‘Would it be possible to speak to Hannah?’

‘Hannah’s not here. She and Simon left soon after you did this morning. I assume they’re back in her house, but they didn’t say where they were going.’ She stood on the doorstep, a lonely and dignified figure, watching the detective walk away.

He found the girl in the garden behind the little house she’d shared with her mother. There was no answer when he knocked at the door and he was about to give up when Hilda waved at him from her living-room window, pointing to an arched gap in the terrace between their two houses.

Hannah was alone. Her red hair was tied back in an untidy plait and she was wearing wellingtons, a big hand-knitted sweater with a frayed rib and holes in the elbows. She was digging over the small vegetable patch. When she saw him she stopped and leaned on the fork. She was flushed and breathless.

‘Mum always planted a few new potatoes over the Easter holiday. Broad beans too. I didn’t want to let it go.’

‘You’ve been going at that like a dog at broth.’ One of his grandda’s sayings. ‘You’ll wear yourself out.’

‘I hope so.’ She smiled at him. ‘It’d be good to get to sleep without a pill. They make me feel lousy the next morning.’

‘Simon not with you?’

‘He’s taken Mum’s car to the supermarket in Hexham. I couldn’t face it – the supermarket or the car – so I said I’d stay here. We have to eat, I suppose, and I don’t want to go to the White House for meals every day.’ She bent absent-mindedly and pulled a strand of goose grass from the soil and threw it onto the wheelbarrow, then straightened. ‘Do you know who killed my mother yet?’

He shook his head. ‘Are you up to answering some questions?’

‘If you don’t mind doing it here. I feel better outside.’ And it seemed to him that she was much better, almost cheerful in the spring sunshine. She’d lost the pallor and the doped indifference.

‘Did your mum mention seeing anything unusual about the health club lately? We think one of the staff had been stealing from guests and other employees. It might be a motive.’ He wanted to start off with something impersonal, not too close to home.

‘No. Nothing like that. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t see something. We were both busy. Often she didn’t get back until late from work, and by then I’d be out with Si or holed up in my room revising. We were close, but there wasn’t a lot of time for chat.’