He saw Lisa, the young lass Vera had co-opted to help her, in the hotel lounge, which was empty finally; all the health-club members had been interviewed and sent away, and a big notice on the hotel door said that the club was closed for business for twenty-four hours ‘Due to Unforeseen Circumstances’. He believed Vera had been thoughtless with Lisa – making the girl peer into the steam room to look at the body, just to save herself a few minutes in the identification, was unprofessional and unkind.

A young woman with a Polish accent seemed to be in charge of the lounge. She wore a black dress and flat shoes. ‘Can I get you some refreshment?’ He asked Lisa if she’d like a coffee and, when her latte arrived, with small round home-made biscuits on a plate, Lisa sat, bent forward, her hands wrapped round the glass. There was a smudge of foamed milk on her upper lip. She must have seen him looking at it, because she blushed and wiped it away with her napkin.

The lounge was set out like the drawing room in one of the National Trust houses Joe’s wife had made him go to, before the kids had come along. Polished dark-wood floor with a square carpet in the middle. The carpet was red and woven, almost as hard on the feet as the floor itself, so threadbare that in some places there was no pattern left. Pictures in big gilt frames on the walls. Mostly portraits, men in wigs and women in long dresses. Big leather chesterfields against the walls and chintz-covered chairs grouped around tables with fragile legs. At one end there was a huge fireplace, but without a fire today, and the big radiators were cold too, so there was a chill as soon as you walked in. The room had a background smell of dust.

Now the remnants of the pensioners’ coffee and sandwiches were scattered on white china plates over the tables. There were coffee pots and bowls of lump sugar. Crumbs and crusts had ended up on the floor. At the other end of the room a middle-aged woman was starting to clear up the debris.

‘Thanks for sticking around,’ he said. By now Lisa’s shift should be over. They were sitting in a corner, and his words seemed to echo around the space.

She slid her eyes up to look at him. ‘That’s all right.’

‘The dead woman’s called Jenny Lister,’ he said. ‘Does that mean anything to you?’

She shook her head. ‘She never came to any of my classes. But mostly I do the over-fifties stretch-and-tone, and she looked a bit young for that.’

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Sorry the boss made you look at her.’

‘Though she didn’t look that old,’ Lisa went on. ‘She might have gone to Natalie’s mums-and-babies class. It’s not unusual to get new mothers in their forties. Not these days. You should check with her.’

‘Were you on duty at the pool all morning?’