She was a sinewy woman in her early twenties whose small, hard eyes and wide, thick mouth made her look like a predatory fish, gormless and malevolent at once. Not for the first time, Ellie treasured a mental image of her gloved fist smashing into Keira’s ugly mouth and scattering her carious yellow teeth in all directions. But it could never be more than an image. Acting it out would cost Ellie her job, and while she mightn’t have much of a career, her job was all she’d got.

“I need to speak to Liz,” she said out loud.

“Liz, is it? When’d you become her best mate?” Keira wobbled over; she wore carpet slippers but walked as if in eight-inch heels. She’d been at the gin again. Ellie managed not to flinch from its juniper stink and her sour breath. “Eh? Asked you a fucking question, Cuntstubble.” She always called Ellie that; it was her idea of wit. “Eh? Bit of fucking respect, eh, under Mrs Harper’s roof.”

“Okay, Keira.” Ellie did her best to address a spot on the ceiling. “I need to speak to Mrs Harper. Actually, I need to talk to the whole family if I can.”

“Oh, actually? Will you, actually?”

“Keira,” said the second voice Ellie had heard through the door, and Keira fell silent, her mouth clamped tight. “Show her in. Get Frank and the boys.”

“Right.” Keira tramped up the stairs. “Frank! Dom!” She didn’t shout Paul’s name; probably wanted to make sure the other two were summoned and downstairs and her halfway to the ground floor after them before hailing the Rapey Cunt of Thursdale, as she was known to call him.

“Come on,” Jess Harper whispered, motioning down the hall and – a little less clumsily than before – rocking the child in her arms.

Ellie made her way down the stinking hall, over threadbare, dirty carpet and walls spotted with black mould and a few cheap 1970s-era art prints, bought, like the faded, decaying wallpaper, when someone at Barrowman Farm had cared about such things. Every breath made her want to cover her mouth and nose; everything and everyone in sight made her itch. A shower or hot bath would be in order when she got home.

Jess pushed open the kitchen door and stepped to one side. Liz Harper sat at the head of a long wooden kitchen table, with half a dozen shotguns laid out on old newspaper – side-by-sides, over-and-unders, single-barrels and a lone pump-action weapon.

The Harpers owned ten shotguns and at least two rifles – legally, anyway. No doubt there were others, but it wasn’t the time to ask how many of the weapons on the table appeared on either of the family’s shotgun certificates; Liz was cleaning a twelve bore with an oily rag, a box of cartridges at her elbow.