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thinks instinctively.
    ‘So,’ she says, standing above him like a monarch preparing to bestow a knighthood. ‘Where did they find him?’
    McAvoy looks up, but can’t make eye contact without straining his neck, and can’t unpick his laces without looking at them. ‘If you’ll just give me a moment, Mrs Stein-Collinson …’
    She responds with an irritated sigh. He imagines her face becoming stern. Tries to decide if it will do more harm to give her the details from this most inappropriate of positions, or to make the poor lady wait until he’s removed his boots.
    ‘He was about seventy miles off the coast of Iceland,’ McAvoy says, trying to inject as much empathy and compassion into his voice as he can. ‘Still in the lifeboat. A cargo ship saw the vessel and the search teams went straight to the scene.’
    With a tug, he pulls off one boot, coating his thumb and forefinger in thick mud. He surreptitiously wipes his hand on the seat of his trousers as he begins work on the other.
    ‘Exposure, I assume,’ she says thoughtfully. ‘He won’t have taken any pills. Won’t have wanted to numb himself to it, our Fred. Will have wanted to feel what they did. I never guessed this was what he was planning. I mean, who would? Not when he’s laughing and telling stories and buying everybody a drink …’
    McAvoy wrestles the other boot free and stands up quickly. She’s already halfway through the open door, andit’s with relief that he leaves the cloakroom and steps into the large, open kitchen. He’s surprised by what he finds. The kitchen is as unruly as a student bedsit. There are dirty dishes stacked high around the deep porcelain sink which sits beneath a large, curtainless window. Splashes of grease and what looks like pasta sauce are welded to the rings of the double-oven at the far end. Newspapers and assorted household bills are scattered across the rectangular oak table that fills the centre of the room, and laundry sits in crumpled islands all over the precious carpet, which has not been cream in many a year. His policeman’s eye takes in the dribbles of wine that sit at the bottom of the dirty glasses on the draining board. Even the pint glasses, embossed with pub logos, seem to have been used for the slugging of claret.
    ‘That’s him,’ she says, nodding at the wall behind McAvoy. He turns and is greeted with a stadium of faces; a gallery of higgledy-piggledy photographs stuck or Sellotaped to a dozen cork boards. The photos are from each of the last five decades. Black and white and colour.
    ‘There,’ she says again. ‘Next to our Alice. Peter’s grandniece, if that’s a word. There he is. Looking like the cat that got the cream.’
    McAvoy focuses on the image that she is pointing to. A good-looking man with luscious black hair, swept back in a rocker’s quiff, holding a pint of beer and grinning at the camera. The fashion of the man in the foreground suggests it was taken in the mid-eighties. He’d have been thirty-something. McAvoy’s age. In his prime.
    ‘Handsome man,’ he says.
    ‘He knew it, too,’ she says, and her face softens. She reaches out and strokes the photo with a pale, bejewelled hand. ‘Poor Fred,’ she says, and then turns to look at McAvoy, as if seeing him for the first time. ‘I’m pleased you came. It wouldn’t have been nice to hear it in a phone call. Not with Peter away.’
    ‘Peter?’
    ‘My husband. He does a lot of work with the police, actually. You might know him. He’s on the authority. Was a councillor for many a year until it got a bit much for him. He’s not as young as he was.’
    The mention of the Police Authority comes as a slap to the jaw. McAvoy takes a breath. Tries to do what he came for. ‘Yes, I’m aware of your husband and all the hard work and dedication he put in to campaign for the police service. As soon as we heard the sad news about Mr Stein, Assistant Chief Constable Everett asked me to come and speak to you