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police officer I thought I knew? ‘Well…’ I prevaricated. ‘I shouldn’t, really. If I get cracking, I can be home again soon after one.’
    ‘Up to you,’ she shrugged. ‘We’re probably leaving this afternoon, as well. But you ought to have a look at the village, first. It’s really interesting. Paul and I walked around it after breakfast, and now I’m off for a look at Blockley.’
    ‘On your own?’
    She shrugged. ‘Paul isn’t very interested. I know Blockley, you see,’ she added. ‘I stayed there with my mum, just about a year ago.’
    She was confiding in me against her better nature, the way people often did. I was good at simply absorbing revelations and vague musings like this. I watched her face, which had relaxed and softened as she spoke. ‘A man was murdered,’ she went on. ‘I hadn’t realised until today how close the two places are. You could walk from here to Blockley and back in barely an hour.’
    I reminded myself of why I was there. Mr Maynard had marched off, his head bent against the wind, and I wondered why he had no visible car to drive away in. Did he perhaps live in Broad Campden? I felt quite glad that he had not stayed to include Jessica in our confrontation.
    ‘No,’ I decided. ‘I really think I ought to head for home.’
    ‘Up to you,’ she conceded. ‘But I think I’ll leave Blockley for another time. I might go and have a proper look at your grave instead, now it’s been filled in.’
    As I opened the driver’s door of my car I remembered again that there was history between Officer Jessica and my humble motor. Keeping my back to her, I waited for the heavy hand, the stern words. They never came. When I glanced back, she had gone into the field, and was disappearing towards the grave, which we had very considerately tucked into a corner out of sight of the road. I got in quickly, and started the engine.
    But something held me back, and I switched it off again. Was I simply going to drive all that tedious way home, with nothing resolved? Mr Maynard would be true to his word, despatching legal threats to me at Peaceful Repose, and disturbing my serenity for the following weeks and months. Wouldn’t it be better to face up to the situation now, and try to get it settled? And where better to start than with an officer of the law, who might yet lend a helpful word, if I managed not to alienate her any further?
    I got out of the car and waited, watching the wind tossing the tops of the leafless trees, thinking how typically March it was and finding some small consolation in the cycle of the seasons and the bigger picture. It seemed a long time before Jessica came back, but was probably less than five minutes. ‘Still here?’ she asked me, unnecessarily.
    ‘I don’t suppose you know Mr Maynard from Parks and Recreation, do you?’
    She stared at me blankly. ‘Of course not. How would I?’
    ‘No…silly question. I just thought, as you were in Blockley recently…well, you might have come across him somehow. He was phoned by one of the mourners at yesterday’s funeral,’ I went on. ‘And he wasted no time in causing trouble. He’s one of those people you feel should never have been born. It’s impossible to imagine him doing any good in the world.’ I was speaking as much to myself as to her, venting my spleen with no sense of caution. Jessica fixed me with a clear greeny-brown gaze. ‘You can’t say that about anybody,’ she told me seriously. ‘That’s a fascist remark.’
    ‘I know,’ I said. ‘It indicates the strength of my antipathy towards him. You should have heard the things he said.’
    ‘I can imagine how it might have been. Council officers do tend to miss the point at times.’ She smiled at me, and for the first time I caught a flash of her mother in her. ‘It’s a nice grave,’ she added, and I felt she’d awarded me some kind of major Brownie point.
    ‘Thanks,’ I said.
    ‘It’ll be a shame if they have to disinter her.