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widthways halfway down its length by a privet hedge with a lawn in the foreground, and beyond the hedge an orchard should be planted, with access to the orchard being gained by a gateway set in the hedge. Beyond the orchard a small area of wilderness was to be permitted in which a pond was to be dug and amphibians introduced.
    It had then become his established practice, upon returning home each day, to stand on the patio, looking out over the garden where Jennifer’s ashes had been scattered and to tell her of his day. ‘It is still very early on in the piece, as I say, and we are only able to address the case because things are quiet at the moment. Relatively speaking, that is. So back into the case we go with enthusiasm and gusto, but after twenty years memories will have blurred and become confused. Evidence will have been lost. Not all the players will still be with us. Well, all I can say is that we’ll give it our best shot. It’s all we can do.’
    Later, after a wholesome, home-cooked chicken bake, George Hennessey settled down to read from a book about the Spanish Civil War which he had recently acquired as an interesting addition to his library of military history. The book, he found, transpired to be a pleasing mixture of highly detailed scholarly research combined with readability. It was, in his experience, a rare combination, and most pleasing because of it.
    Later still, he and Oscar walked together enjoying each other’s company to beyond the edge of Easingwold, where he took the dog off his lead and allowed him to roam freely across a meadow and in and out of a small wood. Later still, having returned Oscar to his house, George Hennessey strolled calmly into Easingwold, again another established practice, to enjoy a pint of brown and mild at the Dove Inn – just one – before last orders were called.
    It was Wednesday, 22.00 hours.

TWO
Wednesday, 10.05 hours – Thursday, 01.35 hours.
    In which more is learned about the Middleton household, two men have an Oriental experience, and both Reginald Webster and Thompson Ventnor are at home to the too kind reader.
    T ang Hall, dear reader, of which there has been repeated mention in the preceding chapter, is a housing development or ‘estate’ which lies to the east of the centre of the city of York. It is a largely low-rise estate with steps within the buildings enabling tenants with flats on the upper floors to access their homes in keeping with the tenement design in Scotland and Continental Europe. In addition to the low-rise flats there are also streets with linked housing and pairs of houses at ground level with each house comprising of the ground floor and one upper floor, plus attic space and a small back garden. The estate is of a red brick appearance and dates in the main from the 1920s and 1930s. It is, by and large, neatly and cleanly kept by the local authority which maintains the small front gardens and the hedgerows which separate the gardens from the pavement and ensures that they are neatly trimmed. It is an estate wherein motorbikes are chained to the lampposts and where old motor cars line the kerbs. The majority of the adults under pensionable age are unemployed and many are known to the police. It is widely regarded to be the least desirable estate in York in which to live, but it is nevertheless an oasis of gentle manners and good conduct when compared to the notorious ‘sink estates’ in cities such as Moss Side in Manchester, Easterhouse in Glasgow, St Paul’s in Bristol and Seacroft in Leeds. One man’s floor, the gracious reader might ponder, is another man’s ceiling.
    Carmen Pharoah drove the car into Hewley Avenue on the Tang Hall Estate and halted outside number 237. She and Thompson Ventnor found Hewley Avenue to be one of the streets in which the buildings were in pairs with a ground floor and an upper floor with small back and front gardens. The road, they also noted,