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am on an important inquiry at present.’
    â€˜Oh, and what would that be? Or can you tell?’
    â€˜I think I can. After all you’re a man of secrets.’
    â€˜It goes with the job,’ agreed the priest.
    Davies crouched on the dank bank. Mod remained standing as though keeping watch. Davies asked: ‘Father, do you remember Celia Norris?’
    â€˜Celia Norris,’ nodded the priest. ‘The girl was apparently murdered. A long time ago.’
    â€˜Twenty-five years,’ said Davies. ‘I’ve reopened the case.’
    â€˜Chessus,’ said Father Harvey. ‘It was when I first came here. In fact I only knew the girl a few weeks. I can’t even remember her face.’
    Davies could. ‘It was never cleared up,’ he said ‘It was just left.’
    â€˜You didn’t come down here looking for footprints, by any chance, did you?’ asked the priest.
    â€˜Not quite. But I thought I would just wander along and see if I could get any ideas.’
    â€˜She was at the youth club. And they never found anything,’ said the priest.
    â€˜Her clothes,’ said Davies. ‘They found those. Except her…underpants.’
    â€˜Ah, her knickers,’ agreed Father Harvey. ‘Yes, I recall that fact.’ He gave the fishing line a few ruminative jerks. ‘Perhaps, now, she wasn’t wearing any.’
    â€˜Father!’ Davies said it. Mod began to whistle in the night.
    â€˜Well, like I said just now, there’s a lot of poverty about. Twenty-five years ago it was no better.’
    Davies considered again the priest’s nose. In silhouette it appeared a lot longer than in daylight. ‘Do you know where Mrs Norris, her mother, lives these days?’ he asked.
    â€˜Yes, yes. Let me see. Hunter Street, by the power station. She still comes to church, sometimes.’
    â€˜Dave Boot,’ said Davies. ‘Remember Dave Boot, the youth club man, Father? What was he like?’
    â€˜Muscles,’ said Father Harvey decisively. ‘All muscles. He did all this training nonsense. Chessus, he used to make me feel envious. I had a few muscles myself in those days, but I was required to hide them under my cassock. One of the sacrifices of spiritual life, you see. But there were times, I must confess when I would have swopped all the vestments of a bishop for a string vest.‘
    Davies laughed sombrely in the dark. Mod, who did not have a top coat, shuffled in the cold. Davies took the hint.
    â€˜We’ll be going then, Father,’ said Davies.
    â€˜Right you are,’ sniffed the priest. ‘I wish you well with your mouldy old murder. This one’s not only dead, it’s been dead a long time. Cold ashes, Dangerous, cold ashes. You might find it’s better left like that.’
    â€˜It’s not an official investigation,’ said Davies. ‘I am doing it myself. In my own time.’
    â€˜Like a hobby?’ said the priest, still watching the water.
    â€˜Yes, you could say that. Like a hobby.’

Chapter Five
    H e began to rake the cold ashes by going to Hunter Street. It was one of the streets grouped around the cooling towers of the power station, midgets crowding giants. The stream and vapour from the towers kept it a perpetual rainy day. But it had compensations, for when the sun came out it filled the damp, melancholy streets with rainbows.
    Davies stood at the front of the terraced house, the same as all the others but more in need of a paint. The door hung like a jaw. Months before someone had planted a Christmas tree in the patch of front garden hoping to defy God and make it grow. God had won. It stood brittle, brown, shivering at the first fingering of another autumn. Davies knocked at the door and several pieces of paint fell off. It appeared that a whole system of locks was undone before the thin woman’s face appeared.
    â€˜What d’you want?’
    â€˜Mrs