‘Makes sense,’ Vera conceded. Sometimes you had to throw Charlie a scrap of praise to keep him motivated.

‘There’ve been reports of petty thieving.’ This was Ashworth wanting to move things to a close. Vera saw him take a quick look at the clock on the wall. His missus always gave him a hard time when he wasn’t back in time to see the kids before bedtime. ‘Could be a motive, if Lister saw one of them stealing.’

‘Who’s the main suspect?’

‘They’ve accused Lisa, the lass from the west end, but the assistant manager reckons she’s just a scapegoat. My money’s on Danny, the student. The thefts only started after he got the temporary work, and he’s an arrogant sort of bastard. You could see he’d think he’d get away with it. His boss thinks he wouldn’t risk his future career for a few trinkets, but I’m not so sure. He’s a chancer.’

Vera suddenly longed for a drink. Beer, she thought. There were a few cans of Speckled Hen left in the larder at home. If he behaved himself, she might even give one to Joe Ashworth. Her place was on his way home. Almost.

‘Seems to me we have three separate areas of enquiry,’ she said briskly. ‘First, Jenny Lister’s private life. We need to trace her secret lover. Why was she so desperate to keep him secret? If he’s married, we could be looking at a jealous wife. Then there’s the Elias Jones case. Is it relevant to the present investigation? If so, how? And finally, the thefts at the Willows. Doesn’t seem much of a motive, but people have killed for less.’

She winced at the cliché, but her team seemed happy enough with her summary. They’d have been happy whatever she’d said. They were bored now by all the talking and just wanted to get out of the room.

Ashworth took less persuading than she’d expected to come back with her for a drink. Perhaps he preferred to arrive home when the chaos of bath and bedtime was over, when the house was quiet and he could have his wife to himself. Joe liked to think of himself as a perfect family man, but everyone was allowed his little self-deception. It was a still evening, and dusk when they arrived at Vera’s house. She got out of her car and smelled gorse flowers and damp foliage and cows. If Hector had given her nothing else, he had given her this house and she would always be grateful to him for that. During this investigation, with all the talk of parenting, she’d found herself thinking about him, and it came to her suddenly that he was an easy scapegoat. She blamed him for all the ills in her life and that might not be quite fair. Hector might be the cause of most of them, but not all.

She lit the fire already laid in the grate, not because it was particularly cold, but because the rest of the room was a mess and it would give them something to look at. And because she knew Joe liked it. Her neighbours had bartered half a lamb for a load of apple logs with a guy in the Borders and had donated her some of the wood; she’d arrived home one night and found the logs neatly stacked in the lean-to at the back of her house. The couple were capable of these acts of kindness and she was grateful they were there, happily tolerated the occasional solstice party when dozens of odd people set up camp on the field in front of her house, turned a blind eye to their dope-smoking – even when it happened, thoughtlessly, in her home.