‘Holly’s to follow up on Danny Shaw and Michael Morgan. Check out possible previous points of contact. Joe, I’d like you to go to Durham nick. Have another chat with Mattie. She’s back there now, recovering in the hospital wing. You’re good with helpless females. I need more details of the visits Jenny Lister made to her. What exactly did they talk about? Charlie, see if you can track down Connie Masters. Her car must be somewhere, and it’s not easy to hide a four-year-old girl. They haven’t been in the cottage in Barnard Bridge since yesterday morning. She left a message on Joe’s phone saying she was fine and needed a bit of space, but he thinks there’s more to it than that.’ Another pause, even longer than the first. ‘And so do I. I want to speak to her.’ Ashworth wasn’t sure what to make of that. Did she think Connie was in danger? If so, why would she leave her in Charlie’s unreliable hands?

Vera stopped speaking, made a sort of shooing gesture with her hands. ‘Go on then. This is a murder inquiry, not a mothers’ union meeting. You haven’t got all day.’

‘What about you?’ Charlie said, verging on the rude.

‘Me?’ She gave another of her self-satisfied grins. ‘I’m management and I don’t go out in the rain. I’m doing some strategic thinking.’

Joe Ashworth liked Durham city. Only twenty minutes down the A1, he thought you could have been in a different world from the centre of Newcastle. This was an old town, classy, with its huge red sandstone cathedral and the castle, the smart shops and the fancy restaurants, the university colleges and the students with their posh voices. Like a southern city, he always thought, lifted up and stuck on the Wear. The prison was quite a different matter. Joe hated most prisons, but this was one of the worst. It was grim and old and made him think of dungeons and rats. It didn’t belong in Durham. It had a unit for long-term and dangerous female prisoners.