‘Not in a biological sense. But they’d gone to an awful lot of trouble to add her to the family, hadn’t they? In a way, Luanne was the child they’d put the biggest investment into – time and effort, and expense, of course. But perhaps the biggest investment of love, too.’

‘Do parents think like that?’ asked Fry. ‘I’d have thought their own children would be the most important to them. Their own flesh and blood.’

But she sounded uncertain, as if it was a subject she wasn’t qualified to speak on. Cooper remembered the few details she’d once told him about her childhood in the Black Country, when she’d been taken away from her parents and fostered. He wasn’t sure what had happened to Diane’s real parents, or whether she ever had any contact with them. She’d never mentioned them at all, and it wasn’t something Cooper felt entitled to ask her. Maybe one day – if he ever felt he knew her well enough.

‘No, Diane, I’m not sure it always works like that,’ he said, though he didn’t really feel any better qualified. It was just something she needed to hear.

‘There’s still no sign of Luanne Mullen. She’s disappeared completely.’

‘Somebody has her somewhere.’

‘She could be dead, couldn’t she?’

‘I have no idea. If you ask me, Georgi’s right and she’s back with her father.’

‘If that’s the case, it would all have been for nothing. We’d all have failed – me, you, Georgi Kotsev. What a waste of time.’

‘Let’s hope we hear something from Georgi, then,’ said Cooper.

And, as he watched Fry’s face, he thought that was one sentiment she probably agreed with.

‘How is Henry Lowther doing?’

‘We’ll get the truth out of him. He’s turned stubborn about talking, but at least he makes more sense than his son did.’

‘You know, there was a question someone asked right at the beginning, when we were in Rose Shepherd’s house after the shooting,’ said Cooper. ‘No one had any idea how to answer it then.’

‘What question was that?’

‘What Miss Shepherd’s killer could possibly have said to her on the phone that would make her go to the window and walk into his sights.’

‘There’s no way we’ll ever know that, unless Henry Lowther tells us.’

‘Well . . .’ said Cooper, ‘if Miss Shepherd was in such desperate financial circumstances that she’d decided to blackmail Henry Lowther, there is one sentence that might have made her do exactly that.’

‘What?’

‘Rose, I’ve brought you your money.’

But as soon as he said it, Cooper knew he would always feel sympathy for this person, too, though she might have been a blackmailer and a baby smuggler. And there was just one reason for that. No one had ever shed a tear for Rose Shepherd.

Chapter Forty