‘So fill me in,’ said the DCI.

Wonder what he’d do if I said, No, you go first? thought Dalziel. Arrest me? Wouldn’t put it past the bugger!

He said, ‘That woman you saw me with at the Keldale, her name’s Gina Wolfe…’

He told the story fairly straight, though he did omit his confusion about the day, and glossed over the fact that he and the woman had met in the cathedral.

His involvement of Novello in the business, his subsequent phone contact with her, the whole sequence of events at the Keldale he described in exact detail. With the lass in hospital, glossing over things wasn’t an option here, not even if they made him look foolish or irresponsible. But he found himself over-stressing that when he passed on Watkins’s address to Novello, he’d told her to find out anything she could about the man but to avoid any direct contact.

When he finished, Pascoe said peremptorily, ‘This photograph you mentioned, you’d better let me have it.’

Have it, not see it.

He took the envelope out of his inner pocket. Pascoe put his gloves back on before taking it.

‘Blond hair,’ said Pascoe. ‘But not wearing a wig. Though, if what you say about Gina Wolfe thinking she saw him watching her at the Keldale is correct, it wasn’t much of a disguise anyway. Of course we’re only guessing that Watkins is Wolfe.’

‘Same initials,’ said Dalziel.

‘Andy, Wieldy’s got the same initials as Esther Williams but that doesn’t mean you want to see him in a figure-hugging swimsuit.’

That was better. First name, a joke, altogether more relaxed. Or mebbe it was just part of the clever bugger’s technique.

He said, ‘Any road, Mick Purdy thinks this is likely a fake.’

‘But you haven’t checked yet?’ said Pascoe.

‘Not had time,’ said Dalziel defensively.

‘No, you have been rather busy. Eating and sleeping,’ murmured Pascoe.

Before the Fat Man could decide how to respond to this piece of insolence, Pascoe handed the magazine page to the sergeant and said, ‘See if you can check this out, Wieldy. Who’ve we got at HQ?’

‘Seymour’s there.’

‘Just the man. Tell him to get himself a WPC then head off to the Keldale to bring Mrs Wolfe in. And we’ll need a team to look at her stuff. Car, clothes, the lot. What was she wearing when you last saw her, Andy?’

‘A sort of negligee,’ said Dalziel. ‘I explained…’

‘I don’t mean that,’ said Pascoe. ‘Though her having a shower might be significant. So what was she wearing last time you saw her fully dressed?’

Dalziel bit back an angry response. In Pascoe’s shoes, he’d be asking the same.

He described Gina’s dress as best he could.

‘Right. Particular attention to that, Wieldy.’

‘Right,’ said the sergeant. ‘By the way, what are we going to do with the Duttas?’

‘They still here? I thought he was taking her back to his mother’s till SOCO got finished going over the corridor.’

‘She’s not keen to go. Don’t think she cares for her ma-in-law and she’s loving being at the centre of things here. I got her out of the caravan after taking their statement, but they’re still sitting round the back.’

‘I’ll have a word.’

The sergeant got out of the car and headed for the caravan.

Dalziel said, ‘Pete, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree about Gina Wolfe…’

‘It still needs barking up,’ said Pascoe. ‘Woman’s in the middle of getting her runaway husband declared officially dead so she can inherit his estate and remarry. She thinks she sees him in or around the same place as Shirley Novello spots a man who’s bugging your table. This man is later found murdered. He is wearing a wig, presumably to disguise his appearance. The woman had possibly overheard you passing on this man’s address to Novello. What would you do, Andy?’

‘I’d want to ask her what she’d been doing all afternoon,’ admitted Dalziel.

‘Of course you would. Right, let’s go and talk to the Duttas.’

Inclusive, but not subordinate. Go with the flow, Andy, till you see where the flow is going, he told himself as he eased his bulk out of the car.

Behind the caravan they found an Asian man standing alongside a woman seated on a fold-up canvas chair. The man, dressed in a Technicolor beach shirt and off-white Nadal-style shorts, looked rather anxious, but the woman, bright-eyed and beautiful in a shot-silk kaftan under which she was heavily pregnant, could have been relaxing in a holiday caravan park.

‘Mr and Mrs Dutta, this is my colleague Detective Superintendent Dalziel,’ said Pascoe. ‘Perhaps you could tell him what you told me earlier. Excuse me, Andy, I’ll be back in a minute.’

The cunning bastard’s leaving me stuck with this lot while he gets on with God knows what! thought the Fat Man. But he wanted to hear it anyway.

Mr Dutta began to speak rapidly.

‘Yes, on Sundays we go to have lunch with my mother. She lives in Bagley Street near the post office, and usually we would stay there all afternoon, sometimes into the evening, but Devi was not feeling so good when we arrived, so we hardly had any lunch at all and came home early only for all this to happen and I am very worried about Devi who should not be put under any strain because of her condition as you can see.’

Devi, from Dalziel’s observation, did not look to be suffering from anything other than a keen desire to find out what was going on and a certain amount of excitement at being at the centre of it. His guess was she was milking her condition for all it was worth to minimize contact with her mother-in-law.

He said, ‘Right, we’ll keep it short then. Tell me about Mr Watkins. Did you know him well?’

‘Not very well,’ began Ravi Dutta.

‘Not very well?’ his wife cut in. ‘I think I’ve seen him once! Number 39 was empty when we moved in six months ago; we looked at it because the rent was much cheaper than our flat, but that was because it is so small, and we needed the extra room with baby on the way, and Ravi has a good job so we can afford it even though his mammy did not want us to leave-we used to live with her, you see, and that was bad enough when there were just the two of us but soon as I knew I was carrying, I said to Ravi, this will not do at all…’

Dalziel said, ‘So how long has number 39 been occupied?’

‘I am not precisely sure…’ began Ravi.

‘Four months ago I started hearing noises, television and radio, the walls are very thin, but not so loud I needed to complain,’ said Devi. ‘In any case, it was not every day; a lot of the time there did not seem to be anyone there, then I would hear the TV again, then another few days or a week and nothing. I thought he must travel a lot…’

‘So tell me what happened today.’

Now Mr Dutta got a short innings. To save his wife the walk, he had gone to get the car, which he kept in a lock-up a minute’s walk away. He’d expected to find her waiting outside the Villas. When she wasn’t there, he had gone back inside to fetch her.

‘See anyone hanging around outside?’ asked Dalziel.

‘No, I do not think so. Though I think someone came into the building behind me.’

Now Devi took over again.

‘There was noise from the TV next door, it was a movie, it sounded an exciting movie, lots of shouting and shooting and loud music, and I was thinking how nice it would be to sit and watch a movie this afternoon instead of making a visit, and then there was a noise like someone falling and a big bang and voices and suddenly the music and everything got much louder, and I said to Ravi, What is that? And he said, It is the television, come on we are late, and I said, It sounded different from the movie, but he was so anxious not to be late at his mammy’s that I did not have time to knock on the door and ask if everything was all right.’

Lucky you, thought Dalziel.

‘But when we came back early because I was not feeling well, while Ravi was parking the car, I went up to the flat and the TV next door was still playing as loud as ever, so I knocked at the door but no one came, and when Ravi came up he knocked too, but still no one come, so I said, Now we must tell someone. Ravi did not want to cause a row but I said, No, this we cannot put up with, in any case maybe Mr Watkins is ill, so I went into our flat and rang 999. Soon your men came, they made us stay in our flat then they brought us out here. What is happening, Superintendent? Is Mr Watkins dead? Did he attack the lady they carried out? When shall we…’