'Something to do with this case, you mean?'

'I don't think so, sir,' said Wield. 'What happened was, Hector buzzed in about this lot, said that the ambulance was just arriving to take Mr Deeks away. It sounded at the time as if the old fellow was still alive, so Mr Headingley said he'd go down to the hospital to see what was what and asked me to get things started down here.'

They'd covered the few yards to 27, but Wield did not offer to knock and the two men sheltered from the driving rain as best they could in the lee of a puce-glossed doorway.

'He contacted me about half an hour later, maybe more. Told me Deeks was dead and Mrs Frostick was under sedation. Then he said something had come up and it'd be best if I could get hold of you as he was going to be occupied with this other thing. I asked if he wanted me to try to get hold of Mr Dalziel too, but he said no, there was no need for that, no need at all. He was being very cagey, said he'd explain things to you later. Anyway, that's how I came to be disturbing your evening.'

'You could have told me this on the phone!' protested Pascoe. 'It might have made me a fraction less bad-tempered.'

'Thought you'd prefer to start off with a clear mind,' said Wield.

He was right, of course. Anything that could make a good, solid, down-to-earth copper like George Headingley slide out from under a murder inquiry must be serious. Already Pascoe's mind was spiralling off into the inane of speculation. He only hoped he could drag it back to earth and hold it there till he got this investigation properly under way.

He needn't have worried. Ballast was at hand.

The fluorescent door was flung open, revealing a brightly lit living-room where the full volume of a television set competed vainly with a clamorous wallpaper whose main motif was the display ritual of birds of paradise in a tropical jungle. Lowering his eyes, Pascoe met the glower of a short but enormously broad woman in a nylon overall which seemed to have been glossed from the same pot as the doorway.