‘Secret? Did she use that word herself?’

‘I think she did. I think she made it obvious that behind everything there was a nasty great secret.’

‘One last thing,’ said the officer. ‘Where did you go? When you went out leaving the house open, on Sunday morning?’

‘Oh … just round the village. As far as the big hotel and back, more or less.’ She found herself oddly resistant to mentioning the romantic abandoned barn. It could not be the least bit relevant, and it would ruin the fairy-tale notions 140she had about it if the police were to start noticing it.

‘You just walked down the main street and back?’

‘Not quite. I took a little road that goes off just past the church, and then came back to the main street through the garden of that big hotel. It was just an aimless stroll to stretch my legs a bit.’

‘Did anybody see you?’

‘Quite a few in passing cars, I suppose, but I don’t imagine they’d remember. I didn’t speak to anybody. Not like this morning. I had quite a good chat in the churchyard then.’

He shook his head impatiently. ‘So, no evidence that you actually did go for a walk on Sunday?’ he said with brutal directness.

‘What? Oh, gosh, I see now.’ She had managed to forget that she was still theoretically suspected of having committed murder. ‘You mean I should find myself an alibi. Well – a woman came out of her house and got into her car. She might remember seeing me. She’d probably know the time, as well. People usually look at the clock before they go out, don’t they?’

‘Do they?’ He sighed. ‘Can you remember which house it was?’

‘I think so. I could point it out, anyway.’

He made a note, and then lapsed into silence.

‘So …?’ she prompted him.

‘So I think that might be enough for now. We’ll collate the findings from the house, and take it from there.’

‘Right.’ She hesitated. ‘Gladwin said there might be a chance of you lending me a car. Did she tell you that?’141

He blinked at her. ‘Not me, no. We’ll ask at the front desk. There’s usually a spare vehicle knocking about, but there’ll have to be a fair bit of paperwork before we can let you have anything.’

142

Chapter Eleven

There was plentiful paperwork to deal with before Thea was allowed to take the five-year-old automatic Fiat away. There had also been a crash course in how to drive an automatic, and dire warnings as to the avalanche of trouble there would be if she damaged it. ‘We’d only do this for a friend of the superintendent,’ said the sergeant who was handing the car over.

‘I’ll only use it when I have to,’ she promised. ‘Just for shopping, really. When do you want it back?’

‘End of the week?’ he offered. ‘There’s no great rush.’

She managed the short drive back to Barnsley at a careful crawl, getting the feel of the car and terrified of stalling it at junctions. She got back to the house on the corner just after four, tucking the car in beside the truck that Sid and Dave used. There were no police vehicles, which suggested a rather rapid forensic exercise. Had they scanned every surface for fingerprints and collected invisible flakes of skin to be tested for DNA? Or had they just had a good look round, concentrating 143on the attic and noting the way Thea was effectively camping in the living room? They weren’t specialist SOCOs, anyway – which was odd, when she thought about it. Had the hunt for pangolin smugglers taken every trained officer away from other work? More than likely, she decided, given the strictures the police were currently working under.