I probably should have stopped the car at that point, while she could still see me, but I was full of exhilaration and, just for a few seconds, I wanted to believe that it could last for ever. So I drove quickly round the block. I pulled up outside the library again about half a minute later. Lucy was sitting cross-legged on the floor, howling. A woman was trying to comfort her and find out what had happened, where her mother was. I got out of the car, bundled Lucy up, saying ‘Thank you very much!’ to the puzzled woman, and we drove back home. ‘Lucy,’ I said calmly. ‘If you’re naughty and don’t do what Mummy says, and if you make life difficult for Mummy, that’s the kind of thing that will happen. Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ she sobbed.

I hate the sound of her crying, so I said, ‘Lucy, stop crying right this minute, or I’ll stop the car and make you get out again, and next time I won’t come back for you.’

She stopped crying instantly.

‘That’s better,’ I said. ‘Now, if you’re good and make life easy for Mummy, then Mummy will be happy and we’ll all have a nice time. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, Mummy,’ she said solemnly.

I felt a mixture of triumph and guilt. I knew I’d done something bad, but I also knew that I couldn’t help it. It’s hard enough behaving well when the people around you also are, when whoever you’re with is leading by example. Sometimes you think, I want to do a bad, selfish thing now, but I can’t because everyone else is being so infuriatingly decent. But when you’re trapped in an explosive situation with someone who is determined to break all records for appalling behaviour, how, dear Gart, do you maintain your composure and do the right thing?

It isn’t only Lucy who sets me off. I’ve often had to sit on my hands, so tempted have I been to whack a friend’s child round the head. Like Oonagh O’Hara, who only has to whinge or stamp her foot to set both her parents off with their, ‘Sweetie! Come for a cuddle!’ nonsense. Gart, how I would love to punch Oonagh in the face. If I could do it once, I think I’d be happy for ever.

8/7/07

DC Colin Sellers sniffed the arm of his jacket when he was sure no one was looking. Inconclusive. He sniffed again, but couldn’t tell if it was his clothes or his surroundings that stank. What was it about charity shops? He resolved never again to tell Stacey she ought to buy her clothes at Oxfam instead of Next. He hadn’t been inside a charity shop for years, hadn’t realised they all smelled like a stale stew of the past, layers of rancid odours piled one on top of the other like the decades of a life that has disappointed its owner.

Sellers wasn’t normally prone to maudlin reflections, but the shops were bringing it out in him. He’d done all the dry-cleaners first-and the chemical stench of those had been bad enough-but now he wished he’d done it the other way round, saved the best for last. Anything was better than the charity shops.

At the moment he was in the Hildred Street branch of Age Concern in Spilling, which was, thank God, the last of them. Tonight he’d make sure to tell Stace to wash his clothes at an extra high temperature. Or maybe he’d just throw them away. One thing he wouldn’t do: donate them to a manky shop for some other poor sod to buy. From now on, Sellers was against second-hand clothes. People ought to give money to these dogooder organisations, and that’s it, he thought. A nice, clean cheque that doesn’t smell of grease or death or failure.

It occurred to Sellers that he had never in his life given any money to charity. Because he couldn’t afford to, because he had Stacey and the kids to pay for as well as making sure Suki, his girlfriend, always had a good time and didn’t get bored of him. And then there were Stacey’s French lessons, which irked him more than he was able to express. S’il vous plaît. If he heard her say that one more time, he might actually ram her fag-packet-sized French dictionary down her throat.

Eventually, an old woman wearing a purple nylon polo-neck and a string of large, fake pearls emerged from behind the beaded curtain, holding the two colour print-outs Sellers had given her much younger and considerably more attractive assistant a few minutes earlier. One was of Geraldine Bretherick, the other of a brown Ozwald Boateng suit like the one Mark Bretherick had reported missing from his house.

‘You’re a policeman?’ The old woman did her best to look down at Sellers, even though she was several inches shorter than he was. She looked about seventy, had fluffy white hair, several prominent moles like lumps of brown putty stuck to her face, a beak of a nose, and about ten times more skin on her eyelids than a person could ever need; each one was like a small, fleshy concertina. ‘You want to know if anyone’s brought in a suit like this?’

‘That’s right.’

‘No. I’d have remembered. It’s got funny lapels.’ She glared at Sellers, daring him to disagree. ‘I don’t think our customers would like it at all.’

‘What about this woman? Do you remember seeing her in the last few weeks?’

‘Yes.’

‘Really?’ Sellers perked up. So far, the response had been a resounding ‘no’. He’d been to every dry-cleaner and charity shop in the Culver Valley and he might as well not have bothered. ‘Did she bring something in?’

‘No.’ The old lady leaned her beak towards him. ‘You asked if I remembered seeing her. I do. She often went into the picture-framer’s opposite. I saw her all the time, getting out of her car right outside the shop-she’d park on the double yellow line, plain as the nose on your face.’ Sellers tried very hard not to look at the nose on her face as she spoke, fearing he might laugh uncontrollably. ‘Usually she’d be carrying some dreadful picture-nothing more than splodges and scrawls, really, obviously by a child. Many a time I said to Mandy, “That woman ought to have her head examined.” I mean, Blu-Tacking them to the fridge door is one thing, but framing them… And why didn’t she wait and bring them in all at once? Didn’t she have anything better to do?’

‘Mandy? Is that your assistant?’ Sellers glanced in the direction of the beaded curtain, but there was no sign of the pretty young girl who’d served him. I’ve already got a pretty young girl, he reminded himself: Suki’s my pretty young girl.

‘If she had the time to take each squiggle of crayon to the framer’s individually then she had time to park her car properly,’ said the old woman. ‘No doubt she thought she’d only be nipping in and out, but all the same, there’s no excuse for parking on a double yellow line. We’ve all got to obey the rules, haven’t we? We can’t go making exceptions for ourselves whenever we feel like it.’

‘Right,’ said Sellers, because he could hardly say otherwise. And he agreed, by and large. Apart from where matters of the heart were concerned. The heart and other equally important organs.

‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’ Folds of skin rearranged themselves around the old woman’s eyes as she looked up at Sellers. ‘I saw it on the news.’

‘Right.’ And you’re still worried about her illegal parking habits? Get a life, you old bat.

‘What time is it?’

‘Nearly seven.’

‘You’d better make yourself scarce. Our evening event’s about to start.’

‘I’ve finished, anyway.’ Sellers eyed the three neat semicircular rows of grey plastic chairs in the middle of the shop. A wild time would be had by all, he didn’t think.

‘You should have come in the afternoon.’

‘I did. You were closed.’

‘Mandy was here all afternoon,’ the old woman contradicted him. ‘We’re open every weekday from nine thirty until five thirty. And, in addition, we have our evening events.’

Sellers nodded. So Mandy had snuck an afternoon off, had she? He was liking her more all the time. He wondered if she would be taking part in tonight’s event, and was about to ask what, precisely, Age Concern in Spilling had to offer him this evening. He came to his senses just in time, thanked the old woman for her help and left.