‘No, not her. Last I heard, she was living on some council estate in Derby with four snotty kids by two different blokes – both of them in prison. One or the other will do for her when he comes out, unless she drinks herself to death first.’

‘When did you last see her?’

‘See her? Not for almost a year. Oh, she rang me a few weeks ago. Wanting money, naturally. She must have been down to the last dregs, or she wouldn’t have bothered with me. Desperation, that was. I never doubted it, no matter what she said.’

Mrs Connolly pressed her lips together in an expression of satisfaction. It wouldn’t do to smile, of course. It wasn’t nice to be seen enjoying someone else’s misfortune. But her face came as close to a smile as was permissible.

‘I don’t suppose you have an address?’ said Cooper.

‘I didn’t ask her for it – why should I? Besides, she’s probably moved by now. Persuaded the council to give her a different house somewhere, hoping she can’t be found. Some hopes.’

‘Well, I can see there’s no love lost between you and your sister,’ said Cooper, ignoring the look of derision on her face at his understatement. ‘But aren’t you at all concerned about what might happen to her children?’

‘Why? They’re nothing to do with me.’

‘They’re your nephews and nieces.’

Mrs Connolly snorted. ‘Nephews and nieces?’

She leaned closer, her face communicating a mixture of disgust and triumph.

‘Two of them,’ she said, ‘are black. Almost.’

Cooper was sweating by the time he got back into his car. The effort of remaining polite and sympathetic in Maureen Connolly’s house had been almost intolerable. Now he felt more depressed than he had in any of the places where death had been all around him. The professional morbidity of the funeral parlour, the intellectual prurience of Freddy Robertson, the cremated remains as an interior-design feature. None of them had seemed so negative, or so tragic, as the things that people could do to each other in life.

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

‘Of course, while we were all feeling sorry for Geoff Birley, what he didn’t bother telling us was that Sandra had been threatening to leave him for some time,’ Fry said in the DI’s office. ‘He says he didn’t believe she meant it, that she would never really leave him.’

‘He was fooling himself, then,’ said Hitchens.

Fry shook her head. ‘Actually, no. Sandra agrees with him. She says she wasn’t planning to leave her husband at all, just to stay away for a night or two to teach him a lesson. In fact, she was planning to phone him today. The Birleys might have been back together by tonight.’

‘But what about Ian Todd? He’s Sandra’s lover, surely?’