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itcould be nasty, but you couldn’t sleep in that thing. You’d never get comfortable.’
    ‘You’re right,’ Smallwood replied. ‘I have another for in bed. One without the streamlined back.’
    ‘A good idea. Well, thanks for your time, Mr Smallwood.’ Dave probably offered a handshake but I was facing the other way, heading down the drive back to the car, so Smallwood couldn’t see the tears trickling down my cheeks. I held on to my composure as we drove off, but seconds later I pulled into the side and we both lost it completely.
     
    The troops were massed in the office when I came down from my Monday morning meeting with the Super. I was in a good mood. The force was in the process of creating dedicated teams for investigating murders, and, trying to keep ahead of the game, the ACC wanted me to head a pilot scheme in East Pennine. It doesn’t exist if it hasn’t an acronym, so I was now surrogate chief honcho of the local Homicide and Major Enquiry Team, known as HMET. I had no illusions – they wanted me to catch the flak and do the dirty work of splitting up a winning team until someone with a higher rank could take over – but I didn’t mind: they were offering me Acting DCI, and I’d only be doing what I was already doing, so I pretended to be surprised and grateful and said ‘Thank you’ like a good little boy.
    There’d been the usual quota of drunks, thefts and assaults over the weekend, but apart from two burglaries there was nothing to interfere with the silky-smooth running of the CID. Jeff Caton, one of my sergeants, had sat in on the meeting with Mr Wood and he would oversee the everyday stuff while I concentrated on the Alfred Armitage job.
    Another of my sergeants, Eddie Carmichael, was holding court, some of the younger DCs grinning widely at his comments. ‘That’s right, guv, isn’t it?’ I heard him say as I approached.
    ‘What?’ I asked.
    ‘I was just saying: the only problem with an inflatable woman is that she can’t help you change the duvet cover.’
    ‘Leave me out of it,’ I replied.
    ‘But that’s only twice a year,’ someone said.
    ‘OK, listen up,’ I told them. ‘Jeff is doing the everyday stuff. Pick your team, Jeff. Meanwhile, anybody who’s never done a murder enquiry but would like to, raise your hand.’
    A couple of hands went up. ‘I thought it was a suspicious death?’ one of the owners asked.
    ‘It is, but we treat it like a murder enquiry until we are convinced otherwise. OK, we want follow-up interviews with people we’ve already seen, we have a list of drinking acquaintances to talk to, and later this morning we should have a list of just about everybody who worked at Ellis and Newbold’s. A Mr Smallwood is preparing that forus. Could you collect it, please, Eddie, and you might like to do a follow-up while you’re there. I think you’ll find him an interesting character. See Dave’s report for further details.’
    Dave stirred as I mentioned his name but didn’t speak.
    ‘Anybody anything to add?’ I asked.
    ‘Yes,’ John Rose replied. ‘Alfred died sometime on Sunday, but the landlords in the two pubs he called his locals say they hadn’t seen him for several days, which was unusual. I was wondering about widening the search, seeing if he’d found a new watering hole and maybe a new audience.’
    ‘Yep, do it,’ I said. Maggie Madison was staying silent, so I brought her into the discussion. ‘Maggie. I’d like you to talk to his neighbours again, but first see if you can track down the owners of the company. Apparently Mr Newbold lived in Spain, but I don’t know if he’s still alive.’
    People were standing up, scraping chairs, pulling jackets on. ‘One last thing,’ I shouted above the noise. ‘And I’m disappointed to have to say this.’ All faces turned to me. ‘Last week a photograph of poor Alfred Armitage appeared in some of the tabloids. It was of his death mask, taken by our own photographic department