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Maria Rutter said.
    She sounded like she’d been crying, Woodend thought.
    â€˜Is somethin’ the matter, lass?’ he asked.
    â€˜A great deal’s the matter, Charlie,’ Maria said. ‘Can you come to the house?’
    â€˜When? Now?’
    â€˜No, not now. Give me half an hour or so to get things a bit straighter.’
    To get
yourself
a bit straighter, more like, Woodend thought.
    â€˜Is Bob with you?’ he asked.
    â€˜No, he isn’t.’
    â€˜Do you want me to see if I can find him?’
    â€˜No!’ Maria said – almost screamed.
    â€˜Is he—’
    â€˜I’d rather you came alone, Charlie. Please!’
    â€˜All right, if that’s what you want,’ Woodend agreed. ‘Do you still want me to leave it for half an hour?’
    â€˜I … Yes, that would be best. Finish the pint you’re drinking now, have another one, and then come to see me.’
    â€˜Listen, if you’d rather …’ Woodend began.
    But he was only talking to the dialling tone.
    Maria placed the phone back on its cradle, then made her way down the hall to the kitchen. She walked confidently because, in her own domain, everything had a place and there was no danger of any inanimate object lurking in ambush for her.
    There were two radios in the kitchen, one tuned permanently to the Home Service and the other to the Third Programme. She clicked the switch on one of them, and found herself listening to Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’.
    Charlie would like a cup of tea when he arrived, she thought. And chocolate biscuits – he was always very partial to chocolate biscuits. She reached up to the cupboard, located the handle, and opened the door.
    If anybody could tell her what to do about the mess she was in, it was Charlie Woodend, she told herself. True, he was Bob’s boss. But he was also her friend – a man she trusted, a man she respected. Yet even Charlie Woodend would be pushed to create any sort of order out of this confusion – even the great magician himself would have trouble pulling off this particular trick.
    Her fingers had located the biscuits, and she carefully took them down.
    The music on the radio was reaching its climax – swelling to fill the whole kitchen. It was so loud that it completely masked the sound coming from the living room – a sound which, if she had heard it, would have told her the catch on the French windows was being forced.
    Woodend finished his pint, and then ordered another one, just as Maria had instructed him to. As a result, he did not leave the Drum and Monkey until twenty minutes after the phone call.
    Later, he would try to tell himself that while Maria had seemed upset, there had been no real urgency in her voice. He would point out – as he defended himself in the case which he himself was also prosecuting – that Maria had specifically said he should wait half an hour. If he’d ignored her instructions and left immediately, he would argue, it would have made no difference. Because even if he’d been driving a racing car – and even if there’d been no other traffic on the road – he
still
wouldn’t have got there in time.
    Yes, he would tell himself all this – and there were others who would argue his case even more strongly than he did himself. But it didn’t make any difference.
    No bloody difference at all!

Eight
    T here were lights burning in most of the windows on Elm Croft, but the Rutter house was in darkness. Which told him two things, thought Charlie Woodend – the perpetual detective, the
compulsive
detective – as he pulled his Wolseley up at the edge of the curb. The first of those things was that Bob had not returned home yet – but from his earlier conversation with Maria, he had rather suspected that would be the case. The second thing was that the baby must be asleep.
    So why should Maria waste electricity? Why