DIANE FRY TOOK Deborah Rawson into a vacant interview room. The woman looked more nervous today, which was what she’d been hoping for. Nervous people were more likely to tell the truth. They found it difficult to concentrate on maintaining a lie. All she needed was one slip, one flaw in Deborah’s story.

‘Mrs Rawson, you said earlier in the week that you didn’t get involved in your husband’s business, you didn’t even know exactly who he dealt with.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Well, I have to tell you, I don’t believe that’s entirely true.’

‘Oh, don’t you? Well, I’m not lying.’

‘Why should we believe you, when you lied to us before?’

Deborah smiled. ‘I only tell lies when I’ve got something to gain by it.’

Fry studied her thoughtfully. She still didn’t trust Deborah Rawson, but her last answer sounded pretty much like the truth.

‘You must know that your husband was supplying horses to an abattoir, for meat.’

‘Meat.’ She pulled an expression of disgust. ‘Do people really eat horses?’

‘Yes, lots of them.’

‘Not in this country, though, I bet. It would be the French.’

‘Did your husband sometimes travel abroad on business?’

‘Yes, sometimes.’

‘To France?’

She hesitated. ‘Yes. He flew to Paris from East Midlands Airport three or four times a year. Brussels, too, now and then. So he said.’

Fry looked at her curiously, detecting a change of tone in her last comment. Watching Deborah Rawson’s face, she saw a faraway look in her eyes, as if at a memory or a recurrent, familiar thought.

‘Mrs Rawson, did you have any reason to think that your husband might be having an affair?’

The woman’s eyes focused sharply on her again as she tried to rearrange her expression. ‘What makes you say that? I’ve been following your logic so far – that Patrick went up to Derbyshire to meet either a seller or buyer, and they had an argument of some kind, and Patrick got hurt. I can understand that. I can live with it. But why are you asking me this question about him having an affair? What has that got to do with anything?’

It was the longest speech Deborah Rawson had made during Fry’s visit, by quite a long way. In relative terms, it amounted to an emotional outburst.

‘We have to keep our minds open to all the possibilities,’ said Fry. ‘In this case, it might not have been a business contact he was meeting. The Derby horse sale isn’t until Saturday, yet he went up a few days early. What he was planning to do, we don’t know. You never asked your husband who he was meeting, and he never felt the need to tell you, did he?’

‘No.’

Deborah regarded her stonily as she waited for Fry to explain further.