‘Except for the Elias Jones case.’ Charlie still had his mouth full. ‘Lots of hatred stirred up over that.’

‘So let’s look at that again.’ Vera wrote the child’s name on the whiteboard. ‘How far have we got with it? Joe, you spoke to the social worker, the one that was pilloried in the press. Connie Masters. Do we think she killed her boss?’

‘She claims she didn’t even know Lister was living in the village.’

‘And do we believe her?’ Come on, Joe. Commit yourself.

‘Yeah,’ he said and she wanted to cheer. Joe Ashworth spent so much of his time sitting on the fence that he should have a blister on his arse. ‘At first it seems impossible – a place that small and they’ve not bumped into each other – but Masters has only been living there for a few months, and Lister would be out all day at work. The times when she might be around, in the evenings, Connie Masters is at home with her bairn.’

‘They didn’t socialize at all when they were working together?’ Holly liked her evenings in the pub with the lads when a case was closed. Liked being fancied.

‘Apparently not. Not Jenny’s way of working. She liked to keep home and the office separate.’

‘Still seems a bit of a coincidence . . .’ Holly pushing it.

‘The boss asked me what I thought, and I’m telling you.’ They glared at each other, the two bright kids in the school vying to be top of the class.

‘Have we tracked down Michael Morgan yet?’ Vera asked. Sometimes the rivalry between the younger members of her team amused her, but now she needed them to pull together and focus. Then, when everyone looked at her as if they didn’t have an idea what she was talking about, she added sharply: ‘Mattie Jones’s boyfriend. The man she fell for, the man she’ll have us believe she killed for. The man who became a sort of stepdad to Elias. So far, all I know about him is that he was weird. I might be wrong here, but aren’t we looking for weird? Do we know if he’s still sticking pins into people for a living? I guess he’d have to have a basic knowledge of anatomy if he trained as an acupuncturist. Might come in handy if you wanted to strangle a fit, healthy woman. I don’t suppose we’ve checked if he was a member of the Willows.’

She was glad that they looked sheepish, though she was as guilty as they were of having forgotten about Mattie’s lover. She’d concentrated, as they had, on Jenny Lister’s private life.