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inside in fresh red waves. Steady, boy, steady.
    ‘It wasn’t me that pulled everything to bits,’ she whined, sloshing not quite boiling water over the tea bag.
    He raised his hand, jabbing a vicious finger in the air. ‘Ay! Just watch it, girl!’
    Tina flinched but wouldn’t be stared down. ‘You ever lay a hand on me again, and I’m out of here,’ she said, her eyes flaring with defiance and fear.
    ‘Oh, come on! It was only the once.’
    ‘Once too many.’
    ‘Ah, shut it, Tina. You’re doing my head in.’
    ‘Your gran was longing for you to get this place and hers sorted,’ Tina said, dumping the hot mug on the arm of the settee. ‘But, oh no, you wouldn’t be bothered to stir yourself. And now it’s too late.’
    Shaun felt the turn of a knife and his eyes flooded with tears. His heart felt as if it would burst, he wanted his gran so much. He felt as if he was on his own for eternity: he would just drift forever on a grey endless sea. He jerked upright, then dropped to his knees and curled his body into a ball. ‘Oh Gran, if only youhadn’t gone and died,’ he exclaimed, burying his head in the crook of his arms and weeping like a distressed toddler.
    Tina looked on in bewilderment, having never seen him shed a single tear before.

3
    The press conference was packed. On the raised platform a technician checked the microphones. TV cameras were in evidence and the press group were testing their tape recorders. Those who still favoured spiral-bound notebooks had their ballpoint pens ready for the off. A reporter from Sky News was talking earnestly with the press and public relations officer. A BBC Radio reporter was waiting her turn. The atmosphere was tense and anticipatory; the cold-blooded murder of a prominent member of the medical profession had attracted national attention.
    There was a hush as the Deputy Chief Constable of West Yorkshire led the panel on to the platform and took the central seat behind the long table covered with a blue cloth. Damian Finch took the place on his right, smart in a sombre slate-grey suit, with flashes of pale-blue collar and cuffs. Swift sat on the DCC’s left, his face calm and neutral. Going through his mind was the ongoing network of the investigation: Doug gathering information on people who regularly visited the victim’s home, Laura talking with Moira Farrell’s mother, the uniform foot-soldiers knocking on neighbours’ doors in the hope of finding a witness, and searching for the murder weapon, the SOCO team working to find clues at the death scene, forensics analysing what had been found so far.
    It was now more than twenty-four hours since Moira Farrell’s death, and the investigation didn’t really seem to have kicked off. Outside winter was proceeding: the sky as brooding and sulky asa disgruntled adolescent, the precipitation coming down from the clouds unable to make up its mind whether it wanted to be rain, sleet or snow.
    The deputy chief constable started the proceedings by telling the audience how shocked and distressed everyone present would be at the death of a woman so respected in her valuable work as a doctor and her contribution in the local community. She was a woman who had given her life and considerable abilities to the care of others, a woman who had been brutally cut down in the prime of her life by an evil and pitiless attacker; murdered in her own home whilst she was alone and defenceless. The police would maintain a grim and unflagging determination to catch and bring her killer to justice.
    He turned to Swift and introduced him as the senior investigating officer who would be directing the hour-by-hour grind of the murder enquiry.
    The first question rang out almost before the deputy chief constable had finished his brief speech.
    ‘How was Mrs Farrell killed?’ The questioner was a middle-aged man, thick set and bulldog-like.
    Swift leaned forward. ‘We can’t give you that information until we’re in possession of the