She recognized that disconnected air, and knew he was determined – no, desperate – to elicit something from the scene, some clue. She took in the disarray in the office, the open safe, the scattered notes. The shooting, it would appear, interrupted something – Baskin counting his cash. The attack was unexpected, which would explain why Baskin and Rhodes had been unarmed; had it been a business transaction gone sour, they would’ve undoubtedly been tooled up as a precaution.

‘Was the door open or closed when the girl found them?’ Clarke said suddenly.

‘Eh?’

‘Was the door open or shut?’

‘I don’t know – why?’

‘Maybe the attacker was in a hurry, that’s why they didn’t finish Baskin off, and if they panicked they wouldn’t have shut the door.’

‘Good point,’ he conceded, ‘I’ll check with the girl. Then we’d best get over to the hospital, see if the fat bastard has survived.’

‘That was a waste of bloody time,’ said DC Derek Simms, resting his feet on the desk in the main CID office. The hospital could at least have mentioned when they radioed ahead that Baskin was still out of it. He lit a cigarette, watching Sue Clarke settle at the desk opposite. There was something funny in her demeanour that he couldn’t put his finger on. She picked up the phone immediately without answering him, not that he required an answer. Though he did fancy a drink after today’s peculiar chain of events. Never can tell what’ll happen next in this job, he thought.

He retrieved a half-bottle of Scotch from the desk drawer, picked up a mug, peered inside and decided to take it straight from the bottle instead. After a couple of swigs he paused, watching Clarke nattering on the phone. They had recently called it quits on their on/off relationship. There had been some fun times – well, one or two at least – over the summer. He’d been keen to have her back at first, as there was no denying how well they got on, but he couldn’t shake off the suspicion that she was with him only because Frost had ditched her, on account of his sick wife. The niggling fear that she was on the rebound wore away at him and made him bad-tempered, until eventually he called time on things.

But now, a month on, Simms suspected he’d made a mistake. He discovered he’d been wrong about Clarke’s feelings yet again. DS Waters, who had become a great friend, was seeing Clarke’s buddy Kim Myles; she’d told him it was Sue who had ditched Frost in May because she’d blatantly had enough, and at the time she’d known nothing of his wife’s illness. Though he wasn’t totally convinced she’d dropped Frost for good, as once Frost’s wife’s condition became common knowledge the pair did seem pretty close … Anyway, Clarke had decided to give it another go with Derek because, well, Derek was Derek. She’d told him as much, but he’d never really grasped the idea that she liked him for himself – it wasn’t until he heard it from a third party and there was some distance between them that it finally registered, and he saw what a fool he’d been. Still, they were young, there was time. There was always time …

‘DC Simms! End of the day already, is it?’

DI Allen’s sharp tone snatched him from his musings. Jesus! He swung his legs off the desk.

‘No, sir.’

‘No, sir, indeed. Where the bloody hell is everyone?’

‘Mary Frost’s funeral, sir.’

Detective Inspector Jim Allen scratched his beard thoughtfully. Within the worn face his pale grey eyes flickered with mild irritation.

‘Are they now. And Superintendent Mullett?’

‘He was there this morning.’

‘Well, that toerag from the Echo, Sandy Lane, is banging on the front door. He had a call from a farmer – something about a foot in a field. Brief the superintendent – we’ll have to make a statement.’ With an angry frown he disappeared from the doorway as silently as he arrived.

Clarke was equally perturbed by DI Allen’s surprise visit. ‘What the hell was he doing here?’ she asked as soon as she hung up the phone. ‘I thought he was on secondment to Rimmington on that abduction case?’

‘Beats me.