Judith started to run as well, but the other woman was much younger, and although Judith’s regime of swimming and cycling meant she was fit for her age, her legs weren’t very long, and the grass was high, so she struggled to close the distance on the woman before she’d clanged back out through the metal gate again.

Judith reached the gate half a minute later, yanked it open and stepped into a little gravel car park. There were a dozen or so cars parked up, but where was the red-haired woman?

A maroon-coloured car pulled out of a parking space with a squeal of tyres, and Judith caught a flash of bronze hair as the driver drove away at speed, the old car briefly backfiring as it belched fumes from the exhaust.

Why had the woman run away from her a second time?

But it wasn’t just that. There was something else as well. Now that she’d seen her at closer quarters, Judith knew that she recognised the woman. She’d spoken to her before. Or knew her from Marlow somehow. But she couldn’t place the memory. Where had they met?

Judith racked her brain, but, to her frustration, the auburn-haired woman’s identity remained tantalisingly out of reach.

Chapter 11

At work the next morning, DS Malik was feeling deeply frustrated. The local press were giving extensive coverage to Iqbal’s murder, and she feared it would be only a matter of time before they found out that Stefan Dunwoody had also been murdered. As her Superintendent kept telling her, the clock was ticking.

But DS Malik and her team couldn’t find a single person who might have had a motive to kill Iqbal Kassam. It was as the dog walker Suzie Harris had said. Iqbal was entirely blameless, or so it seemed. Their door-to-door enquiries also drew a blank. None of the people on his street remembered hearing a gunshot on the morning that Iqbal was killed, or saw anyone suspicious lurking nearby or entering or leaving Iqbal’s property. And yet, someone had got into his bungalow and shot him dead.

DS Malik had briefly been excited when she’d discovered that Iqbal logged every taxi journey he’d made in an electronic diary. It was a complete list of customers, their contact details and times and dates. But as her team started contacting the people who’d used his services, all they heard was what a great guy Iqbal had been. He’d been upbeat, reliable and honest. What was more, there were a number of stories about how Iqbal was happy to go the extra mile, quite literally at times. And he didn’t always charge for a journey if the passenger was in extremis or didn’t have enough money.