The woman seemed to read his mind, and gave him an indulgent smile. ‘We can do you a lunch, if you like. We’ve got a freezer full of steak, fish, you name it, and we’re not allowed to keep it more than three months. Some of it is still okay, but we’re restocking on Friday. We had to pour the real ale away, but the lager is still fine. If you wanted one, I can do it on the house.’

‘That’s very kind,’ Gillard said. ‘But I have to pay. I can’t be seen to accept favours. I couldn’t help noticing your menu. Have you got the hunter’s chicken?’

The hunter’s chicken was awful, barely defrosted, cold in the centre and overcooked at the edges. The cabbage was overdone and the curly fries looked like deep-fried ginger pubes. It occurred to him that the body by the river may well have died of food poisoning. Gillard ate only a little of the meal, but made no mention of it when Guy came to collect the dishes.

‘So when did Vicky get her young chef award?’ Gillard asked.

‘Nah, that was me. She can’t cook for toffee.’ He scooped up the dishes, and wandered back behind the bar shedding cutlery and leftovers onto the carpet as he went. Young chef? The man must be pushing sixty. While his bill was being prepared the detective went over and scrutinised the award certificate on the wall. Guy Naylor, 1983, it said. It must’ve been a fluke, or maybe he’d just stopped making an effort a decade or so ago. Gillard drained his half of lager shandy, and headed off to the gents. It was a smelly traditional pub toilet, sorely in need of renovation. The cold tap was jammed, there were no paper towels in the dispenser, the wall-mounted liquid soap dispenser was empty, and there was a sliver of greying soap glued to the top of the washbasin by its own fossilised lather. A sorry state of neglect, typical of the village. Time to get away, and back to the crime scene.

Gillard found Aqua Western engineer Trevor Collier down on the site well away from the crime scene, overseeing the digging of a trench that from the wooden markers would bisect the meadow parallel to the river. The water engineer agreed to step away from the gaggle of orange-clad contractors and the clank and roar of heavy machinery.

‘I just want to get a bit of context about the discovery of the body,’ Gillard said.

‘Righto,’ Collier said, pushing back his hard hat to reveal dark curly hair, flecked with grey. From the bulging front of his high-vis, it seemed he was fond of a pint. Over the next few minutes he entirely corroborated Vicky Willow’s account of how the body was found. Still, Gillard had more questions.