Kevin took off his jacket and hung it over the back of his chair. ‘I think I’ve hit on something important. It’s about Nan Cutler.’

Charlie looked up, interested. ‘Oh?’

‘Our sweet old lady has a backstory that needs investigating. As far as I can tell, it involves a woman who’s done a disappearing act, and a child, a boy. Other than that, I’m in the dark. I need to tell the boss. We’ll have to dig deeper into her past.’ He was sure this was the missing link in the chain. He’d seen it many times as a local bobby. You happened to speak to just the right person, the one with a little more inside knowledge than the others, and it sent you off on a trail that led to solving the case. And it was he, Kevin, who had gleaned this nugget from Nan’s old church. Kevin badly wanted to prove himself in CID. He wasn’t ambitious. He didn’t want to outshine the others or anything like that, but he did want to prove himself worthy of the support DI Jackman had given him.

‘Gary’ll be back in a moment, Kev,’ said Charlie. ‘He’s working the same line as you, isn’t he? He’ll be very interested.’

‘Interested in what?’ Gary appeared through the door carrying three coffees. He grinned at Kevin. ‘I saw you come in, mate, so I grabbed you a drink too. What’s occurred then?’

Kevin told him about his trip to Holy Trinity Church, and about the possible witch-hunt against Nan Cutler.

‘Aha! So she’s not the nosey parker she was made out to be. That is significant. And who is this Andrea Becker woman?’

‘That’s my first job for today.’ Kevin logged into his computer.

‘Want a hand? The lead I was following has turned out to be another dead end.’ Gary sat at his desk and stared at the pile of memos in front of him. ‘All my other enquiries so far show her to be a thoroughly nice woman, a good friend and very caring. Other than being a bit opinionated and fussy, I can’t find anything actually malicious about her.’

‘I’m sure my friendly churchwarden would agree with that,’ said Kevin. ‘What I want to do is find out where this Andrea woman went, and if she remarried. We need her new name — and we really need to talk to her.’

Gary was already looking at his screen. ‘You say she lived in Connaught Road?’

‘Yeah, which can’t have been nice for Nan if she and this woman didn’t get on.’ He frowned. ‘I reckon the place to start is with Nan’s neighbours, Lizzie and Eric Coupland.’

‘Right. I’ll just do a swift check, see if the name Andrea Becker comes up anywhere, and if that fails, you and I could do some legwork.’