‘Not really. Well, her big expenditure was on the house purchase and everything that went with it – solicitor’s fees, and the work she had done, like the gates and the burglar alarms. That must have made a huge hole in her resources. But since then, it’s just been normal living expenses. Council Tax, utilities, telephone bills. Not to mention food and general household expenses. They’ve all been increasing.’

‘And interest rates have been falling.’

‘She must have miscalculated badly, if she thought she could hide herself away in Bain House for the rest of her life.’

‘In any case, she must have been able to see what was going to happen not too far in the future. She was going to run out of money.’

‘Bain House would have had to go, for a start. She could have survived a few years longer if she’d flogged it and bought a terraced property in the city somewhere.’

‘She could have got a job,’ said Fry.

‘Look at the way she lived here,’ said Kessen. ‘Neither of those two options would have seemed possible to Rose Shepherd. She was too frightened of being tracked down.’

‘Yes, of course.’

Kessen coughed. ‘Are we nearly finished here? We need all the manpower we can get at Matlock Bath. Don’t forget we’re still looking for the child. And whoever assaulted DC Cooper, of course.’

‘Thank goodness the Zhivko bombing is C Division’s baby,’ said Hitchens. ‘We couldn’t have coped with that as well. By all accounts, it’s proving a big headache for them.’

‘I’ll send them our sympathy.’

‘What about Brian Mullen?’ asked Fry, turning back to the room. ‘Should we interview him again? It does seem a bit tough on him, so soon after everything else that’s happened.’

‘Leave it for now,’ said Hitchens. ‘I’ll have another try at Tony Donnelly first.’

‘No, look,’ said Donnelly a few minutes later. ‘All I did was nick a car and torch it afterwards. That’s nothing. You just get a ticking off for that. Community service, that sort of thing. It’s no big deal.’

‘You’ve done it before, Mr Donnelly, haven’t you?’

‘Well, yeah. Everybody has. When we were kids, we did it all the time round our way.’

‘But you’re not a kid any more.’

‘No. Well, I had given it up. This was just a one-off.’

‘Found something more lucrative, did you?’

‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’

‘I think you do,’ said Hitchens.

Donnelly shook his head.

‘So why this one-off?’

‘Look, it was a favour. Someone wanted a car for a bit, that’s all. A decent car, a four-by-four. I found one for him, and I did it as a favour.’

‘This would be the Shogun?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you saying you didn’t know what the vehicle was being used for?’