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half-uneaten, while a salad had wilted in the heat. Kinver, for some reason, hadn’t been able to finish his meal.
    ‘Can you go through it again for me? What happened this morning?’ Since Kinver didn’t offer, Savage pulled a chair out from the table and sat down. ‘It must have been a shock, finding the girl’s clothes.’
    ‘Sorry.’ Kinver appeared to realise he’d neglected to be a good host and now he moved to pick the kettle up and fill it at the sink. ‘No, not a shock. At least not at first. I didn’t think much of it until I saw the underwear. Then the logic sunk in. She was either in the lake or lying naked and dead somewhere in the woods.’
    ‘Why did you think that?’
    ‘Well, there weren’t any other possibilities which came to mind. I could see she wasn’t close by sunbathing. Anyway it was too early for that.’
    ‘How often do you go fishing, Charlie?’
    ‘This time of year it’d be a couple of times a week, sometimes three. I don’t catch something every trip, but when I do it’s nice to have a piece of fresh fish for lunch. Only today I didn’t feel hungry. I cut off their heads, gutted them, gave the scraps to the cat and put them in the freezer for another day.’
    ‘When you were last at Fernworthy did you fish the same spot?’
    ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I did. Usually I’ll try to vary which swims I fish from, but this was only a short trip and I couldn’t be bothered to walk round the lake.’
    ‘And that was when?’
    ‘Day before yesterday. I had no luck but I spotted a couple of nice fish. That’s partly why I returned to the same place. And no, the bag definitely wasn’t there.’
    ‘And in your recent trips you haven’t noticed anybody acting suspiciously?’
    ‘I’m usually there too early to notice anyone. The tourists don’t start arriving until mid-morning. There’ll be some walkers, of course, but it’s rare I see anybody before eight. Once the kids start splashing in the shallows you can say goodbye to any chance of a bite so I usually try to do morning or evening sessions. This morning I didn’t see anyone and if I recall t’was the same the day before yesterday.’
    ‘You said you sometimes do evening sessions?’ Kinver nodded. ‘Do you ever get people at the reservoir then? Couples maybe?’
    Kinver smiled. ‘Sometimes. They’ll turn up at dusk usually. They might take a walk but if they were thinking of a spot of alfresco the mossies usually put them off. All that bare flesh? – supper time for the little vampires, isn’t it?’
    ‘You’ve seen them though?’
    ‘Sure. Stood and watched a few times.’ Kinver held up his hands. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m no perv, but when I’m stalking fish round the edge of the lake I’m invisible, hardly make a sound. Once, late evening, I came across two guys and a woman. She were being spit-roasted, I think that’s what they call it. Me and the wife had a good laugh about it when I came home. Spit-roasted the brace of brownies I caught too.’
    Savage shifted in her chair, aware that Kinver was leering. The man was a little free and easy with his descriptions for her liking. She was glad his wife was out in the back garden.
    ‘And apart from that one time, have you ever seen anything dodgy?’
    ‘The occasional couple in a car. With the lights on you can see everything. I’ve reported a vehicle that’s been broken into a couple of times. Once I rang the rangers to alert them to a bunch of teens who were camping and had lit a big fire. The camping was fine, but I reckoned the fire was a bad idea considering the dry weather we were having. I’d have had words myself but I didn’t want no trouble.’
    ‘And that’s the extent of it?’
    ‘As far as I know. I’ve never seen a guy in an old mac, hands down his trousers, leering after young girls.’ Kinver looked up from his tea-making duties and leered himself. ‘Young,
pretty
girls, know what I mean?’
    ‘I’m not sure I do, Mr