‘And where did you go?’

‘Nowhere. Just strolled for a while but not far from my house.’

‘But you were spotted on Peabody Street around midnight. That’s on the other side of the village from your house.’

He looked nervously from James to Abbott and then back to James. ‘I don’t understand why you’re making a big deal of this. I’m allowed to walk around my own village whenever I want to.’

‘And just walking wouldn’t normally arouse suspicion,’ Abbott said. ‘But you were seen ducking into a doorway so that a police patrol wouldn’t spot you. And before you deny it, you should know that a witness has come forward to say she saw you from her window and she recognised you straight away.’

King started to speak, but James interrupted him.

‘I wouldn’t advise you to drag this out, Mr King. You need to convince us that you haven’t been up to no good. The killer we’re looking for claimed both his victims around midnight on Saturday and Sunday. We don’t yet know for certain if he struck again last night, but we do know he delivered something through the letterbox of a house in Grange Road, which is not far from Peabody Street. So please wise up and be honest with us. You went out last night and took steps to make sure the police wouldn’t see you. Why was that? Are you our killer, Mr King? Or can you offer up an innocent explanation?’

King just stood there in stunned silence for several seconds, his mouth agape, panic flashing across his features.

James could see that he’d been right to go in hard, rather than take a soft approach. It was obvious to him that the man was trying to conceal something.

Eventually King spoke, his voice low and quivering.

‘I really don’t want to tell you where I went last night but I can see I don’t have a choice,’ he said. ‘I beg you not to tell my wife, though. It would just add to her suffering.’

‘I can’t promise you that, Mr King,’ James said. ‘Not until I’m in possession of the facts. So I suggest you get it off your chest. If you’ve done nothing wrong we won’t have to waste any more of your time or ours.’

Before King told them what they wanted to know he locked the door to the store and put a closed sign in the window.

‘I haven’t killed anyone,’ he said, after taking them through to the office-cum-kitchen where he stood shame-faced with his back against the desk. ‘But the truth is I didn’t just go for a walk last night. I went to see a woman named Felicity Bower. She lives on the other side of the village and I was coming back from there when I saw the police car.’

‘So why did you rush into a doorway?’

‘I feared that if the officers spotted me they would ask me to explain where I’d been and where I was going.’