I passed him a note of the telephone calls from Harry Aspinall to the Dell house and to Thorpefield Manor, supplied by the Bordeaux exchange. “They knew he was coming. Mrs. Aspinall didn’t know. I got the feeling from our conversation that there was friction about his continued links with Yorkshire, with Rothwell Manor standing unoccupied, and his obligations here only ever costing him money.”

This mollified Sykes a little. “Commander Woodhead didn’t want an investigation. He wanted a whitewash job and a dupe in case things went wrong. You’ll be justified in the end.”

I appreciated his vote of confidence.

He took out his notebook, though he clearly didn’t need to. Everything was in his head. “I checked the main hotels in Leeds and Wakefield, none of them had a booking in the name of Aspinall. No one had a booking in any name for a person who didn’t arrive. I spoke to taxi drivers. No one remembered him. Station Left Luggage—nothing uncollected.”

It was as if Mr. Aspinall had vanished. Perhaps we would never know how he made his way to the place where he met his death.

Sykes had not finished.

“I visited the demolition firm in Pontefract. Kevin O’Donnell, nickname Giant Jack, was knocking on their door as they opened on Saturday morning, 2nd of March, morning after the murders. Did they have any work for him, he wanted to know, and he wanted to go somewhere else—be away from this area. He was philosophical when they couldn’t give him work. Said he’d go to Liverpool and take his chance there. The foreman got the impression that if there was nothing for him, he’d board a ferry back to Ireland and see his family.”

“So we could have lost him? Do they have an address in Ireland?”

“No address in Ireland.” Sykes wore his I’ve-got-the-sixpence-from-the-Christmas-pudding look. “Better than that. I asked myself, where would a demolition worker go if he wanted employment in Liverpool? I looked up the trade directories, and I looked up the newspapers. There he was in the Liverpool Echo, an article about him.”

“What’s he done?” Mrs. Sugden asked.

“Surprise, surprise, he was hero of the hour. “Giant Jack stops Coal Merchant’s runaway horse.” He was treated in the local pub, and what’s more the coal merchant gave him a job. And before you ask, I have the coal merchant’s name and address.”

There was a sudden burst of energy in the room. We all felt it. Sergeant Dog, who had been lying with his head on all of our feet, pushed his way out and began to wag his tail.

“Mr. Sykes, that is a breakthrough. We’ve no way of knowing that Kevin O’Donnell was involved but –”