‘Agreed. But I don’t think it would make much difference in this case. None of them could really agree on her appearance or manner either. One said Miss Shepherd had a nice smile, another said she was very reserved and never smiled at all. We’ve had a lot of different estimates of her age, too. You’d hardly think they’d met the same person.’

‘Well, a harmless middle-aged woman – who’d take much notice of her, unless she did something to draw attention to herself?’

‘And she didn’t do that.’

Hitchens spun round and looked at Fry. ‘A harmless middle-aged woman that no one takes any notice of. Do you think you’ll end up like that one day, Diane?’

‘Hardly.’

‘Why not? We all get middle-aged, don’t we?’

‘The key word is “harmless”,’ said Fry.

The DI laughed. ‘You’re right. I can’t see anyone not noticing you, no matter how old you get.’

‘Did we get anything from her contacts list?’

‘Well, her dentist can tell us that Rose Shepherd had a few previous fillings. Her GP prescribed her Nitrazepam for her sleeping problems. And the garage can tell us what the emissions were like on her Volvo. Pick the bones out of that, if you can.’

‘Why did she have trouble sleeping, I wonder?’

‘Who can say?’

‘Well, at least we have a confirmation of her ID from the dental records. We don’t have to wait for the GP to get back.’

Hitchens opened the file. ‘One thing we did find in the house was the receipt for her car. It was bought from a Volvo dealer in Chesterfield and delivered to Bain House a few days after Miss Shepherd moved in. The receipt gives the recorded mileage at the time of sale, and we checked it against the current reading. She did about three hundred miles in a year. She was the proverbial careful lady owner.’

‘My God, she hardly went anywhere,’ said Fry.

‘She had no one to visit, did she?’

‘Apparently not.’

He raised his face to drink in the sounds. Cars and motorbikes; thumping music from the pub, the thud of a diesel exhaust. There were loud voices as a crowd of youths and girls queued to get into Brody’s nightclub on the top floor of the Pavilion. Laughing, shrieking, squealing. The noise echoed off the front of the building, allowing him to bathe in the clamour.

He was waiting in the bus pull-in near the tufa fountain, talking to the fish as they popped up to see if he’d brought them any food. Hissing, splashing, plopping. But he mustn’t stay here too long, or a policeman would come his way, suspecting that he planned to stalk some ridiculous teenage girl in a short skirt. Now, then. Now then. Move along.