She stared out of the window. He saw Keating, the pathologist, arriving at last. He’d been delayed on another case, and Jenny Lister was still waiting for him in the steam room.

‘Did you know the woman who died?’

‘I recognized the face. Wouldn’t have known the name.’

‘What do you remember about her?’

‘She was always in a hurry and she never stayed long. And she was polite. Always gave me a smile and a wave, even when she was just swiping her card through the barrier. Treated me like a person, not just a bit of the machinery.’

Now Ashworth had to come to the sensitive bit. A woman was going to protect her son, wasn’t she? Whatever he’d done. ‘You got a holiday job here for Danny?’

‘Yes.’ And already she was on the defensive, looking up at him as if to say: So what? No harm in that, is there?

‘How’s he liking it?’

‘He’s a young lad. He’d rather be in bed or out with his mates. But it was his idea. He wants to go travelling in the summer and he knows we can’t pay for it. So it’s down to him.’

‘We’ll have to talk to him,’ Ashworth said. ‘He cleaned the pool area. He might have seen something.’

‘You don’t need my permission to do that. He’s nearly twenty. An adult. He’ll have started his shift now, if they’ve let him into the hotel.’

Ashworth knew that they’d let Danny in and that he was sitting in Taylor’s office. He was next on the list for interview.

‘What do you know about the thieving that’s been going on here?’

She drained her glass and set it on the table, kept her voice relaxed. ‘That sort of thing goes on everywhere, doesn’t it? Petty. There’s all sorts work here. Can’t see what it might have to do with murder.’

‘But it’ll have caused bad feeling. Gossip. Not nice to think that one of your mates might be stealing from you.’

She shrugged. ‘I try not to listen too much to gossip.’ Once again she gathered up the big squashy bag. ‘If there’s nothing else, there’s a deep bath and a chilled glass waiting for me at home. One’s never quite enough for me.’ He stayed where he was and watched from the window until she emerged from the main door of the hotel. She took a mobile phone from the bag, hit a button and put it to her ear. At the car she turned and he could see that she was frowning and talking furiously. He’d have bet his police pension that she was speaking to her son.

Chapter Seven

At the Lister house, Vera tried to persuade Hannah to move in with Simon’s parents, at least for a few days, but the girl refused. ‘I want to stay up all night and cry. I’ll probably get very drunk. I couldn’t do that anywhere but in my own home.’

‘We can arrange for a liaison officer to camp out with you then.’