The heart of Kingsmarkham was no place to be on a Saturday evening, especially if you were over forty. It had once been a quiet country town, sleepy and peaceful, but now you might as well have been in Piccadilly Circus. The binge drinkers were out in force, spilling out of the pubs and clubs on to the pavement because this was a warm November. Wexford told Donaldson to drive them to the little pub on the Kingsbrook called the Gooseberry Bush and not to wait for them, they would walk home from there. The place wasn’t crowded but it wasn’t exactly deserted either. Young people without cars dislike the half-hour walk from the town along footpaths bordering water meadows. The car park was full of the transport used by the middle-aged. If you turned your back to it, as Wexford said, if you pretended it wasn’t there, you could look instead from your table at a clear starry sky and a moon shedding its pale light on to meadows bisected by dark hedges, willows fringing the Kingsbrook.

“That was awful,” he said flatly. “I should have been tougher but I felt so sorry for her.”

“Did she say any more after I’d gone?” Burden had left the house and gone outside to sit in the car.

“Only that they’d never moved the body. I mean they’d never done what she says they intended, that is burn or bury it. Well, we know they didn’t. They moved house, leaving the body in there, covered by all the logs.”

Burden ordered drinks for them without asking Wexford what he wanted. He knew. “That’s how it was when Damon and I found it.”

“Her husband died. I suppose the shock of knowing he’s killed a man caused his first stroke. She kept thinking she would go back into the bungalow and take a look, see if it could remain there, but she didn’t. Not till two years ago. Mrs Pickford asked her to tea. She says she went over there on the bus and got there a bit early. Grimble’s key was still under the stone by the back door. She went in and down the stairs.”

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