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weeks she learned quite a lot. She even taught me a few things — largely about what our computer could do. She helped me to streamline our ordering system. And for about three months she was quite a pleasure to have around: bright and interested, and with a ready smile for the customers.”
    “But the good start didn’t last?”
    “I’m afraid not. Tamsin seemed to lose interest rather, after that promising beginning. She also became, well, unreliable. I had to check everything she was doing. She gave people the wrong change a couple of times —not through dishonesty, but through genuine carelessness. But nothing does more harm with customers than that. And she forgot to put through a couple of orders.”
    “And have you any idea why this happened? She seemed from what you say to have made a good start.”
    Bert was thinking that this was the classic unreliability of the drug user who was becoming more dependent. But this innocent man hadn’t considered that explanation. “No. I asked her once if she had some trauma within her family, or perhaps boyfriend trouble. But she just smiled and shook her head. Tamsin was always quite apologetic when she made a mistake, but her remorse didn’t seem to improve her. She got worse, in fact. She became very unpunctual, particularly in the mornings, whereas she’d been an excellent timekeeper when she started.”
    “Could you give me some idea of the dates of all this?”
    The earnest face wrinkled with concentration. “Well, she was all right for about three months, I think. Then she became gradually more and more erratic, over a period of about six months. Things came to a head when she was rude to a customer. I gave her a final warning. She didn’t argue with me. She said she deserved it. She seemed quite upset, and for a moment I thought she was going to cry. Then she said I was quite right, and it would be better if she left there and then, without waiting to let me down again. She insisted on going that afternoon. She kept saying she was sorry.”
    Cedric Brown looked upset at the recollection, as if he still wished that things had turned out differently, as if he felt in some way responsible for the girl’s death because he had dispensed with her services. Hook fancied he had been more patient with the girl than most would have been, had probably kept her on long after others would have sacked her. He said gently, “How much was she paid each week, Mr Brown? It’s important that we know. I’ll explain why in a moment.”
    Brown said apologetically, “Tamsin got a hundred and sixty pounds a week. It’s not a lot, I know, but the business didn’t really warrant even that.”
    Hook nodded. “She was a drug addict, Mr Brown. That’s probably why she became so unreliable. And why she behaved out of character like that with customers. What you’ve told me will help us to document the time when she passed from being just a user of drugs to being dependent upon them. It’s also why I needed to know how much she was paid. There is no way she could have funded her accommodation and a hard-drug habit on what she was paid here. And for the last few months of her life, after you dispensed with her services, she had no regular income at all, as far as we know at this moment.”
    Brown was shocked. He said, “I was stupid not to have thought of this before. I’ve no experience of the drug culture, you see.”
    “I doubt if it would have made very much difference if you had realised what was going on. She was probably already dependent when you saw her work becoming more unreliable.”
    “Poor thing!” said Brown. It was more than a conventional cliché of regret: he was genuinely upset.
    Bert Hook left the proprietor sitting miserably behind the counter of his cramped shop. He realised as he left that in the twenty minutes he had been there on a Saturday morning, there had been not a single customer.
     

 
     
    Seven
     
    It was on Saturday afternoon that the case