Two things still worried Annie. Nobody seemed able to find Jade, and despite the successes and revelations of the past few hours, she still had no idea who had killed Mimosa Moffat. Sunny, or one of his colleagues, might have done it, but no cars caught on the CCTV had been identified with any of them—not even one of Ismail’s taxis—and motive still remained a problem. Still, Sunny had no alibi, had the use of Ismail’s minicabs, and as he was the leader, he might have had his own reasons to dish out punishment to Mimosa. Perhaps a punishment that had gone too far. They would keep at him, and if he had done it, Annie was sure that he would crack and confess eventually. For the moment, he was stewing in his cell. One of the Moffats might have done it, though Albert had an alibi, and Annie ruled out Lenny and Johnny. Which left Sinead. Junkie or not, she had kicked up a fuss, quite rightly, about the counselor who had messed with her daughter, so if she had found out about Sunny, she might have gone after him, too. The problem was that it was Mimosa who had been killed, not Sunny or any of his friends. Annie thought maybe Sinead lost it with her daughter, but the idea was beginning to seem farfetched.

They found Jim Nuttall working in his garage on an old Morris Minor station wagon, the kind with the wooden frame around the back and sides that Annie’s father used to drive when she was a child. It had been an antique even then. The garage was a lot tidier and cleaner than most garages Annie had seen. You didn’t feel you’d end up with a grease or oil stain no matter what surface you touched, and the racks of parts were clearly labeled and, she noticed, ran in alphabetical order by make of car and name of part. It smelled of rubber, oil and sheared metal, a mix Annie really didn’t mind at all. There was something comforting about it.

The door at the back led through to an office, and that was where Nuttall took them, for a brew. The office, which smelled the same as the garage, was cramped and looked out on a backyard piled with rusted car parts, mostly tires, bumpers, radiator fronts and doors. There were two hard-backed chairs opposite Nuttall’s, which sat behind the desk, and they eased themselves in. The office was a bit less tidy than the garage, but not much. Nuttall himself was a middle-aged man in a dark blue overall, a little overweight, thinning on top.

“It’s a one-man business,” he said, “so I apologize for the mess. I have to do my own books and orders and everything. Even make the tea.”

“Must be a full-time job with all the deliveries, too,” said Annie.

“More than full-time.”