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little love he was too, the way them mongols are, and loved Rhoda, and she taking him out with her, not a bit ashamed.

    ‘She’d have been how old then, Mrs Parker?’ Wexford said for something to say. It was a mistake because he didn’t really care, and he had to bawl it twice more before she heard.

    ‘Twelve, she was, when he was born, and sixteen when Lilian had him put away. She was at the County High School, and Mr Comfrey wanted to take her away when she was fourteen like you could in them days. The headmistress herself, Miss Fowler that was, come to the house personally herself to beg him let Rhoda stay on, her being so bright. Well, he gave way for a bit, but he wasn’t having her go on to no college, made her leave at sixteen, wanted her money, he said, the old skinflint.’

    It was very hot, and the words began to roll over Wexford only half-heard. Just the very usual unhappy tale of the mean-spirited working-class parent who values cash in hand more than the career in the future. ‘Got shop work - wanted to better herself, did Rhoda - always shut up in that back bedroom reading - taught herself French - went to typing classes - ’ How the hell was he going to get that address? Trace her through those clothes, those antique shoes? Not a hope. The sharp old voice cackled on . . . ‘Nothing to look at - never had a boy - that Lilian always at her - “When you going to get yourself a boy-friend, Rhoda?” - got to be a secretary - poor thing, she used to get herself up like Lilian, flashy clothes and high heels and paint all over her face.’

    He’d have to get help from the Press: Do You Know This Woman? On the strength of that photograph? ‘Aggie got cancer - never went to the doctor till it was too late - had an operation, but it wasn’t no use - she passed on and poor Rhoda was left with the old man - ' Well, he wasn’t going to allow publication of photos of her dead face, never had done that and never would. If only Mrs Parker would come to an end, if only she hadn’t about twenty years still to go! ‘And would have stayed, I daresay - been a slave to him - stayed for ever but for getting all that money - tied to him hand and foot - ’

    ‘What did you say?’

    ‘I’m the one that’s deaf, young man,’ said Mrs Parker.

    ‘I know, I’m sorry. But what was that about coming into money?’

    ‘You want to listen when you’re spoken to, not go off in day-dreams. She didn’t come into money, she won it. On the pools, it was one of them office what-d’you-call-its.’

    ‘Syndicates?’

    ‘I daresay. Old Jim Comfrey, he thought he was in clover. "My ship’s come in," he says to my eldest son. But he was wrong there. Rhoda upped and walked out on him, and so much for the house he was going to have and the car and all.’

    ‘How much was it?’

    ‘How much was what? What she won? Thousands and thousands. She never said and I wouldn’t ask. She come round to my place one afternoon - I was living up the road then - and she’d got a big case all packed. Just thirty, she was, and twenty years ago nearly to the day. She had the same birthday as me, you see, August the fifth, and forty-two years between us. "I’m leaving. Auntie Vi," she says, "going to London to seek my fortune," and she gives me the address of some hotel and says would I have all her books packed up and sent on to her? Fat chance of that. Jim Comfrey burned the lot of them down the garden. I can see her now like it was yesterday, in them high heels she couldn’t walk in properly and a dress all frills, and beads all over her and fingernails like she’d dipped them in red paint and . . .’

    ‘You didn’t see her yesterday, did you?’ Wexford yelled rapidly. ‘I mean, the day before yesterday?’

    ‘No. didn’t know she was here. She’d have come, though, if it wasn’t for some wicked . . .’

    ‘What was she going to do in London, Mrs Parker?’

    ‘Be a reporter on a paper. That’s what