He paused again and clapped as the loud woman in the grey blazer put a bowl close to the jack.

“Then Sinclair wanted to expand,” he continued. “ I can’t remember the details. Not now. There was a big order, apparently, that he couldn’t meet without new equipment. So he took on a new partner. Someone who wanted to buy into a successful local business. At least that’s what he said at the time.”

Now she did feel she should interrupt.

“But if he was such a good worker, and the business was expanding, why did they make Rosco redundant?”

He looked at her. “Well,” he said, “ that’s the big question, isn’t it? That’s what I wanted to know.”

“And did you come up with an answer?” she asked, knowing already that he would have, because he was the sort of man to worry at a problem until he had come up with a solution.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I came up with an answer. Rosco was sacked because that gave him a good excuse for setting fire to the yard.”

“But why?” she cried, although she thought she had already guessed.

“It was an insurance fraud,” Rolfe said, and waited, as if he expected applause. “An elaborate insurance fraud.”

“But why did Rosco go along with the plan?” Claire asked.

“He was made an offer he couldn’t refuse,” Rolfe said. “After the Rosco case I made it my business to find out about the businessman Sinclair took into the boat yard as a sleeping partner. More like a gangster than a businessman, I found out. Involved in all sorts of unsavoury business. But wanting to go respectable. And desperate for land so he could have a piece of the action in the dock development. I should think he’d have some powerful means of persuasion.”

Rolfe looked at her to make sure she was listening intently.

“When the security guard was killed, Sinclair’s partner might have been afraid Rosco would tell us everything. But Rosco didn’t. And I don’t think it was because he was scared. He’d been promised money, a lot of money, when he got out. Louis and I got quite close after all the interviews—you know how you sometimes do—and he almost admitted to me once why he’d got involved in the deal. ‘ You like boats, Sergeant Rolfe,’ he said. ‘Haven’t you ever felt you’d do nearly anything for a boat of your own?’ He thought he’d get a boat out of it when it was all over. I knew what he meant, but it wasn’t the sort of thing you could use as evidence.”

“Who was the businessman?” Claire asked. “What was his name?”