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at the house. The curtains were roughly drawn
but he could see light through the gaps and the shadows of people moving around.
Donovan was inside, being looked after by Sharon Fuller, the family liaison officer,
as well as his boss, DCI Carolyn Steele. Two other detectives from his team, Dave
Wightman and Hannah Bird, had already started searching the house and going through
Claire Donovan’s possessions, bagging up anything that looked interesting or might
possibly give a clue to the identity of the man who had killed her. Tartaglia wondered
how Donovan felt about having her home invaded at such a time, even though she knew
it had to be done.
    As the tail-lights of the BMW disappeared around the corner, he pulled out his phone
and texted Steele to say that he had arrived. He crossed the road, sat down on a
low garden wall opposite the house and lit a cigarette. When he had spoken to her
half an hour earlier to tell her that he was on his way over, she had told him to
wait outside. He had spent many a happy hour at the Donovans’ house and it felt odd
to be forced to loiter outside like a stranger. He had explained to Steele earlier
that day about losing his phone and about having been in the Dillon Hotel at the
time of the murder. She had made a couple of sharp comments about needing to have
an early night when on call, but otherwise seemed to have taken what he had said
at face value. His alibi would have to be checked like anybody else’s, but otherwise
it seemed there would be no repercussions. Something else must have happened, but
he was at a loss to know what it was about.
    A minute or so later the front door opened and Steele came out, bundled up in a long,
belted, beige-coloured coat over her usual dark trouser suit. She must have a wardrobe
full of them, he often thought. He tossed away the remains of his cigarette and crossed
the road to meet her.
    ‘Let’s go somewhere,’ she said, pulling on leather gloves and knotting a silk scarf
tightly around her neck, her voice hoarse from the tail-end of a cold. ‘We need to
talk. Did you come by car?’
    ‘Nick dropped me off. He’s gone back to the office to get some stuff.’
    ‘Let’s sit in mine, then.’ She walked over to a silver Audi parked on the opposite
side of the street and clicked open the locks.
    ‘What’s up?’ he asked, sliding into the passenger seat.
    ‘I need to speak to you before you see Sam.’
    ‘How is she?’
    Steele switched on the ignition and turned the heater up to maximum. ‘As you’d expect.
I did my best to talk to her and ask if she knew anything that might help us, but
she’s in a pretty bad way. The doctor’s given her a sedative to calm her down, plus
pills to help her sleep tonight. She and Claire were close, weren’t they?’
    ‘Up to a point. They got on OK, but they are . . . I mean they were . . . very different.’
Like chalk and cheese, both physically and in terms of character, he’d always thought,
marvelling at the vagaries of genetics. Claire, the elder, had been striking, on
the tall side, with dark, wavy hair; Sam was small, prettier, with light brown hair.
While Claire had been more outwardly confident and gregarious, he had always felt
she lacked her sister’s inner core and complexity.
    ‘Still, they shared a house together,’ Steele said. ‘That must count for something.
Unfortunately, she doesn’t seem to know much about what her sister was up to, or
what she was doing in that hotel.’
    ‘You know Sam’s been living in Bristol for the last couple of months.’
    ‘There’s the phone, Facebook, email. Surely they kept in touch? You know her better
than I do. Do you think she’s telling the truth?’
    He looked at her, surprised. Although Steele never socialised outside work, she
had a good enough feel for Sam’s character. ‘Sam? Why wouldn’t she?’
    ‘I have to ask.’
    He nodded. ‘I wasn’t that close to Claire, but I’d say it’s perfectly possible she
kept things to