He leant forward. ‘Is that what you thought she was doing?’

‘No, no. Not at the time. Gladwin told me about finding the pangolins in Cheltenham later on.’ She stopped to reflect. ‘No, I didn’t really think Grace was doing anything criminal. I thought she was more of a victim than a wrongdoer. Although she seemed to be feeling guilty about something, all the same. She said, “We fear those we hurt,” which I took to mean that somebody was out for revenge. And when you think about it, she did seem more the sort of person who’d victimise other people, rather than having it done to her. If you see what I mean.’

‘But you did eventually make a connection between her and the rare species investigation. Can you tell me why?’

‘Because she was Chinese,’ said Thea unhappily. ‘Does that make me a racist?’138

‘Not for me to say,’ he replied with the faintest of smiles. ‘From what we can gather, there is some Chinese involvement, among a lot of other people from a lot of other countries.’

‘It could fit,’ said Thea thoughtfully. ‘I mean, she might not have realised what was going on until she got to Barnsley, and then decided to run away, rather than take part in something so horrible.’

The man nodded, saying nothing.

‘It feels more likely than her being trafficked as a prostitute, anyway,’ Thea went on. ‘I mean – that was my very first thought. But she seemed too … confident. And she’s much too old, if she’s fifty – isn’t she?’

‘You’d be surprised. But we would need a lot more evidence before we pursued that line of enquiry.’

‘Isn’t there any CCTV at the business park? Surely there must be. Some of those businesses must worry about security. And people live there as well.’

‘There are a couple of cameras. On first glance, they don’t seem very helpful.’

It struck Thea that she was being given much more inside information than was usual. That had to be because of her friendship with Gladwin, conferring a semi-official role on her. There had been talk, a little while before, of Thea becoming a paid employee of the police, in a civilian role, helping with local knowledge and insights. But it had come to nothing, when the precise job description proved impossible to establish. All that had happened was that Gladwin continued 139to treat her as a special case, sharing facts about her investigations and trusting Thea to provide whatever assistance she could.

The interviewer looked up from his notes, meeting Thea’s eyes. ‘Did you like her?’ he asked.

‘What? Oh, gosh, there’s a question. I can’t give you a straight answer. I wanted to like her, but it was all so peculiar, and I was fairly sure that she didn’t much like me. There was something calculating about her, right from the start.’

‘You felt used? Manipulated?’

‘I did rather. But I admit I liked the adventure of it. It gave me something to do, something to think about. If she’d still been there when I got back from the walk, I was going to ask her a hundred questions and try to get to the bottom of the story. That’s what I mean about people being irrational, inconsistent. I sort of wanted to be rid of her, but I was also very keen to have more talk with her. It’s been extremely frustrating not understanding what was so secret.’