‘Well, that’s usually the case, Diane.’

‘Yes. But, in the end, it turns out that Rawson died because of the nature of someone’s relationship with an animal. That’s a new one on me.’

‘And me.’

‘The trouble is,’ said Fry, ‘Naomi Widdowson obviously knows nothing at all about what happened to Michael Clay.’

‘So are we accepting Miss Widdowson’s account?’ asked Hitchens.

‘No, we’re not,’ said Fry. ‘Because we know that she wasn’t on her own.’

‘She’s shielding someone, then. Her brother?’

‘I don’t think so.’

Fry took the postmortem photos of Patrick Rawson’s head injury from her case file and lay them on Hitchens’ desk.

‘Mrs van Doon has completed her analysis of the injury pattern,’ she said. ‘As we can see, the depression in the skull is basically the shape of a horseshoe, which would substantiate Naomi Widdowson’s story. But this area here, where the pattern has been obliterated – that was caused by a later injury. Mrs van Doon thinks a blunt-ended weapon.’

Hitchens examined the photos closely. ‘Interesting. So someone finished Patrick Rawson off.’

‘That’s our murderer,’ said Fry. ‘It’s whoever the second person was who went to that meeting with Naomi Widdowson. It’s the person she’s shielding. And it’s someone who had a reason for making sure that Patrick Rawson was dead.’

COOPER KNEW ONLY too well how an overnight resolve could dissipate completely by morning. You went to bed with your mind full of determination, and by the time you got up your willpower was as mushy as the muesli in your breakfast bowl. Things seemed so much less important in the cold light of day. Easier, surely, to let it all go by and get on with life.

But that morning, a couple of hours before dawn, he had already been wide awake and planning how he would carry out his intention.

‘You’re getting really good at these interviews,’ said Cooper in the CID room.

‘I always was good,’ said Fry.

‘No, I mean – you really knew how to handle the Widdowsons. They’re going to give more away about what happened at any moment.’

‘If they have anything more to give away.’

Cooper turned. ‘What? Do you think they might be genuine?’

‘I’ve no idea, Ben.’

‘Oh.’

Cooper wasn’t quite sure how Fry had managed to make him feel in the wrong when all he had tried to do was pay her a professional compliment.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘if something’s bothering you, you should talk about it.’

Fry looked at him, a cool expression on her face that he couldn’t read. Sometimes, it seemed to be an expression that she put on entirely for his benefit, a mask that he wasn’t supposed to penetrate.

‘Ben,’ she said, ‘if I was going to talk to someone about what’s bothering me – it certainly wouldn’t be you.’

Cooper sat back, feeling the physical force of her rebuff.

‘OK. It’s up to you.’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘I’m being serious, Diane.’