Dominic chuckled. ‘I feel like a monk, Joycie. Please take him back. He loves you so much, he talks constantly about you to me and Joey every night of the week.’

Joyce smirked. She liked Stanley talking about her constantly, and she hoped he was hurting as much as he’d hurt her. She hadn’t spoken to him since the day they’d met in the carvery. She had let him drop her home that day and had told him she would let him know in her own time if he could come back home.

‘Well? What do you say, Nan?’ Joey asked hopefully.

Joycie sank the rest of her wine and wiped her mouth with the napkin. ‘OK, tell the old goat he can come home tomorrow. I’m only doing this for your sakes, mind. You can tell him that I shall be writing a list of house rules, which I expect him to abide by. If he doesn’t, then the dirty old bastard is straight out the door again.’

When Joyce headed for the toilet, Joey laughed and turned to Dominic. ‘Poor Grandad. I’d hate to be in his bloody shoes.’

DI Blyth was sitting opposite the superintendent in Arbour Square police station in East London. The superintendent had been on a skiing holiday for the past couple of weeks and Blyth had eagerly awaited his return before presenting her evidence. In Blyth’s experience, you were always better to speak to the organ grinder rather than waste time talking to the monkeys.

The superintendent put the statements down on his desk and turned to Blyth. He knew the Mitchell family very well. Over the years they had become the bane of his life and not getting the murder conviction to stick against Eddie had been one of the worst moments of his career.

‘This all looks very impressive on paper, but I wouldn’t trust a Mitchell as far as I could throw them. This is the same girl that lied through her teeth at her father’s trial, I take it?’

Without the superintendent’s support, Blyth knew she was up the creek without a paddle, so she sold Frankie to him as a person as best as she could. ‘Frankie had very little choice other than to defend Eddie Mitchell at his trial. What girl wouldn’t speak up for their own father? And I’m positive that she was got at by her own brothers as well. As for Frankie’s statement telling us that Jed O’Hara was responsible for murdering her grandfather, I am one hundred per cent sure that the girl is telling the truth. Kerry, her friend, backed up the story; her statement is virtually identical to Frankie’s.’