‘We think that were it, aye,’ she said. ‘Who’s to say? That car …’

‘I told him not to buy it.’

‘We all did. Were an expensive mistake.’

‘There’s parts to be saved,’ said Gordon, and he rubbed the sleeve of his overalls across his face as if rubbing a peephole in a dirty window. ‘You’ll be helping sort his estate I’ll imagine.’

‘Not much estate,’ said Felicity. ‘But aye, I’m helping with the mess of it all.’

‘Interviewed me half a dozen times, did Fairfax,’ smiled Gordon, wistfully. ‘Always scribbling. Bet I used up a dozen notebooks for him.’

‘That were the thing of it,’ said Felicity, guilelessly. ‘He’d been writing Cordelia’s story.’

‘Aye?’

‘Aye. Been talking a fair bit these past weeks. She gave him some papers she found in the house and she’s a bit concerned she may have given him something that belonged to her husband.’

I tried to look like a silly wife. I gestured at myself, indicating that I was a bit scatterbrained and feather-headed and that I would be in trouble with my influential husband if he didn’t come to my aid.

‘She gave it to Fairfax as he was getting into his car,’ said Felicity, her voice full of reprimand. ‘She saw him put it in the boot. Would we be able to have a little look and see if we could get it back. Would mean a lot to the both of us.’

Gordon looked from Flick to me and back again. He was clearly an intelligent man and I could see him weighing up if there was a way to turn it to his advantage.

‘Back often is he?’ asked Gordon. ‘Your man?’

‘As often as he can,’ I gushed.

‘Mebbes you could bring him down the social club for a chinwag,’ he said, scratching his chin. ‘Got a lot of ideas he could maybe pass on to those what makes decisions.’

I nodded, eagerly, and it seemed to sway him. He sucked his lower lip and there was an obscene slurping noise as he struggled with his false teeth.

‘I aint opened it up, I don’t think,’ he said. ‘You won’t want to see it, I doubt. Be a bit hard for you, I’d have thought, Felicity. But tell me what you’re after and I’ll go look.’

I shook my head, urgent and severe. ‘No, it’s fine, I really would rather look myself …’

‘There’s blood,’ he pointed out. ‘It’s a state.’

‘I don’t mind blood,’ I said, and it sounded so much like the wrong thing to say that I shot a glance at Hopper and Mont to see if they were pulling faces. They weren’t. They just squinted.

‘Well, whatever you like,’ said Gordon, sighing. ‘But you’ll remember me to your husband, yes?’

‘Of course.’

‘Righto. This way.’