‘I haven’t finished Linzi Birrell.’ Dunning looked shocked that anyone would try to cut him short. ‘Linzi and Ahmed had been subjected to a fair amount of racist abuse from local unsavouries, but nothing that stood out, no one who seemed passionate about it – just the predictable comments shouted in the street, things overheard in pubs. Low-level everyday stuff – nothing to suggest anyone’d take it as far as murder.’

‘Another thing Combingham flat-out refused to acknowledge,’ Simon said. ‘As well as my question they’d never answer: wouldn’t racists kill Ahmed instead of Linzi, or as well as?’

‘Combingham detectives interviewed most of the town’s population – everyone who’d ever had a racist thought – and they got nowhere,’ said Dunning. ‘Same when they interviewed Linzi’s and Ahmed’s families, colleagues, friends. Nothing. As per Billy’s other three victims: no red flags in the finances, no affairs – just nothing. Little white home-made books with lines from poems in them, and apart from that? Diddly squat. There was a brief moment when suspicion fell on the owner of the caff opposite Linzi’s flat, Hot-n-Tasty. That’s the caff’s name, not the owner’s. She’s called Miff Sheeran. And she didn’t once leave Hot-n-Tasty on the day Linzi was killed – it’s been confirmed by about twenty people who were also there – so she was quickly ruled out, and no one had pinned their hopes on her anyway. Ahmed insisted Miff wouldn’t hurt a fly, and her DNA wasn’t a match for Billy’s at the scene, so … that was a never-very-promising lead down the drain.’

‘Though it’s worth remembering that Miff Sheeran denied Linzi ever made a complaint about a lasagne,’ said Simon, sensing that Dunning was about to move on without mentioning this.

Proust groaned. ‘Please not the lasagne again.’

‘I just think it’s odd she lied, that’s all,’ said Simon. ‘Linzi can’t have been the first customer who’d complained.’

‘I honestly think she might have been,’ Sam said. ‘Hot-n-Tasty isn’t the kind of place where customers have especially high expectations of the food.’

‘Three people in the caff on the day in question, two months before Linzi was murdered, confirmed they’d overheard the row between Linzi and Miff about the lasagne,’ said Dunning. ‘Though to be fair, two called it a discussion. Third says it was definitely heated – claims Linzi ended up picking up her phone and the Harry Potter book she’d taken in there with her to read over lunch and walking out, leaving the lasagne on the table after only one mouthful.