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You can do it, can’t you?’
    ‘If we arrest him. What else are you on with?’
    ‘The Sylvan Fields burglaries. A few complications need sorting.’
    ‘Fair enough. I’ll have a couple of hours here reading the file, see if anything jumps out at me. What’re you doing, Dave?’
    ‘Three or four scrotes to interview, see how well their stories have been rehearsed. Some stolen property to identify, and the dreaded paperwork, of course.’
    ‘In other words, not much,’ I said. ‘In that case, meet me in the Tap and Spile at lunchtime, if you can. I think it’s time to have a word with the landlord.’
    ‘About the rape?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘What time?’
    I glanced at my watch and at the pile of reports. They’d grown since my last look. ‘Oh, er, let’s say twelve thirty, eh?’
    ‘Right.’
    Sparky was following Nigel out through the door when I shouted: ‘Dave!’
    He poked his head back round it.
    ‘And don’t forget,’ I told him, ‘knowledge catches crooks.’
    He nodded and repeated my words. ‘Knowledge catches crooks. I’ll try to remember.’
    It was the quietest incident room I’d ever been in. For two hours the phone never rang. It looked as if nobody knew I was there. Somewhere there should have been several other officers taking care of the assorted jobs that come with a murder enquiry: control staff, SOCO, liaison officer, correspondence diary, HOLMES expert, et cetera, et cetera. It looked as if Mr Makinson hadn’t thought it necessary to tell them that I was taking over. Everything was tied up, and all I had to do was lift theculprit and keep him in cold storage until he returned. I thought about getting annoyed, but decided that life was too short.
    I tore the grubby top sheet off a new A4 pad and attacked the pile of reports. Two hours later I decided that Makinson was right. The hot suspect for the doctor’s murder was Ged Skinner. There were plenty of side alleys along the trail, and I like to think I’d have taken a longer look down them, but the right answer, as I’d learnt at the quiz, is usually the obvious one.
    From the reports I discovered that the doctor had been a bit of a laddo on the quiet. He had a girlfriend in every consulting room and a few others besides. There were going to be a lot of distraught females at the funeral, casting sideways looks at each other as they dabbed away the mascara. Then the recriminations would start. What’s the collective noun for distraught females, I wondered? An anguish? A wail?
    A jealous boyfriend or husband could have shot him, but it wasn’t likely. The anger usually surfaces long before the violence does, and we’d have heard about it. There would have been public embarrassment and threats, but the doctor appeared to be as discreet as an undertaker’s cough.
    The White Rose Clinic was something else. I’d driven by many times, watched it being built. It was just another private hospital, as far as I knew, cashing in on the demise of the NHS. Now I learnt that it specialised in cosmetic surgery. Why did the doctor, a Fellow of theRoyal College of Gynaecologists, freelance one day per week at a clinic that specialised in cosmetic surgery? My mind went into freefall. Maybe I should have taken out that subscription for Cosmopolitan after all.
    I found the answer in Nigel’s next report. The clinic had a lucrative little sideline. They would, at special request, and only for certain valued clients who complied with their rigorous screening procedure, perform abortions. They didn’t advertise this service, and relied on word of mouth to attract custom.
    Once again, discretion was the name of the game. There’d been no hate mail, no letter bombs, no noisy protestors outside the gates. The anti-abortion lobby is fanatical and violent, but they didn’t know the White Rose Clinic existed.
    Ged Skinner was our man, no doubt about it.
    I went upstairs and had five minutes with Les Isles, the superintendent in overall charge of the