullets that killed her were real enough.’

‘Do we have an update on the bullets?’ asked Kessen.

‘Well, they’ve gone to the lab,’ said Wayne Abbott. ‘The one removed from the wall of the bedroom was too badly damaged to be any use, but the two the pathologist recovered have their surface marks intact. The firearms examiner should be able to give us the make, model and calibre of the weapon, with a bit of luck. And if we manage to locate the weapon, we can match it up to the bullets with a fair degree of certainty.’

‘Can’t we run the bullets through the ballistics database?’

‘You mean IBIS? Well, we could – but what result would you be hoping for?’

‘A match that would help us identify the weapon, of course,’ said Kessen.

Abbott shook his head. ‘I think there might be a misunderstanding of what the database can do. You can only get an identification of a firearm if it’s been found somewhere and test fired in the lab. But this weapon is still out there, being used. It won’t be recorded in the database.’

‘But if the same firearm was used in an earlier incident where the bullets were found, could we establish a link?’

‘Perhaps. Provided details from the previous incident have been entered into the database.’

‘Ask them to try, then,’ said Kessen.

‘If you say so.’

‘What about the PM report, Paul?’

‘Pretty much what we expected. One bullet entered near the victim’s left eye and ricocheted around the brain for a bit before lodging behind the right ear. The other penetrated her left lung and was removed from a site close to her spine. A high-powered rifle can do a lot of damage to a human body.’