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angry a handful of times, serious most of the time, and light-hearted roughly never.
    Covertly, I watched him as he drove. It had been a long night. The tiredness lurked in the corners of his mouth and around his eyes, where the lines were deeper and longer than usual. But he still looked as if something fundamental had changed and I wondered what it was.
    ‘Sir—’
    The phone vibrated in my hand. I’d forgotten I was still holding it. Automatically I glanced down to see the first few lines of the message flash up as a preview on the screen.
Make no mistake
you fucking cunt, you’d
better change your mind
or you know what will
    I stared down at it for a few long seconds. The phone was on silent so Godley had no idea he had a new message. More importantly, he didn’t know that I’d seen it. I turned the phone over so he couldn’t see the screen and slid it on to the central console. It was none of my business.
    I still couldn’t stop thinking about it. I’d forgotten Terence Hammond. I’d forgotten why I was sitting in Godley’s car and where we were going. Change your mind . You know what will . I could fill in the rest of that sentence without too much trouble. You know what will happen. Something to take the smile off Godley’s face, I thought. Something terrible. The message was nothing to do with me but I was light-headed with shock.
    ‘This must be the place.’
    I looked up, surprised, as Godley pulled in behind Lowry’s car. It had stopped outside a 1930s semi-detached house with an empty driveway. The curtains were closed. No one was up yet.
    ‘I’ll go in with Lowry and West,’ Godley said. ‘Make sure you stay close to me. I don’t want you to get sidelined. I value your opinion.’ A sideways look. ‘That’s why I wanted you to come with me, you know. You’re good at people.’
    I dredged up a smile that felt stiff on my face. ‘Thanks.’ I did appreciate the compliment, even though I knew it was the one area where I had an advantage over my male colleagues. It was a widely held belief that female officers were useful to have around when people were likely to be upset. I wasn’t so sure; I’d known more than a few who had no nurturing instincts at all.
    ‘I want your impressions of the family. I want to know if you think Mrs Hammond is surprised by the news about her husband.’
    ‘Are you thinking of her as a suspect?’
    ‘Anything’s possible. Especially given what Hammond was doing when he died. I doubt she pulled the trigger but she might have asked someone else to do it. Loving wives of unfaithful husbands make good suspects.’
    ‘Cynic,’ I said, smiling for real this time.
    ‘You know the rules. Most murders occur for reasons that are close to home.’
    A bulky man was levering himself out of the driver’s seat of the car in front. He was overweight, his jowls overlapping his collar, and his face was red. His blood pressure had to be through the roof. He gave Godley a sick look and nodded to the house.
    ‘Right.’ Godley picked up his phone and slid it into his pocket without looking at the screen. ‘Time to go.’
    I hung back as he went to join Lowry and West on the pavement. The three of them conferred for a minute. West was a thin, wrinkled man whose skin was weathered to a shade that was almost the same light-brown as his fine hair. He kept passing a hand over the top of his head, smoothing his hair down. They walked up the drive together and Godley rang the doorbell.
    It was a long time until someone responded. The light went on in the hall first, and then the door swung open to reveal a middle-aged woman. She was tying the belt on her dressing gown, but her attention was on us, her gaze flitting across our faces, trying to read our expressions. Her face was pale, sleep-saggy, wary. Her hair was short and streaked blond. At the moment it stood up like a cockatoo’s crest.
    ‘Mrs Hammond?’ Lowry began.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I’m Superintendent John Lowry. Sorry to