‘Thanks, Diane,’ said Hitchens.

He was spinning his swivel chair from side to side, making it squeal at the end of each turn. It was a habit he had when he was angry or stressed.

‘What’s the plan, sir?’

‘I’ll let Donnelly stew for a while, then I’ll have another go at him later.’

‘He’d never heard Lindsay Mullen’s name before,’ said Fry. ‘I could tell from his face when you asked him about her.’

‘Do you think so, Diane?’

‘Yes, I do.’

Hitchens stared out of the window as he took a sip of coffee and put the cup down quickly. It was too hot, as usual.

‘I’m inclined to agree with you. It was almost the only time we got a genuine reaction out of him. He was surprised. And then he thought it was funny. It makes things more difficult for us, doesn’t it? It suggests there were more people involved than we first thought.’

Fry sat down, balancing her own cup on her knee. ‘What do you mean?’

‘If Donnelly doesn’t know anything about Lindsay Mullen, it means the Darwin Street job must have been given to someone else.’

‘Really?’

‘Well, it’s good practice. Separate teams, with no contact between them. Neither team knowing what job the other is doing. There’d be much less chance of them implicating each other that way. That would explain why Tony Donnelly doesn’t even know Lindsay Mullen’s name. He probably only read about her in the papers, like everyone else.’

‘I suppose it could also be the reason why the arson seemed so much less professionally executed. There were always too many differences in approach for them to fit together comfortably. So we have a second suspect, you think?’

‘At least.’

‘Nikolov?’

‘I don’t see how. There’s no indication that he left the farm during the last couple of days before he died. More likely, he picked up a newspaper, or turned on the radio, and heard about Rose Shepherd’s killing. Then he drank himself to death.’

‘He followed her to Derbyshire, then followed her into death?’

Hitchens blinked a little. ‘Well, Nikolov was no hit man.’

‘Who, then? I wonder if that could have been someone recruited at short notice. They can’t have expected to identify the Mullens so quickly after finding Rose Shepherd. There’d have to be a last-minute change to their plans.’

‘A local villain, dragged off the street for a one-off job, cash in the pocket?’ said Hitchens, brightening noticeably.

‘He’d be easier to find, wouldn’t he?’

‘Easier to find? If he’d left us some DNA, we’d have him banged up already.’

‘But, as it stands, we have no evidence to charge Tony Donnelly in connection with the Mullen killings.’

‘No, none at all. But he’s not going anywhere, since we have his prints from the Shogun. So we can worry about that later.’