All that had meant was that Cordelia gave up a regular wage in return for the uncertain rewards of success in the form of an equal share of the profits together with a rent-free bed-sitting-room in Bernie's house. He hadn't meant to cheat. The offer of the partnership had been made in the genuine belief that she would recognize it for what it was; not a good conduct prize but an accolade of trust.

'What was your father?'

'He was an itinerant Marxist poet and an amateur revolutionary.'

'You must have had an interesting childhood.'

Remembering the succession of foster mothers, the unexplained incomprehensible moves from house to house, the changes of schools, the concerned faces of Local Authority Welfare Officers and school teachers desperately wondering what to do with her in the holidays, Cordelia replied as she always did to this assertion, gravely and without irony.

'Yes, it was very interesting.'

'And what was this training you received from Mr Pryde?'

'Bernie taught me some of the things he learnt in the CID: how to search the scene of a crime properly, how to collect exhibits, some elementary self-defence, how to detect and lift fingerprints – that kind of thing.'

'Those are skills which I hardly feel you will find appropriate to this case.'

Miss Learning bent her head over her papers and did not speak again until the train reached Cambridge.

Outside the station Miss Learning briefly surveyed the car-park and led the way towards a small black van. Standing beside it rigidly as a uniformed chauffeur, was a stockily built young man dressed in an open-necked white shirt, dark breeches and tall boots who Miss Learning introduced casually and without explanation as 'Lunn'.