“You’re no fun. You’re going to leave an old lady alone with her memories and her gin?”

“Needs must.”

She waved her glass at them and some of the gin slopped over the side, dribbled down her hand and splashed on the front of her T-shirt to join the cigarette ash. “Now see what you’ve made me do.” She pouted. “Go on, then. Off you go. They all do in the end.”

Banks and Winsome took their leave. As Winsome got behind the wheel, she turned to Banks and said, “I know it’s only the second day, guv, but already I have to confess I’m getting sick to death of this case and these people.”

Banks had expected something like that. He wondered if Annie would have been able to keep quiet as long as Winsome had in Carol Canning’s company. He doubted it. She wasn’t quite as sensitive as Winsome, and not as well behaved. She usually gave as good as she got, or thought she was getting. “My sentiments exactly,” he said. “Give me a down-to-earth honest criminal anytime. The more god-awful these people are, the more we owe it to Linda Palmer to make a good case against Danny Caxton.”

“Yeah,” Winsome said. “I suppose so. I suppose you’re right.”

“And cheer up. You know what the woman in the movie said: ‘Tomorrow’s another day.’”

5

AFTER A GLASS OF GRAPEFRUIT JUICE, A MUG OF green tea and a bowl of muesli, Annie was ready to set off for work. She was hoping there would be something from forensics that morning, and an identification of the victim would also be welcome. When the news came on on her car radio, it was no surprise to hear that one of the main stories was about the unidentified young girl found murdered on a leafy lane in Yorkshire, and the other was about Danny Caxton being interviewed on a matter of historical sexual abuse. As yet, the media had only scant details about both cases. One of the things they didn’t know, and were at all costs not to find out about, was that there had been a second car in the “leafy lane” on the night of the girl’s murder. For the time being, it suited Annie for the rapists to think they were suspected of murder and the murderer to think he was home-free. That way the rapists might panic and perhaps make a mistake, and the killer would carry on blithely unaware while the police closed in on him. At least, that was the theory.