‘So, you’ve arrested my husband?’ She smiled, but haughtily so.

‘Not yet. He is helping with enquiries.’

‘He once told me what that phrase meant. The first time he helped the police with their enquiries, he was fifteen and a policeman threatened to break his arm unless he confessed to a crime he hadn’t committed.’

‘No comment,’ Yellich said coldly. ‘So you help your husband in the gym?’

‘No.’

‘No?’ Yellich glanced to his left through the pane of glass at men and women in brightly coloured sportswear pushing weights and running on small conveyor belts, moving to music with a strong beat.

‘No. He helps me run the gym. It’s my gym. We are married but the gym is mine. It belongs to me, lock, stock and barrel. I’m a wealthy woman, I was when I married him. He was not a wealthy man, he comes from Tang Hall, he’s still there in his mind. My father’s a businessman, farming equipment, has a house in Nether Poppleton.’

‘Different side of the tracks. Literally.’

‘Yes. He’s lucky to have me, don’t you think? I am a woman with everything, looks, charm, money. He’s a nice hunk of man flesh…he at least looks the part.’

‘Appearance means a lot to you, does it?’

‘It means everything. Appearance and money. But I’m secure. If I divorce him and cast him out into the great unknown, he goes back to Tang Hall and crime. And he knows it. I can control him. If he steps out of line he’s by himself. He dare not even look at another woman. Are you married?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is your wife pretty?’

‘No.’

Vanessa Sheringham smiled.

‘She’s beautiful. She’s a very beautiful woman. In every way.’

‘I see, the old “eye of the beholder” number…’

‘We’ll keep this official if you don’t mind, Mrs Sheringham.’

‘As you wish.’ Just then the music in the gym suddenly stopped.

‘Your husband can’t be very secure in his marriage. I mean, from what you’re telling me, if you were to divorce he has no claim, even in part, on the house or the gym.’

‘He doesn’t. Both were my possession before we married and he has signed a contract that should we divorce he will not lay claim to either. He gave his name to the gym because it has a certain ring to it. Before that it was called “Vanessa’s Gym”, but Sheringham’s is a little classier sounding. Don’t you think?’

‘Perhaps.’ But privately he conceded that names of products are very, very important in terms of marketing strategy. That was why dog fish used to be sold as ‘rock salmon’. When the practice was outlawed, nobody bought dog fish, though they’d been eating the inexpensive and highly nutritious ‘rock salmon’ for generations, so Yellich had once read.

‘But yes, I suppose he is a little insecure.’ Vanessa Sheringham turned to her side and replaced another compact disc in the hi-fi machine - once again, music of a strong beat and rhythm played loudly in the gym. ‘But I like that, you know.’ She smiled as she once again turned towards Yellich. ‘It keeps him on his toes, he’s very attentive. I’m happy with the arrangement. He’s not, but that’s the way I like it. I’m not prepared to surrender the least bit of control.’

‘What I’m driving at is that your husband has a lot of motivation to keep you happy?’

‘Yes.’ Vanessa Sheringham nodded. ‘That I like…a lot of motivation to keep me happy. He’s nothing without me, and an awful lot of women would be queuing up to fill my shoes. Not only because of what nature has given me, but because I have a fit, healthy and a handsome husband who will do my least bidding because he’s terrified of our marriage ending. That’s power. Power is lovely, it’s as profound as an orgasm.’

‘That’s very interesting.’ Yellich spoke softly. ‘Very interesting indeed.’

‘Power is, I’ve always liked power.’

‘No, I meant that your husband would do much to keep his marriage alive.’

‘Oh, he would. He comes from poverty, he’s frightened of going back to it. One step out of line, as I said, and he can kiss goodbye to the good life.’

‘He must be totally faithful to you?’

‘Like I said, Mr Yellich, my husband would not even dare to look at another woman.’

‘Can you tell me how many members you have?’

‘Two hundred. About.’

‘As many as that?’

‘They don’t all come at once.’

‘So I see.’

‘Members book in for one-hour sessions. We can accommodate thirty at any one time, we’re open from eight a.m. to ten at night. So you see, we can accommodate more than twice our membership in one working day, but with about two hundred members, the gym doesn’t get crowded. They pay an annual subscription, plus an entrance fee each time they come. We also sell snacks and hot drinks and sportswear. We do all right. We…I have a nice, steady growth rate. My husband may give the impression that we’re struggling, but that’s Tang Hall man speaking. If you grow up in Tang Hall, you rapidly learn to keep quiet about your money, if you’ve got any.’

‘Can I have a look at the membership list?’

‘Do you have a warrant?’

‘No. I can get one, then we’ll search the gym, who knows what steroids we’ll find?’

‘You won’t find any.’ Vanessa Sheringham reached for a drawer in a filing cabinet. ‘But you can have a look at the list. Male or female?’

‘Male, for now.’

‘That relieves me.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes.’ Vanessa Sheringham handed Yellich a sheet of paper containing a list of names and addresses. ‘Well, if you’ve arrested my husband, or he’s at least helping you with your enquiries, and you wanted a list of my female members, then I’d start to get a little worried that I might have to divorce him. I mean, who knows what he’s been up to?’

‘Who indeed?’ Yellich scanned the list of names. ‘Or what indeed?’ He found the ‘Rs’. Michael Richardson’s name came between John Richards and Donald Rye. ‘May I keep this?’

‘Yes. We have other lists.’

‘What does your husband do in his free time?’

‘He doesn’t have any free time. The only two days of the week when he’s not here with me at the gym are Wednesdays and Sundays, they’re our ladies-only days. On those days he’s addressing a list of jobs I leave for him. I add on, he does and ticks off when done. In any order he likes, keeps him busy about the house or collecting things. That’s how we work it, that’s how I like it.’

Yellich stood and said he’d see himself out.

Louise D’Acre took the length of scaffolding and held it against the linear fracture on the top of Amanda Williams’s skull. She rotated it along its length over the skull. ‘It’s a little wide,’ she said. She wore a green smock, the laboratory smelled of formaldehyde. Behind her, the laboratory assistant, Mr Filey, dutifully arranged surgical instruments on a trolley.

‘It’s possible,’ she added. ‘It’s not impossible but I cannot say that it was this or any other length of scaffolding which killed her. I’ve a better chance of identifying the murder weapon by examining her skull than his, the single blow, you see, classic case of going out like a light, left a neat injury. His head was battered repeatedly. His death might have been prolonged.’

‘Prolonged?’ Hennessey asked.

‘By a few seconds, but a second is a long time, long enough to know what’s happening to you and if you’re conscious for four or five seconds, then it’s long enough to feel emotion.’

‘Such as fear?’

‘Such as terror, such as the certainty of death this instant…knowing you haven’t the time to prepare for it. He knew what was happening to him. She, on the other hand, either did or did not know what happened to her husband. His head was battered out of shape…there was real passion there. In fact, his skull reminded me of the Choctaw Indian skulls. They were apparently one of the east coast tribes of what is now the USA. One of the early victims of the Pilgrim Fathers either by way of execution or the measles. But they used to flatten their skulls with tight bindings, in much the same way that the Chinese used to bind the feet of their girl children. Max Williams’s skull reminded me of the Choctaw Indian skull I once saw in a museum of anthropology. It was battered out of shape, which may or may not have been instantaneous. But she, bless her, was despatched by means of a single blow. Probably with something thinner than a length of scaffolding.’