'She really hated uniforms, didn't she?' said Myra dropping the picture back in the drawer. 'I still remember how sarky she got when I joined the Brownies.'

'Think of how she must have felt with Dad playing soldiers in the TA once a week. Not to mention him turning out a Hang 'em and Flog 'em Tory.'

'Still voting for the revolution are you, Peter? Funny that, you being a cop. Now that was really the last straw for poor old Ada, wasn't it?'

She sounded as if the memory didn't altogether displease her.

'At least it got her and Dad on the same side for once,' said Pascoe, determined not to he lured back into a squabble. 'He told me he hadn't subsidized me through a university education to pound a beat. He wanted me to be a bank manager or something in the City. Gran saw me as a reforming MP. She was even more incredulous than Dad. She came to my graduation thinking she could change my mind. Dad had given up on me by then. He wouldn't even let Mum come.'

Despite his effort at lightness he could feel bitterness creeping in.

'Well, you got your own back, getting yourself posted up north and finding fifty-seven varieties of excuse why you could never make it home at Christmas,' said Myra. 'Still, it's all water under the bridge. Gran's gone, and I bet Dad bores the corks off their hats down under boasting about my son the chief inspector.'

'You reckon? Maybe I'll resign. Hey, remember how you used to beat me at tennis when I was a weedy kid and you had forearms like Rod Laver? Got any of those muscles left?'

Between them they manoeuvred the secretaire out of the cottage and up onto his roof rack. He strapped it down, with a waterproof sheet on top of it.

'Right,' said Myra. 'Now what?'

'Now you push off. I'll finish the inventory and start sorting her papers. You've got to be back here tomorrow morning to meet the house clearance man, remember?'