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after the style of Kandinsky, and should make a nice contrast with all the other stuff on show.’
    ‘Ah ah! I bet they will.’
    We shook hands and I gave him my card and told him the usual: ‘If you think of anything else…’ and thanked him profusely for his help. He asked me to let him know how the investigation progressed and I said I would.
    I turned right at the Corner, into Hyde Park Road, with the open ground of the university campus on my left and endless rows of Victorian terraced houses on the other side. At Brudenell Road I made a right, then turned into another street and drove round in a big square. Almost every house had a couple of estate agents’ signs planted in the front yard, sticking out like prayer flags in a stiff breeze, announcing rooms to let. The student population would be returning in the next few weeks and the last of what was once a community would retreat to their cellars until the blessed relief of the Christmas recess. If Magdalena wasn’t on the electoral roll, finding someone who knew her would be as hopeless as looking for a matching pair in a mushy pea factory.
     
    The troops were sitting round in a big group when I arrived back at the nick, either gossiping and telling dirty stories or discussing various cases, depending on who you asked. I made myself a mug of tea and joined them.
    ‘Everything moving smoothly, Jeff?’ I asked.
    Jeff Caton takes on all the other stuff, mainly burglaries, when I’m diverted to a murder case. ‘All in order, Chas,’ he replied, desperately trying to suppress a wicked smile.
    I told Dave and Maggie about Magdalena Fischer and they said they’d booted up the HOLMES terminal down in the incident room, had a quick look at the crime scene and fetched the files from Halifax. Dave was sitting with his chair the wrong way round, hunched over with his elbows resting on the chair back. When the boring stuff was out of the way Jeff said: ‘Did anybody see that programme on eagle owls the other night?’
    ‘I did,’ Dave replied, immediately sitting up.
    ‘It was fascinating,’ Jeff told us. ‘They have a six-foot wingspan.’
    ‘And they can carry a sheep,’ Dave added.
    ‘Well, a lamb.’
    ‘That’s right. A lamb.’
    ‘And there’s one loose on the North York Moors.’
    ‘Has anyone actually seen one catch a lamb?’ I asked.
    ‘Not on the North York Moors, but they can, in their native land.’
    ‘What sort of noise do they make?’ asked Brendan, one of my DCs.
    ‘They just hoot.’
    ‘What, like a train?’
    ‘No, like an owl.’
    ‘Perhaps sheep are smaller where they come from,’ somebody suggested.
    ‘Sheep are the same size everywhere,’ Jeff assured us. ‘A sheep is a sheep.’
    ‘African elephants are bigger than Indian elephants,’ John Rose argued.
    ‘Surely they can’t lift an elephant,’ I protested.
    ‘Well, not an African one,’ Jeff replied.
    ‘Are you lot taking the piss?’ Dave wondered.
     
    After that the meeting broke up and we went home. I dined on lamb chops done in the slow cooker with all the vegetables, and frozen Yorkshire pudding. Frozen Yorkshire puddings are a gift from God. After I’d finished I went up into the loft and started exploring. There were two tents up there of an ancient design, with all the other camping gear necessary for a summer break not too far from the creature comforts should the weather turn nasty. I smiled at the memories. After college I married the best-looking girl there, and we had a couple of camping holidays down in Cornwall. It was all we could afford. Two were enough for Vanessa, though, and she moved on to somewhere with room service. I realised that I’d been doing quite a bit of reminiscing lately, and wondered what it was a symptom of.
    There was enough paint up there to paint a mural on the Great Wall of China, in tubes, jars and tins, plus a couple of easels and assorted works of art that would never see daylight again. I remembered each one, where I