‘Rest assured, I won’t.’

Looking at him, Jazz thought how out of place Norton seemed in his Savile Row suit, his long legs bent almost up to his chest on the low sofa.

‘Did you know, Sir? About Patrick and . . . her?’

‘I’d heard a rumour, but I couldn’t interfere. If it makes you feel any better, she put in for a transfer to Paddington Green a couple of weeks after you left. She knew she couldn’t hope to compete with you. Everyone in the team cold-shouldered her with a vengeance. You were very popular, you know. They all miss you.’

Norton smiled broadly, showing a good strong set of white teeth. Jazz couldn’t help thinking, with his thick black hair greying at the temples, his reading glasses perched on the end of his nose, how growing older was only enhancing his physical gravitas.

‘Well, that’s nice to know, I suppose. Anyway, what Patrick and his pet DC do now is up to them. I’m not interested any more. Mind you,’ Jazz quipped, ‘you might warn her that at the first sniff of competition, she’ll get a knife in her back.’

‘I don’t doubt it. Your ex is a talented officer, but he’s also ruthlessly ambitious. The one thing he couldn’t deal with was a wife who was potentially better than he was. I knew what he was up to, undermining you, constantly putting you down, but because you never came to me, I couldn’t do anything about it.’

‘I was in an impossible situation. He was my husband.’

‘I accept that. Anyway, as long as he learns to keep his trousers zipped I daresay he’ll get what he’s after, in the end.’

‘He can screw the entire department if he wants. I really don’t care.’

‘That’s the spirit,’ Norton replied cheerily. ‘So, are you sure you want me to take this letter back? It’ll make it official, you know.’ He waved the envelope at her.

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Okay, DI Hunter,’ Norton said, suddenly formal, ‘having had the opportunity to discuss the situation with you, you’ve made it clear you are determined to leave the force. I will take this letter and return to London with my tail firmly between my legs and not mention the other options I had in mind.’

The image of Norton with his tail between his legs made Jazz smile. She raised her eyebrows and sighed. ‘Go on then, you might as well tell me, as you’ve come such a long way.’

‘Believe it or not, there are other CID divisions. I might have suggested you transfer to one of those.’

‘Paddington Green perhaps? Then I could share cosy tête-à-têtes with my ex-husband’s lover.’

‘I’m going to ignore that childish remark. But it does bring me to the point rather neatly. The question is, did you resign because of the situation vis-à-vis Patrick? Or because you no longer wanted to be part of the force?’

‘Both,’ Jazz answered honestly.

‘All right, let me put it another way: here you are, thirty-four years of age, a highly trained CID officer, living in a Norfolk backwater like an old spinster. What on earth are you going to do with yourself?’