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Llewellyn contradicted. ‘The murderer, like Mr Jones at number five, could simply have been innocently doing a few odd jobs in the garden when he or she saw their chance.’
    ‘And grabbed it. Mmm. I suppose you’re right.’ Frustratingly, Llewellyn usually was. ‘OK. Scrub that theory. Any other ideas?’
    ‘To return to the psychological angle—’
    ‘Let’s not. I told you, it’s something meaty I want. How many hammers are we missing?’
    ‘Three. One each from the sheds of numbers one, three and eleven. But as those sheds were as lacking in locks as the back gates it gets us no further forward. Anyone could have helped themselves from most of the garden sheds along the row.’
    ‘You’re no use, are you? I ask you to give me hope and all you do is give me facts I already know.’ Rafferty slumped back in his chair and returned to his study of the ceiling. ‘Throw me a few straws I can clutch at, for God’s sake.’
    ‘I’m not a great believer in straw-clutching.’
    Rafferty lowered his gaze from his ceiling-study and stared at his sergeant for a few seconds. He sighed and said, ‘No, you’re not, are you? Perhaps I should try young Timmy Smales? I might at least find a straw behind his wet ear.’ Though even that hope evaporated as he recalled that Smales’s ears were beginning to dry up nicely. Which were more than his own were doing as he felt like he had half the Atlantic lodged there. He found a grubby tissue in his drawer and poked about for a bit, shaking his head vigorously to dislodge any lingering puddles.
    The murder had occurred in a part of town which frequently required the presence of uniform: domestics, neighbourly disputes and troublesome youths causing a nuisance.
    Rafferty’s Ma’s house, only a few streets away, was different again. Most of the residents of her road were older and had bought their houses from the Council. They had a pride in keeping them spruce. Primrose Avenue conjured up an aura of faded gentility that was at odds with reality. The terraced housing had been built after the war and the land had originally been fields adjoining a stream which had been drained at the time the houses went up. There were few primroses to be seen there now.
    He turned back to Llewellyn who was studying the batch of early statements. ‘None of Malcolm Forbes’s debtors mentioned Jaws Harrison knocking on their doors?’
    Llewellyn shook his head. ‘Not according to house-to-house.’ The Welshman’s intelligent brown eyes were thoughtful. ‘I’d like to know what he was doing in that alleyway where he died.’
    Rafferty smiled. Experience always told. That one was easy, as he told his sergeant. ‘I imagine he was in that alleyway because he knew he wouldn’t get an answer if he knocked on the front door. Probably, he had nous enough to know that debtor families with kids leave the back door unlocked. Likely, he didn’t keep to a strict routine on his collection round, either. If he had any sense, he would have liked the element of surprise. He was also probably scared of getting mugged given the two cases last week. He’d usually have a tidy sum, I imagine, by the time he’d finished his collections.’
    ‘So nobody could have known precisely when he’d turn up?’
    ‘That’s what I’m thinking. But we can check it out. If I’m right, it must have made it more difficult to plan his murder — if planning was actually involved and it wasn’t just an opportunistic assault.’
    ‘Clearly not too difficult, considering he’s dead.’
    ‘True.’ Rafferty put his feet up on his desk. His shoes were dulled from their contact with the deep puddles in Primrose Avenue. He’d have felt aggrieved at that if they hadn’t been pretty dull to begin with. No Beau Brummel, him. ‘Perhaps the adults used the kids as lookouts and got warning of his arrival?’ The children on the street were currently on their Easter holidays from school, and even though the weather had been