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this job, as you well know, you have to learn to divorce your personal life from your professional life.’
    â€˜Divorce! Now that’s an interesting choice of word to use,’ Monika Paniatowski said.
    â€˜Separate it, then,’ Woodend said impatiently. ‘Anyway, you see what I’m talkin’ about, don’t you? When we’re discussin’ a case, we have to be able to do it fully an’ openly. I can’t go pussyfootin’ around the issues – wondering whether you’ll think that when I talk about a suspect I’m secretly talkin’ about you. We’d never get anywhere if we did that.’
    â€˜You’re right,’ Monika Paniatowski said contritely.
    But the problem was, he wasn’t entirely sure himself that he
was
right, Woodend thought. He had always tried his best to understand human failing rather than condemn it, and he often told himself that he certainly wasn’t going to condemn Monika and Bob for their affair. Yet at the same time, he was forced to admit, there was a small corner of him which
did
blame – and found it very difficult to forgive – them.
    â€˜The reason I asked if she knew whether or not he had a family is because that could have had an effect on her behaviour,’ he said, feeling he was still not
quite
being entirely honest with either her or himself.
    â€˜Her behaviour,’ Paniatowski repeated dully. ‘For example?’
    â€˜For example, if she’d believed they had a future together, and then suddenly found out he would never leave the kids that she didn’t even know he had. That sort of revelation would be enough to make most people furious – and
more
than enough to make some people turn that fury into violence. If, on the other hand, she already did know about the kids, then she must also have known that there was at least a
good
chance she’d never have him for herself.’
    â€˜And so she’d be less likely to suddenly lose control of herself?’
    â€˜Exactly.’
    You’ve no idea what it’s like to be the
other
woman, have you, sir? Monika Paniatowski thought. Even if that other woman goes into it with both eyes open, there are still times when she feels so much rage at the situation that she wants to kill her lover, his wife – or herself.
    She took another cigarette out of the packet, and lit it from the stub of one of those burning a new scar into her desk.
    â€˜How did we ever get to this point?’ she asked.
    â€˜What point?’ Woodend wondered.
    â€˜The point at which we’re asking ourselves whether or not she had sufficient motive to kill her lover.’
    â€˜Come again?’
    â€˜We don’t even know yet if she even
had
a lover. Maybe the Dunethorpe bobbies were completely wrong about that, and Judith Maitland was actually telling the truth.’
    She was right, Woodend thought. Without noticing it, he had fallen into the same trap as the Chief Constable had – the trap of assuming that everything the Dunethorpe Police said was unquestionably accurate, and that if Judith Maitland had been convicted, then she was probably guilty.
    Himself and Marlowe of one mind! Now there was a terrifying thought if ever there was one!
    â€˜We need to go right back to the start of the case,’ he said. ‘We have to look at this murder as if it had just happened – as if the blood on the floor of Burroughs’ office hadn’t even dried yet. In other words, we need to approach it with open minds an’ a completely clean sheet.’
    â€˜And we need to
investigate
the people concerned – not judge them,’ Monika Paniatowski said.
    â€˜Aye, that an’ all,’ Woodend agreed, starting to feel slightly uncomfortable again.

Five
    L ike so many of the other businesses which had sprung up in Whitebridge since the end of the war, Élite Catering was situated on the industrial estate three miles from the