He shot me a furious look. ‘Look, you’ve not earned the right to call me that name. It’s a stupid name. A childish name. Give me your name. Give me your warrant card number. What exactly are you doing here?’

‘I’m trying to understand. You must have some thoughts. And don’t give me the line about Hugo Buck banging the help. Don’t tell me that Adam Jones had it coming. Your friend Captain King told us that the deaths are unrelated. Mr Khan told us the same thing. But I don’t think they believe it. And I don’t think you do, Piggy.’

But he wasn’t listening to me. Mrs Jones had entered the crematorium with Rosalita. They sat down in the front row directly in front of the coffin. I thought that Philips was shocked by the sight of Adam’s mother. I had seen her far more recently and she shocked me. Her face was swollen with chemotherapy and twisted with grief. The coffin she stood before could have been her own.

But Guy Philips wasn’t looking at Mrs Jones. He was looking at Rosalita.

‘Christ,’ he said, ‘it’s the same housekeeper. She’s aged a bit.’

The minister was talking: ‘Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery.’

When the coffin had slid into the flames and the curtains had primly swished across the mouth of the furnace, I stood up.

‘Are you off?’ Philips said. ‘Very pleasant talking to you, constable.’

‘We haven’t talked yet, Piggy,’ I said.

As I walked down the aisle to the front the few mourners coming in the opposite direction eased out of my path with the instinctive cringe of people who are used to getting out of the way.

I found Mrs Jones contemplating the empty spaces.

‘We should have waited before starting the service,’ she said. ‘More people might have come.’

‘Ma’am,’ Rosalita said. ‘We had our time slot, ma’am. Forty-five minutes, ma’am. We had to begin, didn’t we?’

Mrs Jones smiled weakly when she saw me. ‘You came,’ she said. ‘How thoughtful.’ She took my hands. ‘I enjoyed our talk.’

‘I’d like to talk to you again,’ I said. ‘About the old days. When Adam was a boy.’

She was suddenly distressed. ‘It’s all so long ago,’ she said, pulling her hands away, turning to the woman by her side. ‘I don’t remember. Rosalita, tell him, will you?’

Rosalita put her arm around Mrs Jones, and glared at me.

‘You upset her now.’

‘I just don’t remember,’ Mrs Jones said.

‘Of course not, ma’am, why should you?’ Rosalita said. ‘That’s all right.’