She stared at the grass. The cat was still rolling around, playing cute. ‘Quarter past six,’ Ida finally said.

‘You know that for sure?’ Manolis asked. ‘You checked your watch?’

She looked at him as if he were slow. ‘No, Inspector. But trust me. Every morning, God willing, I wake up at exactly five-thirty, and leave to get my paper at six.’

‘And you’re certain she was dead when you found her?’

Ida laughed into her drink. Her false teeth slipped in her mouth as she swallowed. ‘She was a doornail.’

‘Was the victim known to you before the morning in question?’ Manolis asked.

‘To the extent she was the local floozy, yes.’

‘And what made her a floozy? Do you have the names of any of the men she’d been seeing?’

Ida’s thin lips formed a tight smile. ‘Why yes, Inspector. I’ve got them all written down in my little black book. Their phone numbers and measurements too.’

Manolis scratched behind his ear in frustration. ‘So, other than that, you knew nothing more about her?’

‘No. I knew her parents more. Wonderful people. Respectable. Served both town and country. God-fearing.’

‘Did you touch the body?’

‘Yes.’

‘With what?’

‘My stump.’

‘Why?’ Manolis’s questions were clipped.

Ida tightened her eyebrows, thin black millipedes. ‘To make sure my cataracts weren’t deceiving me. I see many things at my age, including dead bodies and ghosts.’

Manolis asked Ida where she was the night Molly died.

She cackled like a witch. ‘You have got to be joking.’ She turned to Kerr. ‘Kate, dear, how’s Mum?’

Kerr hoicked up her belt and positioned her hands on her hips. ‘Not good,’ she exhaled. ‘I can bring her by sometime if you want to say hello.’

‘Don’t bother. I don’t want to see what that poor woman has become.’ Ida turned back to Manolis. ‘You know, Inspector, your skin’s rather dark. You’re not related to anyone at the brown house, are you?’

Her mouth creased into a sour smile. Manolis clicked his pen closed and narrowed his eyes. He saw the bones in her fingers, the skin over them as thin as crepe paper. Activated by gin, ropes of fresh saliva hung in her mouth like rigging on a sailboat.

After pocketing his notepad, he offered his card. ‘Thank you for your valuable time, Mrs Jones. Please call me if anything else occurs to you.’

Ida slipped the card into her breast pocket without looking at it. She massaged her goitre, making it move, and continued sipping at her drink, which by now was running dangerously low.

‘Waste of time,’ Kerr whispered as they walked back to the car.

‘It’s never a waste,’ said Manolis. ‘People are sometimes scared to talk, or things only occur to them later. Meeting them face to face makes all the difference.’