Rosco was not surprised to see the car driven carefully down the lane. He was surprised it had taken them so long to come for him. He thought it was tactics. They would want to make him sweat.

Claire walked round the cottage through the knee-deep grass to find him.

“Mr. Rosco,” she said formally, “we’d like you to come with us to the police station to answer some questions.”

He stood, poised in the fading light in the shadow of the trees, a peg in the hand stretched above his head.

“Can you give me a few minutes,” he said, “ to wash and shave?” He did not know how long he would be away.

She nodded, and she and Berry waited in the car for him because there was nowhere in the small cottage they could wait without disturbing his privacy. When he came out to them, he was wearing a clean shirt and black cord trousers. They switched on the car headlights as soon as he was at the door, and they could see him quite clearly. He was empty-handed. There was no gun dropped surreptitiously into the undergrowth between the house and the lane. That had been done hours ago.

Back in Heanor Claire insisted on talking to Rosco herself. They sat in the bare, squalid interview room, lit by a bright neon strip light, and throughout the conversation she felt uneasy. Even when she should have been pleased by his answers, she felt she was making a mistake. But she was young and inexperienced and could not trust the instinct which told her he was not a liar.

“Why didn’t you tell us about your prison record?” she asked.

“It was something I wasn’t particularly proud of.” He had known it would come to this— the ugly interview room, the endless meaningless questions. All afternoon, with the saw and the axe, he had been trying to banish the memory of the last time.

“You must have known we’d find out,” the inspector said.

“Yes,” he said. He was looking down at the table. His face was brown, and she saw as his head bent that his hair was thinning and that the top of his head was brown, too. “ When the boy died, I panicked,” he said. “I thought it was an accident, and then all the questions started. It was like the last time. That was a terrible shock, too.”

“But you were responsible for the security guard’s death,” she said. “You did start the fire at the boat yard?”

“Oh, yes,” he said bitterly. “I started the fire.” He paused. “But I wasn’t responsible for young Franks’ death. I had nothing to do with that.”

“Why should I believe you now?”