‘Makes a change,’ she said briefly. ‘I gather you’ve got a special pass with Superintendent Gladwin. We’d heard about you, even over here in Cirencester.’ She deftly manoeuvred the car and was soon on the road back to Barnsley. Thea did not recognise the road, feeling alien and vulnerable. Rather like Grace, in fact. This part of the Cotswolds was unfamiliar to her, with Bibury almost entirely unknown. She was even more helpless without a car than she had first thought. Now it seemed vital that she should be able to get away from Barnsley at a moment’s notice. Without Gladwin’s stalwart support, she was alarmingly alone. The closer they came to the house, the more she panicked. ‘Will there be police people here all day, do you think?’ She wasn’t sure what she hoped the answer would be.

‘I doubt it. Once they’ve removed the body, that might be it.’

‘Oh. Don’t you think it was suspicious, then? The death, I mean?’

‘Not for me to say. No signs of disturbance, though. Or resistance. Just lying there – but they’ll not waste any time in finding out.’

‘Even on a Sunday?’

‘That could be an issue, maybe.’ The woman shrugged. Thea gave her a closer look, for want of anything else to divert her. Aged about thirty, with the rank of sergeant, she was not so different from where Thea’s own daughter was likely to be in six or seven years’ time. Ready for anything; trained to manage a host of difficult situations; bound by the shackles of inclusivity, tolerance, rigid 84politeness, so that any self-proclaimed victim must be taken seriously, and any leaping to conclusions firmly suppressed. All good in theory, but often leading to inefficiencies in practice. Gladwin’s scant respect even for some of the more exigent and insistent rules was the main source of Thea’s liking and admiration.

‘I think somebody killed her,’ she said boldly. ‘I think it’s a bit slack of the police doctor not to flag it up right away as a murder, in fact. So there should be a SOCO team, and photographer and the whole works. Even on a Sunday,’ she added crossly.

The policewoman did not take umbrage. ‘We’ll seal off that room until we know. Normally we probably would have got the whole team in, just in case, but they’ve all gone off to some farm in the wilds up near Northleach or somewhere. They can’t be everywhere at once, and I gather there might be two fatalities up there. It all kicked off at the same time as your woman.’

Somewhere inside, Thea felt a faint glow of satisfaction that other people got into horrible pickles besides her. She imagined a farmer shooting his overworked wife, and then himself, because the crops had failed or the bank had cancelled their loan, or their EU subsidy had evaporated. Then she chastised herself for such an unworthy feeling. ‘Sounds pretty awful,’ she said. ‘Poor people.’

‘Yeah.’

There didn’t seem to be much more to say. They were almost back at the Barnsley house, where Thea would have to get through the rest of the day somehow. 85She would be told which rooms she could use, and be interrupted at unpredictable intervals by various branches of the police. Already she had been told to stay where she could be easily found, and to call a specific number if she thought of any more useful information.