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– came spewing out.
    It was a full ten minutes before Woodend felt he could face the world again, and even then his legs were still shaking as he re-entered the kitchen.
    Bannerman was sitting at the table, a copy of the Evening Telegraph spread out in front of him, and his lips set in a supercilious twist. There was no sign of the woman.
    â€˜Where’s Mrs Dawson?’ Woodend demanded.
    Bannerman looked up. ‘She said she needed to go outside for a breath of fresh air,’ he replied, with marked unconcern.
    â€˜Why was that?’ Woodend asked, suspiciously. ‘You’ve not said anythin’ to upset her, have you?’
    â€˜Me?’ Bannerman said, with a look of comic surprise on his face.
    â€˜Well, I don’t see anybody else in the room, so, yes, I do mean you ,’ Woodend countered.
    â€˜Now what could I possibly have said to upset her?’ Bannerman wondered innocently.
    â€˜Do you want me to give you a list?’ Woodend demanded. ‘Because, if you do, it’ll be a bloody long one!’ He sighed. ‘Sorry, lad, I didn’t mean it. I needed to lash out at somethin’ – an’ you just happened to be in the way.’
    â€˜That’s all right, sir,’ Bannerman said, with easy grace. ‘What’s that you’ve got in your hand?’
    Woodend looked down, and – though he didn’t even remember picking them up – saw that he was holding some of Lilly’s pictures.
    â€˜Look at these,’ he said, laying them out on the table.
    Bannerman studied the drawings for a few moments, then said, ‘Well, if we’re to believe her mother, she may indeed have been immature in some ways – but she certainly seemed to have a very grown-up attitude to men.’
    An’ to think, it’s barely a minute since I apologized to this bastard! Woodend thought angrily.
    â€˜Are we lookin’ at the same pictures, do you think, Sergeant?’ he asked, in a tone which was much leveller than the rage he was feeling inside.
    â€˜I’m sorry, sir?’
    â€˜Aye, an’ so you bloody well should be! From what you’ve just said, it sounds as if you think she was the kind of girl who was so hot for men that she had no elastic in her knickers.’
    â€˜Well, you must admit, she did seem to have had something of an obsession for the opposite sex,’ Bannerman replied.
    For the briefest of instants, Woodend seriously contemplated showing his sergeant the error of his ways by the simple expedient of smashing his fist in Bannerman’s face and breaking his upper-middle-class nose. But the moment passed, and before he had time to substitute a verbal beating for the – much more satisfying – physical one, the back door opened, and Mrs Dawson walked into the kitchen.
    â€˜I . . . err . . . I needed to get out for a bit,’ she said to Woodend.
    â€˜Aye, love, my sergeant said,’ Woodend replied, as he noted that she had obviously been crying again. ‘We’ve got a few more questions,’ he continued. ‘Do you feel strong enough to answer them?’
    â€˜I . . . I think so.’
    â€˜Then sit yourself down, an’ it’ll be all over before you know it.’
    Mrs Dawson sat, deliberately positioning herself so that, while she could look directly at Woodend, Bannerman was just out of her line of vision.
    â€˜Did anythin’ unusual happen in the week before your Lilly disappeared?’ Woodend asked softly.
    â€˜Unusual?’ Mrs Dawson repeated.
    â€˜Did you, for example, see any strangers hangin’ around in the street?’
    Mrs Dawson shook her head. ‘That sort of thing doesn’t happen round here, Chief Inspector. People would notice strangers. They’d ask them what they thought they were doin’.’
    Of course they would, Woodend agreed silently. This wasn’t a leafy southern suburb, in which every