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she says, after a time. ‘I live up Kirk Ella. Nice little place, just the two of us. I didn’t grow up here either. We’re from Batley. West Yorkshire. Dad came over here for a job about fifteen years ago and they bought this place. I can’t say I thought much of the area but Mum said the people seemed nice. She made it a lovely home. Well, you can see that, can’t you? And she was never one to keep herself to herself. Couldn’t help but get involved. She’d lived here a year and she’d started a neighbourhood association. Even ran for the city council as an independent. The papers used to come to her for a quote and she was always good value. Told them this was a nice neighbourhood but that a few rotten apples were spoiling it for everyone. She meant that too.’
    ‘Did she ever name names?’
    ‘I don’t think she knew any,’ says Elaine. ‘Everybody on this estate knows how to buy a bit of this or that, but Mum was no threat to anybody’s business. Not really. She was probably a nuisance, if anything. She used to give your lot hell about the lack of police patrols and not seeing any policemen on the streets any more but it was busybody stuff, really. She wasn’t some supergrass. She worked in a bloody late shop, for goodness’ sake …’
    ‘And she always walked home? It’s quite a hike.’
    ‘That’s my fault,’ says Elaine, kicking at a clump of grass that is pushing through a crack in the spongy surface of the park. ‘We started this health challenge a couple of years ago. You have to do a certain amount of steps each day and enter the number on this website and it tells you how far around the world your team has got. She was well into it. They gave us pedometers and we both lost a bit of weight chalking up the miles. I packed it in when I got pregnant but Mum stuck with it. Said she wanted to be able to say she had walked to Mexico. Worked out that if she walked to and from work for her shifts and did a big walk on a weekend, she could be there before she was sixty.’
    ‘So anybody who knew her would know she always walked, yes? Anybody waiting for her would know.’
    Elaine reaches out and takes Lucas, holding him like a teddy bear.
    ‘This isn’t anything to do with drugs or gangs,’ she says, softly. ‘It can’t be.’
    ‘Do you know anybody who would want to harm her?’
    ‘She was a good person. My best friend …’
    ‘Elaine, this is a very early stage in the investigation but we need to build up as clear a picture of your mum as possible. Did she have any enemies? Had she ever been threatened?’
    The dead woman’s daughter shakes her head. ‘She was everybody’s friend. She was a lifesaver. There was …’
    Elaine stops herself, her hand raised to her mouth.
    ‘Darren,’ she says, softly.
    ‘I’m sorry?’
    Elaine puts down her son. Tells him to go play.
    ‘My ex.’
    ‘Elaine?’
    She grabs a handful of her fringe, eyes suddenly alive with more than tears.
    ‘Shit, I didn’t think …’
    McAvoy takes her shoulders and turns her eyes to his. Tries to make it okay.
    ‘Elaine, you can tell me.’
    She sobs, and covers her mouth with her hand.
    ‘He said if he ever saw her again he would kill her. That he would tear her heart out the way I tore out his …’

3
    ‘Lemon-scented.’
    Helen Tremberg walks back to the car and pokes her head through the open window.
    ‘Sorry, Ma’am?’
    Sharon Archer punches the steering wheel with the flat of her hand. When she speaks, it is through bared teeth and unmoving lips, and for a moment, she takes on the look of a psychotic ventriloquist.
    ‘I said lemon fucking scented.’
    Tremberg nods, pressing her lips down hard on the smile that is threatening to become a snigger. It is an act as hard as calling a woman two years older than herself ‘Ma’am’.
    ‘Sandwich, or anything?’
    Archer’s eyes flash fury as she turns.
    ‘Do I look like I’m in the mood for a fucking snack?’
    Tremberg turns away and heads