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admin department, where he hoped he’d be able to photocopy her personnel file. That would be a real coup.
    Until then, he was patiently and painstakingly building up his own dossier on her.
    So far, he’d liked all that he’d found out about her. Except for the husband, of course. Finding out all about that bent, no-good tosser had been like discovering an ugly worm in an otherwise perfect apple. His memory niggled away at Tom, making him doubt her, and he hated that.
    He so didn’t want to doubt her. This time he wanted perfection. He couldn’t bear another disappointment, like all the others.
    And she was so close to being perfect. Choosing an older woman had been a really clever move on his part.
    She was beautiful.
    Experienced.
    Clever.
    Accomplished. When he’d found out about her degree in English Literature from Oxford it had made him almost glow with pride.
    Not only was she all that, but she was like a celebrity back at HQ. Everyone was talking about her return.
    She only had the one thing blotting her otherwise perfect image.
    A bad marriage. No, worse than bad – a catastrophic marriage.
    It was a pity that Ronnie Greene was already dead, Tom thought, his green eyes glittering with frustration.
    He’d rather have liked to have been able to kill him himself.

CHAPTER THREE
    J immy Jessop pulled off the main Oxford to Banbury road when he saw the signpost for Thrupp up ahead and found himself on a narrow lane, leading to what seemed to him to be little more than a cluster of cottages. Although he’d lived in Kidlington itself for several years now, he’d never had reason to visit the tiny satellite community, based on the Oxford canal.
    It looked pretty and peaceful, almost out of time with the modern world just a few moments away and he understood at once why someone, faced with the stresses and pressures of a demanding job, would want to live here.
    He parked on the grass verge, allowing room for cars to pass, and wandered down to the canal. On an overcast March morning, it looked grey-green and uninviting, although some rushes were starting to spring verdantly at the edges, promising beauty to come and a curious moorhen drifted by, eyeing him warily.
    Most of the narrowboats that were moored along the towpath for as far as he could see were either brightly coloured or boasted traditional ‘canal art’ – painted panels of crudely cheerful scenes, mostly floral, in vibrant reds, greens, blues and yellows. But one narrowboat, moored further down, was a different proposition, being painted predominantly in a soft blue-grey, with a black-painted roof and attractive white and gold trim. As he approached it, he could see that the side panels on this boat had simple, well-executed paintings that all depicted herons. A quick glance at the name on the pointed end confirmed that this was indeed the ‘Mollern’, his new guv’nor’s boat.
    He stood beside it, not sure what to do next. A total landlubber, he was not sure of the protocol. Did he shout, ‘Ahoy there’ like someone from a pirate movie? Jimmy didn’t much see himself as Johnny Depp. On the other hand, he didn’t fancy stepping onto the boat at all without permission. And the wide hinged door allowing entrance looked to be made of metal, and he didn’t fancy rapping his knuckles on it.
    Instead he bent down a bit, and said loudly into the nearest window, ‘Morning, ma’am.’
    A movement at one of the curtains caught his eye, and Hillary’s face briefly appeared, then withdrew. A moment later she climbed out of the back, and slipped the padlock around the door. She was dressed in a pencil-line black skirt with a matching black jacket and an apricot coloured blouse. She looked both smart and professional but also competent and comfortable. She smiled a welcome, and stepped neatly off the boat and onto the gravelled towpath.
    As they walked to his car, Jimmy brought her up to date on what he’d discovered about the original inquiry’s main