‘Thirty-five minutes, boss,’ Yellich said as Hennessey pulled up outside the Williamses’ bungalow.

‘Right. So that ties in with Lieutenant Williams’s statement about getting home at about half past midnight, if Mr Vialli is correct about the time they left the Mill. Let’s have a look inside the house.’

They left the car, ducked under the blue and white police tape which had been strung across the driveway from gatepost to gatepost and entered the house using the back door key.

‘What are we looking for, boss?’

‘Don’t know, Yellich.’ Hennessey turned the key in the lock. ‘We’ll know when we find it.’ He opened the door and stepped over the threshold. ‘Oh my…’

‘What is it, boss?’

‘Just the neatness, the tidiness, the everything-in-its-place-ness. I couldn’t relax in this house. Little wonder the son was drawn to the navy. Anyway. If you wanted to find out about a woman’s private life, where would you look?’

‘The bedroom. Her dressing table.’

‘So would I.’

‘And if you wanted to find out about a man’s private life, where would you look?’

‘In his study if he has one; among his papers, at any rate.’

‘So would I. Man does. Woman is. There is still much truth to that statement, despite what the angry sisterhood might think.’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘Right. We’ll stay together. Bedroom first. Bit strong, isn’t it? The smell of disinfectant, bleach as well, I think.’

‘Just the sort of house it is, sir. And the windows haven’t been opened much, in this heat, just the ideal conditions to make smells rise.’

‘Daresay you’re right. Let’s find out about Mrs Williams.’

Hennessey and Yellich went to the main bedroom of the house and slid between the bed and the dressing table, and Hennessey noted how there wasn’t a seat in front of the dressing table. He said, ‘She must have sat on the bed when putting on her war paint.’

‘Must have, sir,’ Yellich muttered, picking up a printed card from the table. ‘But here’s Sheringham.’ He handed the card to Hennessey.

‘Sheringham’s Gym.’ Hennessey turned the card over. It was blank on the reverse where he had noticed people often scribble messages of personal note. ‘Holgate, York.’

‘Nice and central,’ Yellich offered. ‘A lot of mixed housing there, plenty of old properties that could be turned into a gym.’

‘We’ll pay a call there.’ Hennessey took a note of the address and then began to open the drawers of Mrs Williams’s dressing table. In a deep drawer, at the back, behind expensive lingerie, was a small black notebook. It contained a series of entries, but one, Tim—the gym’, and then the phone number of Sheringham’s Gym, stood out. Tim Sheringham,’

Hennessey mused. ‘We ought to have a chat with him.’

‘You know, boss, in the CID training course, they impressed on us not to leap to conclusions, and not to dismiss the unlikely. That’s what they said.’

‘Did they indeed? Let’s look at the study.’

Yellich turned and left the room. Hennessey followed.

‘Yes, sir. They said that “improbable” and “impossible” are two different words, each with their own meaning, and CID officers shouldn’t blur the meanings.’

‘Don’t say.’ The two men stood in the living room of the house. ‘I never actually did CID training. In my day, you were just promoted and you got on with it, learning as you went along.’

‘The point being, that what is improbable is not impossible.’

‘Well, there’s wisdom for you.’

‘Well, this is just a long-winded way of saying I think your waters are right. I thought it suspicious all along but I didn’t dismiss kidnap or embezzlement.’

‘Now you do?’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘We can still be wrong. I hope for Max and Amanda Williams’s sake that we are. You said there was a study?’

‘Here, sir. A little cubby hole with a bureau.’

Which Hennessey thought a very apt description. It was a small indentation off the dining room, which adjoined the living room; it had no door and contained just a modern, neat-looking, angular bureau, and a modern, upright chair, with the bureau having been pushed lengthways into the indentation and the chair wedged against it. He, like Yellich, noted that a person sitting on the chair had to place his or her legs at either side of it in order to be sitting at the bureau. Hennessey, feeling his joints to be too old for such acrobatics, stood beside the chair and lowered the bureau lid.

‘Everything shipshape and Bristol fashion,’ Yellich said, nothing the neatness of the papers in the bureau. ‘Just like the rest of the house.’

‘Everything what fashion?’

‘Bristol fashion, boss. Mate of mine has a small yacht, a twenty-five-footer, keeps it in Hull Marina, uses that expression a lot.’

‘Well, Bristol must be a neat town.’

‘Don’t know, boss. I’ve never been there.’

Hennessey threw him a pained look and then returned his attention to the contents of the bureau. He studied the Williamses’ credit card statements. He gasped. The Williamses’ credit limit was sufficient to buy a very good prestige secondhand car, maybe even a new car at the bottom end of the market. The balance outstanding was about the same amount. Against the ‘payment received, thank you’ the sum was modest in the extreme. Less than a meal for two in a good restaurant. ‘Look at that, Yellich.’ Yellich pondered the statements. ‘He’s been living at the edge of his credit. He’s been spending money like ‘Like there’s no tomorrow. Apt, don’t you think?’

‘Double suicide, do you think, boss? Blow it all away then top themselves. It’s not unknown.’

‘Well, they’ve still got the bungalow…so all is not lost. But if they have been murdered, it wasn’t for their money. And you were right to rule out kidnap and embezzlement. Nothing here to pay a ransom, nothing to embezzle. It veers me still further to the belief that the Williamses are no longer with us by the hand of A. N. Other, or others.’

The phone in the bungalow rang. Yellich and Hennessey looked at each other. Hennessey said, ‘Better answer it.’

Yellich strode into the living room. He picked up the warbling phone and said, ‘Hello…DS Yellich, North Yorkshire Police. Who is this?…Oh…right…well, no, we don’t know what has happened to your parents. Can you hold the line, please?’ Yellich pressed the monitor button on the phone and called to Hennessey. ‘It’s the daughter, sir, Nicola. She says she just heard from her brother and has phoned home. She says that there’s no logic to her actions if her parents are missing, but she did it anyway on a whim. I can understand that, boss.’

‘So can I, Yellich. Daresay I’d do the same if I was in her position. Right. Ask her when she last saw her parents, ask her if the name Sheringham, possibly Tim Sheringham, means anything to her, ask her if she knows of any enemies her parents might have and ask her for a contact phone number.’

‘Right, sir.’

Hennessey listened as Yellich put the questions and the request to Nicola Williams. Yellich listened and then said, ‘Yes, of course we’ll let you know of any developments.’

He replaced the phone and joined Hennessey in the dining room. ‘Well, sir, she last saw her parents on Sunday. She said goodbye to both of them and drove to London. She confirms that her brother had left the house by then.’

‘So she saw both of them. By the time she was ready to leave, her father had crawled groggily out of bed with a bad head.’

‘It would appear so, sir. She left at about three p.m. That would be their last sighting. She knows Tim Sheringham.’

‘She does?’

‘Manager of the gym. Her mum goes to work out there, makes no secret of it.’

‘She wouldn’t if she was having an affair with the manager. Especially if said manager was younger than her son.’

‘Aye, happen. She knows of no enemies that her parents might have. And she’s given me her home and office phone number.’