‘You’re what? I’ve cleared the whole day, remember? George is in Liverpool; a.m. in the cathedral, p.m. at a footie match.’

‘I know. Looking to get the credit if they win, eh?’

Her husband, George Harbott MP, known familiarly as Holy George, was the Labour spokesman on religious affairs.

He saw at once his joke had fallen on stony ground.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘And I’m really sorry about today. Early Alzheimer’s.’

He began to get out of bed.

‘What’s the hurry anyway?’ she queried. ‘Lunchtime’s hours away. And you could always ring them up and cancel, tell them you’ve got a cold or something. Come here and I’ll persuade you.’

‘I don’t doubt you could,’ he said, standing up out of her reach. ‘But no way I can cancel. This is my granpappy’s memorial community centre I’m opening.’

‘So? Your father’s still alive, if we can believe the Tory major contributors list. Why jump a generation? Let him open it.’

‘He says it’s a good vote-catcher for me,’ he replied. ‘And it’s not just lunchtime. I’ve got to go to church first.’

‘Church? You? Whose idea was that?’

‘Holy George’s, in a way. He rattles on so much about Christian values and getting back to the good old-fashioned Sabbath that Cameron’s getting edgy. What with your lot wallowing in Catholic converts and Scottish Presbyterianism, he feels he can’t rely on the old religious vote any more. His last newsletter stopped just short of establishing compulsory church parades. But it was Maggie who came up with this.’

‘Pinchbeck? Jesus, Dave, that woman’s got you by the pecker!’

The image itself was absurd, but he couldn’t deny its truth. Whatever his leader said, church was the last place he wanted to be on a Sunday. In fact when Maggie had suggested opening the new community centre on Sunday rather than on Monday as proposed by the council, he’d told her she must be mad.

She’d replied, ‘Monday there’s showers forecast, plus most people will be at work. You’ll get the council freeloaders and maybe a few bored mums with their wailing kids. Sunday’s the day for good works and this is a good work you’re doing. In fact, go to church first. St Osith’s is perfect. Just a mile down the road, plenty of room there and I know the vicar, Stephen Prendergast. He’ll be delighted to get the publicity. Service will be over by midday, so if we schedule the opening for one you should get most of the congregation along too, plus a whole gang of others with nothing better to do on a Sunday lunchtime.’

‘But what about the press?’

‘Leave the press to me. It will do that heathen bunch good to go to church.’

‘Won’t I risk alienating the ethnic vote?’

‘The Muslims, you mean? No. The moderates will be delighted to see you’re a man of faith. The extremists will want to blow you up whatever you do.’

She had an answer for everything, and the trouble was it usually turned out to be the right answer.

The woman was out of bed now and gathering up her clothes.

‘Hey, Sofe,’ he pleaded. ‘Don’t get mad. No need to rush off. Stay for some breakfast…’

‘You want I should still be hanging round here like this when Pinchbeck turns up? I can feel those beady little eyes tracking over every inch of flesh, looking for bite marks. You knew about this when I rang yesterday afternoon, right? But you didn’t say a thing in case I told you I didn’t care to be kicked out of bed at sparrowfart like some cheap tart. Well, I bloody well don’t!’

She disappeared into the bathroom. He heard the new power shower switch on. Half a minute later there was an enraged scream and Sophie appeared dripping water in the doorway.

‘You some kind of masochist, or what?’ she demanded. ‘That shower, it’s gone from red hot to icy cold of its own accord.’

He regarded her indifferently. Even a nicely put together body like hers ceased to be a turn-on when it was wet and goose-pimpled and topped by a face contorted by anger.

‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘I’ve been having some problems. Maggie got me a couple of Poles to fix things. Looks like I’ll need to have them back.’

‘Maggie!’ she spat. ‘I might have known she’d have something to do with it!’

She vanished.

David Gidman the Third yawned then picked up a remote from the dressing table and clicked it at a mini hi-fi system on top of a chest of drawers. Terfel’s sumptuous voice started singing ‘Ich habe genug’.

‘Now that’s what I call serendipity,’ he said.

He turned to a full-length mirror set in the wardrobe door and sang along for a while, studying himself in the glass.

Golden-skinned, craggily handsome, muscularly slim, reasonably well hung, and above all youthful; David Gidman the Third MP, the Tory Party’s Great Off-white Hope.

He stopped singing, dropped his voice, uttered a couple of gorilla grunts, scratched his balls, leered prognathically into the mirror, and said huskily, ‘The next PM but one-here’s looking at you, baby!’

For what felt like a good minute the woman called Gina Wolfe said nothing, but stared down at her hands, which were nervously plucking at the hem of her short skirt. Then suddenly out came a tumble of words.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘the thing is, I’d like to make it clear from the start, I don’t want Alex dead…OK, I know that’s the way it started out, me needing to prove he was dead, but what I mean is if I found him alive I wouldn’t want him to be killed…’

‘Just as well, missus,’ interrupted Dalziel. ‘’Cos I need to know folk really well afore I start doing favours like that.’

That stemmed the flow. Her hands stopped their movement and she looked him straight in the face. Then she smiled weakly.

‘I’m gabbling, aren’t I? It’s just that I didn’t think I was going to have to start at the start, so to speak.’

‘Because Mick Purdy would have put me in the picture, right? OK, let’s see if I can get you on track with a couple of questions. First, who’s Alex?’

‘Of course. Sorry. Alex Wolfe. My husband.’

‘And he left you?’

‘Yes. Well, no, I suppose strictly speaking I left him. But not really. I never abandoned him…I never thought of it as permanent…things had just got so bad that I needed space…we both did. And in a sense, he’d left me a long time before…’

‘Whoa!’ said Dalziel. ‘Lots of things I need to get straight afore we get into the blame game. Where was this? When was this? What did Alex Wolfe do for a living? Why did you leave him? I think that’ll do for starters.’

‘It was in Ilford, we lived in Ilford. I still do. That’s part of the problem…sorry. What did Alex do? He was like you. A policeman. Not as important. A detective inspector.’

Ilford. He’d heard of Ilford. It was in Essex. DI Mick Purdy had been with the Essex division of the Met. And Alex the walkabout husband had been a cop. Things were beginning to join up, but he was still a lot of lines short of a picture.

‘And you leaving him? What was that about? A woman?’

‘No! That would have been easy. Easier. It was a very bad time. For both of us. We lost…there was a bereavement…our daughter, Lucy…’

He could feel the effort she was making to keep herself together. Oh shit, he thought, me and my big boots. He’d have known about this presumably if he’d listened to Purdy on the phone.

On the other hand, not knowing meant he was getting everything up front, no pre-judgments.

He said, ‘I’m sorry, luv. Didn’t know. Must have been terrible.’

She said with unconvincing matter-of-factness, ‘Yes. Terrible just about sums it up. Certainly not the best of times to have this other stuff at work start up. Not that it seemed to bother Alex. He just didn’t seem to care. About anything. I got angry with him. I needed someone, but all he wanted was to be left alone. So I left him alone. I didn’t abandon him…we were in it together…except we weren’t…so I thought if left him alone…no I didn’t think that, I didn’t really think anything. I just had to be with people who would listen to me talking, and going into a room where Alex was felt like going into an empty room…’