A triumphant trumpet sounded in my head. ‘Tell me about him.’

‘He’s a drunk,’ she said dismissively. ‘Adeptus Diall seemed to like him but he’s useless. And he’s a bastard.’

‘What makes you say he’s a bastard?’

‘He was born out of wedlock, of course.’

I blinked. ‘Er…’

Bethany ignored my startled reaction. ‘He doesn’t hold with the old ways. He brings a laptop into work.’ Her eyes grew saucer-wide. ‘A laptop,’ she repeated, obviously shocked at such a heinous infraction of the rules.

‘Unbelievable.’

She nodded fervently in agreement.

‘When was the last time you saw him?’

‘He left an hour or two after Bellham and Fairclough. He’s not been back since.’

‘Bethany,’ Winter said, ‘could you get us his personnel file?’

She seemed surprised. ‘Oh, I don’t have it. All those sorts of things are kept over at HR.’

I frowned at Winter. ‘Is that typical?’

‘I suppose so.’

I couldn’t help wondering whether Tarquin was involved with this too. He was in HR and I certainly wouldn’t put it past him. ‘Thank you so much, Bethany. You’ve been extraordinarily helpful. You may go.’

‘Sure.’ She stood up and pushed her chair back before bobbing her head and leaving. Once she’d gone, I got to my feet as well. ‘Now that,’ I said with a dramatic flourish, ‘is how to conduct twenty interviews in five minutes. Let’s get out of here.’

Winter didn’t move. ‘There are still nineteen people to go.’

‘Yeah, but we’ve got what we needed. Bethany has her finger on the pulse.’ I grinned. ‘Never underestimate the tea lady.’

‘It’s important to talk to everyone.’

‘It’ll take hours, days probably. We don’t have that kind of time and we already have a new lead. Stop being such a stickler for the rules, Rafe. We can come back if we need to.’

‘This is not the way things are normally done.’

‘You should be happy.’

‘I am.’ He didn’t look it. He seemed rather disturbed.

‘You’re not smiling,’ I pointed out. He didn’t smile all that often and he really should because his eyes crinkled up and he looked approachable and warm rather than – wintry. ‘Don’t worry about Bethany. There are people like her in every office up and down the land. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled that you could talk to someone about giving her more responsibility but she probably loves knowing all the gossip too. She’d be great at the reception desk,’ I mused. ‘Then Michael Weathers could go off and improve his magic.’

Winter still didn’t smile. ‘And what if someone whose parents dared to have sex before marriage shows up?’

I shrugged. ‘She’s old-fashioned. And yes, a bit odd. But we can’t lock everyone for that. If we did, I reckon the two of us would be top of the list. Besides, this is the Order. Weird goes with the territory. Along with power hungry, overly ambitious and downright irritating.’

Winter sighed and pushed back his hair. ‘Let’s find the file for this Marsh fellow and pay him a visit. We should probably talk to Adeptus Price too and find out why he was so desperate to speak to Diall. But we need to make a detour first.’