Still no response. It seemed to take her an age to realize what had happened. She reached out to feel for a pulse, had the sensation of cold, dead flesh under her fingers, but still she didn’t believe it. She lifted his eyelids and saw the red pinpricks in the whites of his eyes and pulled back the deep collar of his sweater to see the line around his neck. Only then did it hit her, like a punch in the gut, that Danny had been killed too. Strangled in the same way as Jenny Lister. This time, the death was her responsibility, her failure. The music from the CD player thumped in her ears, taunting her, drowning out the sound of the birds. She knew better than to touch it. There could be a partial fingerprint on the flat plastic switch. But the noise was driving her crazy and she walked away from it, back towards the road, just pulling herself together sufficiently to shout to Joe, ‘Stay there. I’ll call it in.’

Standing by her car, waiting for the CSIs – the hoopla of experts who gathered at a murder like raptors over a dead sheep – she wished for the first time in ten years that she still smoked. She hadn’t known Danny Shaw, but his death moved her more than any she’d encountered professionally. She’d been cruising on this case. It hadn’t even crossed her mind that there might be another killing. Now her mind raced. Why was Danny Shaw murdered? For something he’d seen? For something he’d known?

There was the sound of a car in the road. Vera expected it to be the community officers she’d requested to secure the scene, but it was small and green, and Danny’s mother was inside.

Karen Shaw was out of it like a shot. ‘Can I help you?’ Prickly, ready to pick a fight, assuming Vera was there to hassle her son. Which of course she had been. Then she seemed to sense Vera’s mood. She stood in the middle of the road. ‘What’s happened? Where’s my boy?’

Vera couldn’t find the words to answer. Before Vera could stop her, Karen had let herself into the house and was running through it screaming for her son.

By the time Vera reached her she’d gone into the garden through a French window in the dining room and Joe Ashworth had her in his arms. She was very small; her head just came up to his chest. He held her there and let her sob. Vera stood watching, helpless, useless. At least by then the CD was over and the music had stopped.