Slater reconsidered whether the intelligence gleaned was worth the risk of injury or food poisoning. He’d only tried the cooked breakfast once. The bacon shattered the moment he put his fork into it, and the fried eggs were solid enough to have been worn as medals. Still, he was there to get information, and information was what he would get. His cover was that he was a travelling salesman, but he hadn’t gone into details. A few nights after the discovery of the body, he had tried to turn on the charm with Vicky Willow. She was a handsome girl, big boned and curvy, a good twenty years younger than him, and he couldn’t help imagining her riding him energetically on the squeaky bed upstairs, naked and sweaty, her breasts flopping in his face. He fought the image away for the tenth time that evening. In typical barmaid style she responded neutrally to his chat-up lines. She had clearly heard it all, and flattery was getting him nowhere. She was, however, happy to drink at his expense. She downed only the first drink each evening. The rest he offered to buy her were just notched up on his bill.

‘So are you an only child?’ Slater asked, as Vicky prepared a round of lagers for the contractors laughing noisily in the other bar.

‘No, I’ve got a sister, bit older than me.’ While she was holding the beer tap down with one hand for one of the pints, she opened the dishwasher under the bar with another, feeding out hot glasses onto the shelf behind her.

‘Does she live locally?’

‘Crystal lives up in Haslemere, runs her own wellness centre from the back of her house.’

Slater knew all about it. He’d sat for many hours outside the place on and off over the last week to see who visited. Nobody, was the answer. ‘So what exactly is wellness, then?’

Vicky smiled, and glanced at him for the first time. ‘She does therapeutic massage, and ear candling, reflexology, and tattoos. She’s a very good artist.’

Slater nodded. ‘Massages, eh?’

‘She doesn’t do those kind,’ Vicky said firmly.

‘What kind?’ Slater asked with as innocent a look as he could muster.

‘I wasn’t born yesterday,’ Vicky said.

‘Maybe the day before, from the way you look.’ It came out all wrong, and she rolled her eyes. Slater knew that this was one aspect of private detective work he wasn’t good at. He was shrewd enough to know that as a paunchy middle-aged bloke with a boozer’s face, he was hardly going to charm the birds from the trees. But if he’d had the patter, at least he could lure them to the bird feeder.

‘So what is it you sell, then?’ she asked, clearly wanting to change the subject.