Ellen Walker had started to look uneasy then, and Cooper had known she would either clam up, or demand an explanation.

‘One last thing. Could you let me have an address for your Auntie Viv, please?’

‘Yes, if you like.’

Finally, Cooper had stood up, still troubled. ‘Ellen, are you certain?’

‘Certain?’ Mrs Walker had looked at him as if he’d challenged her on her prediction for the weather. ‘Of what?’

‘Are you certain your cousin was cremated?’

‘Well, I didn’t think there was much doubt. Why else would they have taken her to the crematorium?’

‘We could try a different eye colour,’ said Suzi Lee reluctantly, when Cooper phoned her at the university later that morning. ‘I can do that on the computer, if you like. Or a change of hairstyle. Glasses, perhaps.’

‘Would that make a lot of difference?’ asked Cooper.

‘As I said before, it’s the bone structure and tissue depth that decide the shape of the face. And I’m confident that’s accurate.’ She paused. ‘Why do you think it isn’t?’

‘A wrong identification.’

‘I see.’ She sounded unreasonably disappointed. But Cooper knew how she felt.

‘I’m not suggesting there’s anything wrong with your reconstruction,’ he said.

‘No, of course not. You’re just saying it looks like the wrong person.’

Cooper studied the photograph for a moment. Its eyes were fixed on the middle distance, and the face held no expression. But it didn’t need to. He wondered if Suzi Lee was doing the same thing at the other end of the line.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she said.

‘In your own mind,’ said Cooper, ‘do you feel the first reconstruction is as accurate as you could have got it?’

She was silent for a moment. ‘Yes, I am. Not in my mind, but in my heart. I feel sure that’s Jane Raven Lee.’

Cooper nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s my feeling, too.’

Audrey Steele’s mother lived on the Devonshire Estate, in a cream – rendered semi that had a washing line full of sheets billowing in the back garden. You didn’t see many washing lines these days, but maybe Vivien Gill was the old-fashioned type.

Inside, a rustic-effect brick fireplace had been set into one wall of the sitting room, and a central heating radiator on another. Above the picture rails, the ceiling was coved and artexed. At the back of the house was a kitchen smelling strongly of disinfectant. When he followed Mrs Gill into it, Cooper became aware of a sickeningly sweet scent that might have several sources he didn’t want to think about. A baby sat in a high chair at the table, its mouth smeared with something sticky and yellow. Doidy Cup and Bickiepegs were set out on the counter.

‘This is my granddaughter,’ said Mrs Gill. ‘Isn’t she gorgeous?’