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around here might have had your friend killed?’
    Again she nodded rather than put it into words. All she actually said was, ‘I can’t think who else would have wanted to kill Sarah. She was a good kid.’
    It was a belated assertion of her own seniority, a pathetic reminder that this young, vulnerable creature had been a mentor to someone even younger, even more defenceless against the dark forces of this strange half-world she inhabited.
    Karen Jones looked fearfully up and down the street as her visitors departed, but was relieved to see no one in sight, as a wan sun lit up the faded dignity of the Victorian facades. Then she went and made herself a cup of coffee and sat down to an anxious review of what she had said to them.
    It didn’t seem too bad. She hadn’t even mentioned Joe Johnson’s name.
    â€˜We don’t even know how long she’s been dead yet.’ Percy Peach was professionally lugubrious with his chief.
    â€˜This is ridiculous, you know. Things moved much faster than this when you were away!’ said Chief Superintendent Tucker peevishly.
    Peach allowed his black eyebrows to rise expressively beneath the bald pate. ‘I see, sir. Bodies were presumably discovered more quickly in the last year, then.’
    Tucker stared at him suspiciously. Irony was not his strong point. That left him at a severe disadvantage with DCI Peach. ‘I expect they were, yes. Things were generally much tighter when you were away.’
    This was manifestly untrue. Peach had skimmed the crime figures quickly and then studied the clear-up rates very closely. Even his experienced eye had been shocked by them: he was holding his own private sessions in the CID section to amend matters; some Inspectorial fur had been considerably ruffled two storeys beneath Tucker’s penthouse office. He looked hard at Tucker and said, ‘Really, sir. Well, I expect Traffic would still have me back if you think I am a drag on the progress of your section.’
    â€˜No, no, Peach, I’m not suggesting that.’ Tucker forced the kind of smile we don for the dentist and said, ‘Goodness me, you didn’t use to be so touchy in the old days. Do come and sit down, Percy.’
    Peach sat down with extreme care in the armchair indicated by Tucker’s expansive gesture. His first name had been forced through the closed teeth of the Head of CID’s wide, artificial smile. Well, Percy didn’t want to hear it any more than Tommy Bloody Tucker wanted to say it. He said, ‘The girl’s been dead two or three days at least. We may get a more accurate time of death from the PM report.’
    â€˜Do we have an identification?’
    â€˜Probably, sir. One of our young ladies of the night thinks she was called Sarah Dunne.’
    â€˜A prostitute?’ Tucker’s face dropped at the thought. Low-life murders were always the most difficult to solve. And the least worthwhile: Tucker was firmly of the view that people who dabbled in crime deserved whatever they got. Sometimes it seemed to him a pity that he had to give his full resources to chasing up crimes like this, but he supposed that the law had to be upheld.
    â€˜An apprentice prostitute, you might say, sir. None of the female officers who interview the toms when we bring them in has even heard of Sarah Dunne.’
    â€˜Once we have an identification, the house-to-house should help us with the time of death. We should be able to establish when she was last seen.’
    Peach noted that a year without him hadn’t diminished Tucker’s talent for the blindin’ bleedin’ obvious. ‘Yes, sir. We’ve located the people we think are the girl’s parents. DC Murphy has gone over to Bolton to break the news and bring someone back for an identification.’
    â€˜Good man, Brendan Murphy.’ Tucker nodded his approval.
    Peach lifted those black eyebrows again, this time in genuine surprise.