But not a note. A phone call. A besotted admirer had once told him he had the kind of vibrator voice that could sell bacon futures to an ayatollah. His old English teacher wasn’t the only Burton manqué.

As if issuing a challenge, ‘Cwm Rhondda’ played. He checked the name: Gem Huntley. He’d promised to meet up with her later. No time for that now. He couldn’t be bothered to talk to the girl, but he’d better not leave her totally disconnected. For one thing, she’d be expecting some feedback from the opening to put into her piece. Not that she’d be getting more than a couple of paras.

The phone stopped ringing. He thought for a moment then tapped out a message on his laptop.

Hotlips, hi! Opening went fine. Gidman made moving speech about his family’s origins, said his father felt affection and loyalty towards the community as did he etc etc. Universal applause. Centre a joy to behold. Sorry, something’s come up, family emergency, gran about to snuff it but won’t go without seeing me first, so need to head west. Look forward to catching up with you soon as I get back. Anticipate I’ll be emotionally vulnerable and in need of a lot of TLC! Love G x

There, that should keep her on hold. One excuse fits all. The economy of genius!

He sent the message, closed the laptop, began to put it into its case, then changed his mind.

Nowadays there were computers wherever you went. Lugging a pricey bit of kit like this around was a liability. Up there in the frozen north they lifted everything that wasn’t nailed down. He had no fears about leaving it here. Marina Tower had better security than Westminster Palace and another thing he certainly hadn’t shared with Beanie was his access code.

He stuck the laptop at the back of the top shelf of the wardrobe and headed down to his car.

As he drove away he felt that surge of excitement that always accompanied the start of a trail. This was what made him the success he was. Brought up in a strict nonconformist socialist tradition, it was easy, and useful, to claim a moral imperative for what he did. Sometimes he almost believed it himself. But this time he revelled in acknowledging to himself at least that it was completely personal.

Getting some dirt on Goldie Gidman and making sure it spread out wide enough to hit his son would be a real pleasure.

He selected one of the discs in his CD player, found the track he wanted, pressed the play button.

The tremendous opening bars of ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ thrilled out.

The image it brought to his mind had nothing to do with buxom divas and grand opera, which he disliked almost as much as male voice choirs. It was the helicopter squadron in Apocalypse Now signalling its devastating approach to the Vietnamese villagers.

Whatever was going on up there in the frozen north, the bastards were in for a real shock when they realized who it was that had them in his sights.

He turned the music up full blast.

‘Here I come, ready or not!’ he cried.

Ellie Pascoe wasn’t happy with the way her Sunday had gone and she blamed Dalziel.

The explosion of glass that proclaimed his imminence to the pastoral idyll of baby Lucinda’s christening party should have warned her. This was a promise of disruption as clear as thunder on an east wind. But bathed in the golden glow of the autumn sun, not to mention the golden glow of the Keldale’s champagne, she had refused to let it dissipate her feelings of mellow fruitfulness. Peter had never looked more attractive and the afternoon stretched out before them like a fair field over which they would wander to that most private corner of their garden where a suburban Adam and Eve could imparadise themselves in one another’s arms with no witness other than the lusty sun.

But things started to go downhill thereafter, slowly at first, then with gathering momentum.

The baby grew fractious, a condition that spread rapidly to his parents with an interesting role reversal in that it was the anxious dad urging that the best place for little Lucinda was home and the laid-back mum retorting that this was nonsense, babies were like viola players, they cried to get attention, but if you left them alone, they usually fell asleep.

Whoever said that music has charms to soothe a savage breast clearly hadn’t heard the clarinet duet now played by Rosie Pascoe and a stout young woman called Cilla who had been less abstemious than her partner. All went well till Cilla was assailed by a sforzando set of hiccoughs which might in less musically sensitive company have passed for an amusing experiment in syncopation. Baby Lucinda, who had shown signs of nodding off, came back to screaming life and a vengeful violist observed loudly that if these were Ali’s primas, he would not care to hear her secondas. The duet limped to its end with Rosie winning by several bars. Cilla left the pagoda in tears, Rosie in a rage.

When her parents caught up with her, she refused to be consoled, declaring her conviction that this must inevitably signal the end not only of Ali’s friendship but of her tuition, in acknowledgement of which she threatened to break her clarinet across her knee, prompting Pascoe, who’d found the duet quite hilarious, to say brightly, ‘Not all bad then,’ which did nothing to improve the moment. Nor did it help that the Sinfonietta quartet who were back in the pagoda now broke into a schmalzy rendering of ‘The Last Rose of Summer’.

It had taken the direct intervention of Ali Wintershine to lift the girl from the depths of despair, for which Ellie was grateful. But her gratitude grew somewhat dusty when Rosie, now revelling in her role as justified sinner, demanded yet one more reassurance that she was truly forgiven and Ali said, ‘A few of my very dearest friends are coming to the house for a cup of tea after we finish here. Why don’t you join us, Rosie? And your mum and dad, too, of course.’

Refusal would clearly have tipped the girl back into the depths, so Ellie had put mellow fruitfulness on hold, gritted her teeth, and said brightly, ‘That would be nice.’

Pascoe had taken the diversion fairly philosophically. Though looking forward with much enthusiasm to the promised bliss awaiting him at home, the afternoon was young, not yet half past two, and he didn’t mind a brief interval of tea and cake to neutralize the side-effects of too much champagne.

It was quickly apparent to Ellie that the alleged tea-party was little more than a ruse to complete Rosie’s restoration. There were only two very dearest friends there: a timpanist with a roving eye and a habit of testing all surfaces he encountered for resonance, including, whenever he got the chance, those of the other musical friend, a bassoonist too intoxicated to know her Arne from her Elgar. Ed Muir, perhaps thinking of the large cost of what hadn’t turned out to be a totally successful celebration, appeared somewhat distracted, provoking a sotto voce reproof from his partner, who clearly felt he wasn’t pulling his weight as co-host. Only Rosie looked unequivocally delighted. Getting her out of there, Ellie realized, was not going to be easy.

At this stage, though already feeling Dalziel’s unexpected appearance as augurous, she was still far from ascribing to him full responsibility for the day’s divagations.

Then Pascoe’s mobile rang.

Ellie sometimes claimed there was a ring tone undetectable by ordinary people. Only a policeman’s wife could catch it, and she heard it now.

He looked at the display, mouthed ‘Wieldy’ at her apologetically, and left the room at the same time as Ed Muir who’d vanished a little earlier re-entered to tell Ali there was a small catering crisis at the Arts Centre that required his presence. Ali started demanding details and there was no saying where this debate may have led if Pascoe hadn’t appeared in the doorway looking distracted and said, ‘Ellie, sorry, I’ve got to go. Can you get a taxi?’