At another time she might have tried to help them, given them floor space to unroll their sleeping bags, invited them in for something to eat. But that night she was in no mood to be hospitable. She even resented the old residents. She wanted Louis Rosco to herself. She felt that at any time he might be taken back to Heanor for questioning, and she was edgy and frightened. She would not leave his side, and often she reached out her hand for reassurance. At last, when half a dozen loads of birdwatchers had stopped to ask for shelter, she took a piece of paper and wrote NO VACANCIES on it and pinned it to the front door. Then they were only disturbed by the headlights shining in at the kitchen window as the birdwatchers drove on down towards the beach, where they slept in their cars.

The constant movement in the lane outside, the thought of strangers in the valley, unsettled Molly, and she felt that the others were restless, too. Jane stood up from the table and wandered to the window to watch the cars. Duncan James played with the napkin on his plate, pleating and turning it in his short, fat fingers. Yet George seemed not to notice. He sat in a huddle with Roger, Rob, and Gerald, mumbling the same list of skuas and shearwaters, excited, it seemed, by no other thought than the seawatching.

That evening in the police station at Heanor Claire Bingham, Berry, and Wargan had a meeting in the superintendent’s office. The place was unexpectedly busy. There had been flood alerts, and the station was administrating the evacuation of low-lying villages close to the river. Everyone seemed to be enjoying the drama and change from routine. A pile of sandbags had been delivered into the front office, and members of the public came in a stream to collect them. There was a suppressed excitement and a forced community spirit which gave them a taste of what it must have been like in the war. Wargan pointedly ignored the activity. He shut his door on the noise, implying that they at least had real police work to get on with. Yet despite his irritation at the disruption all around him, Claire found him surprisingly enthusiastic. He even congratulated her on her work.

“You did a good job in Bristol,” he said. “ You’ll make a good detective yet.”

She said nothing. Both Wargan and Berry were even more convinced of Rosco’s guilt. They, too, had followed George’s reasoning. The link with Barnes made it devious, Wargan said. He sat behind his desk beaming with self-satisfaction. It was clear to Claire that he had taken credit for all her discoveries in Bristol. Now he wanted the biggest catch of all—the arrest of Brian Barnes.