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lucky.
    ‘They don’t let me loose on the members.’ Danny laughed. ‘I’m just the cleaner.’
    Ashworth put a blown-up photo of the victim on the table. ‘But you might have seen her around.’
    There was a moment’s hesitation as Danny glanced down. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I can’t help.’
    ‘Tell me how your job works,’ Ashworth said. ‘Talk me through a regular shift.’
    ‘I’m on lates. Start at four. First off, based in the men’s changing rooms. It’s a busy time, people coming in straight from work, so it’s about keeping the place clean and tidy, mopping the floors where people come in from the pool, checking the toilets and showers. Then, when the health club closes at ten, I clean the pool area and gym.’ He managed to imply that the job was beneath him.
    ‘And that’s what you did last night?’
    ‘Yes, just the same as usual.’
    ‘And you checked the steam room and sauna?’ Ashworth had to ask, though Vera had phoned him after speaking to Jenny’s daughter. They knew now that Jenny had still been alive for breakfast that morning; there was no possibility that her body had been in the steam room all night.
    ‘Of course.’ He smiled, challenging Ashworth to question his commitment to his work. Ashworth decided not to play.
    ‘See anything out of the ordinary?’
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ Ashworth tried to keep his voice patient. ‘Like signs of a break-in, or that there was still someone in the place.’
    ‘You think the murderer might have got in the night before?’
    ‘We don’t have a specific theory at this point. We have to explore all the possibilities.’
    There was another moment of silence. Danny seemed at least now to be taking the question seriously. ‘I certainly didn’t see anybody. I mean, I’d have called security. The hotel does lots of weddings at weekends, some conferences. Late at night you get pissed people thinking it’d be fun to go skinny-dipping when nobody else is around; once I caught a couple of lads hiding away in the showers before we locked up, but we do a thorough check that the place is empty. There was nothing like that last night.’
    ‘Can you walk me through the changing rooms?’ Ashworth found it almost impossible to visualize the changing rooms and the business side of the health club. He knew Vera had been in to find the victim’s identity card, but it wouldn’t hurt for him to have a quick look.
    ‘Sure.’ The boy got to his feet – glad, it seemed, to be on the move. Because he’d been slouched in the chair, Ashworth hadn’t realized how tall he was. Standing, he became a gangly, loose-limbed giant.
    Ashworth followed him into the ladies’ changing rooms. There was a smell of chlorine from the pool and something else faintly cosmetic. There were bays of lockers all along one wall, with wooden benches underneath them and again between the bays. The tiled floor was clean and dry. For a moment he longed to be out of this antiseptic, artificial atmosphere. He hadn’t had a breath of fresh air since Vera had summoned him at lunchtime.
    ‘Is this where the thieving was happening?’
    ‘What thieving?’
    ‘Are you pissing me about, lad?’ Usually he minded his language when he was working – and when he wasn’t – but something about this boy got under his skin. ‘I’d heard stuff had been stolen from the changing rooms.’
    ‘Oh, that. I’m not sure much was actually taken. Most of the members are getting on. They forget where they put something and they put it down to theft.’
    ‘What about the stuff that went missing from the staffroom? Are you putting that down to senile dementia too?’
    ‘I wouldn’t know about that.’ Danny had given up his attempt to be pleasant and looked like a petulant teenager. ‘I don’t go into the staffroom much. Crap coffee and crap company.’
    Ashworth shook his head and let the boy go.
    He couldn’t find a CSI to come with him to look for Jenny Lister’s car.