“I’d like to speak to Rolfe,” Claire said. “ Where does he live? Would he speak to me?”

“He still lives in Bedminster,” the detective said. “I believe he and his wife bought the police house there before he retired. If he’s not at home, he’ll be on the bowling green. His wife will point you in the right direction. And he’ll speak to you. He’ll speak to anyone that’ll listen.”

She walked out into the sunshine, into a busy shopping street and through the centre, past Saint Mary Radcliffe Church towards the river. It was a place of prosperity and style, of warehouses with newly scrubbed brickwork turned into offices for computer firms, of attractive wine bars and expensive apartments overlooking the water. Outside the Arnol Fini Arts Centre a student was handing out publicity about a university production of The Duchess of Malfi. It was the sort of place where Claire Bingham felt at home.

She crossed the river by a narrow footbridge close to the SS Great Britain and found Rolfe’s home almost immediately. It was semidetached, neat, immaculately cared for, the pebble dash facing newly white washed. At the other end of the road she could see the red brick bulk of the old Wills’ tobacco factory. This was a different Bristol from the elegance of Clifton or the affluence of the docks. She might have been in industrial Lancashire. There were net curtains at the windows, and as she walked up the street, she felt she was being watched.

When Claire Bingham knocked at the door, it was opened by a tiny woman in a flowery nylon overall with a duster in her hand. From the open door came the smell of newly cleaned windows and furniture polish.

“I’m sorry, my dear,” Mrs. Rolfe said, hardly looking at the caller, her attention still inside where the brasses needed doing. “Hubert’s not here. He never is in the mornings. Not in this weather. You’ll find him in the park. On the bowling green.” And she closed the door firmly on the dirty, uncertain world outside.

The park could have been in a northern town, too. It was small, rather scruffy, bordered on one side by allotments. There were rusting wrought iron lamp posts and elderly ladies walking threadbare dogs in the sun. In contrast the bowling green was perfectly smooth, and there was a smart new pavilion at one end. Outside the pavilion she asked a ferocious woman dressed in the club uniform of grey skirt and blazer for Hubert and was directed disapprovingly to a bench by the green. With the uniform the woman seemed to have taken on a prefect’s bossiness, and throughout her conversation with Hubert Rolfe, Claire could hear her calling orders and encouragement to her partner.