‘So the householder can see the postman in the flesh, and know he’s not an impostor.’

‘That’s it.’

Cooper looked down at the body again as the exchange went backwards and forwards around him. Voices echoed strangely in the house, as if it wasn’t fully furnished. Actually, the furniture was fairly sparse. Nothing unnecessary or frivolous cluttered the rooms that he’d seen. It made him think of his flat in Welbeck Street when he’d first viewed it. Furnished, but empty. Empty because no one lived there.

He felt uncomfortable for the victim, lying there on the floor. He knew nothing about Rose Shepherd, but he was sure she’d have hated anyone to see her like this. Her grey hair was dishevelled and fell in loose strands across her face. Her mouth had fallen open, and a trail of saliva had dried on her lips. Crime-scene photographs would show up a small rip in the victim’s nightdress and the white, crinkled flesh on the back of her thighs. The flash would cruelly expose the crow’s feet around her eyes, the loose skin at her neck, the beginning of liver spots on the back of her hand where it clutched the rug. Death did nothing for the appearance. But this was the way Miss Shepherd would be immortalized.

Kessen walked back to the bedroom and looked out on to the garden. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ he said, ‘but there’s quite a bit of money tied up here, isn’t there?’

Abbott nodded. ‘A few hundred pounds for that intercom unit alone, I’d say. Probably double that for the installation of the gates.’

‘So it looks as though the victim really needed to know who was calling on her, doesn’t it?’

‘We’ve got house-to-house under way. But so far, everyone we’ve talked to is in agreement on one thing: Miss Shepherd never got any visitors. Apart from the postman – and even he didn’t get past the gates.’

‘No visitors at all?’

‘So they say.’

‘No. We just haven’t talked to the right people, yet,’ said Kessen.

‘Why?’

‘Well, that can’t be true, can it, Paul? You’re a property owner. What about all those folk who come to your address? The refuse men to collect your wheelie bin, the tanker driver to deliver your central heating fuel, the man who reads your electricity meter? No one can build a moat around their property and keep everyone out. It isn’t possible these days. Life has a way of intruding in all sorts of ways.’

‘Rose Shepherd does seem to have been a very solitary person, though. She lived on her own, and she didn’t mix with the neighbours, by all accounts. No one in Pinfold Lane knows who Miss Shepherd’s next of kin could be, or whether she had a family at all. We found an address book near the phone downstairs, but we can’t see any obvious relatives listed. In fact, the entries seem to be all routine stuff – doctor, dentist, a local garage.’

‘There must be something in the house to give us names. A diary, letters …?’

‘Well, we’re still looking. But it seems odd. There ought to be somewhere obvious for her to keep information like that. Why make us hunt for it?’

‘Try a phone bill. See what numbers she called most often, who was on her Family and Friends list.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘How long had she lived here? Do we know that?’

‘The neighbours say about a year. Miss Shepherd moved in on her own, with no sign of a husband or anything. No secret lover sneaking in through the back door either.’

‘If the lover was secret, no one would know about him, surely?’

‘This is a village,’ said Hitchens, as if that explained everything.

‘You know, this is a large house for one woman living on her own.’

‘She doesn’t seem to have employed anyone, not even a gardener or cleaner. The lady at the next property down the lane says Miss Shepherd did some gardening herself now and then. She used to see her from her bedroom window, pottering about on the other side of the hedge.’ He looked up at Kessen. ‘See what I mean about a village? Who needs surveillance?’

‘But the house?’ Kessen brushed at a cobweb. ‘It looks as though it could have done with the attention of a cleaner now and then, to be honest.’

‘Presumably Miss Shepherd was less keen on housework than gardening.’

Kessen turned back to Abbott. ‘What about security? We know she had an intruder alarm.’

‘A top-of-the-range monitored system, too. She wanted to be sure that there would be a police response if she had an intruder. Motion sensors – so possibly an audio connection or a CCTV camera somewhere. We can check with the monitoring centre whether she ever had any alerts. This is more than a DIY job, or a bells-only system.’

‘Doors and windows?’

‘Five-lever mortice deadlocks, and hinge bolts.’ Abbott tapped the fanlight. ‘Laminated glass – almost impossible to break in the normal way. Oh, and there’s a restrictor on the inside of the letter box to stop anyone reaching through to release locks and bolts. She didn’t use the letter box on the door, though. There’s one on the gates.’

‘Probably the gates came later.’

Abbott moved around the room. ‘We’ve got double glazing, key-operated window locks. Venetian blinds, so she could stop people looking in without blocking the light. Outside, I noticed there were bulkhead lights as well as the floodlights fitted with motion detectors.’

‘She seems to have had good advice on security.’

‘There’s even a shredder next to the desk here. She wasn’t taking any chances.’

‘She knew about bin raiding, then. Not everyone has that sort of nous. I wonder where she learned about the risk of identity theft.’

‘What about that Notts exercise a while ago? Wasn’t that in the local papers?’

‘Could have been.’

Cooper remembered that, too. Nottinghamshire Police had decided to take the contents of hundreds of household bins and analyse them to see what people were throwing away. A messy job, but interesting results. They found nearly ninety per cent of domestic rubbish contained information that would be helpful to fraudsters. Most of the bins had the full name and address of someone in the household, and many had details of bank account numbers and sort codes. Some had the full set. Helpful? That was more like making someone a Christmas present of your bank account. PC Judson would be horrified.

‘The one thing we’ve found is her passport,’ said Hitchens.

‘A UK passport?’

‘Yes. Rose Ann Shepherd, British citizen, born 1944 in London …’ He flicked through the pages. ‘No stamps.’

‘What about an address?’

‘Your address doesn’t appear in your passport.’

‘No, but most people give a next of kin. A friend or relative, anyway – maybe two.’

‘You’re right.’ Hitchens turned to the back page again. ‘Nope, not in Miss Shepherd’s case.’

‘No one she wanted informed in the event of an accident?’

‘I guess not. You know, this passport looks almost unused to me. Mine has got a bit creased at the spine and started to turn up at one corner.’

‘Well, that would explain why there are no stamps.’

‘Not necessarily. It just means she hasn’t been outside Europe with it. Or rather, outside the Schengen area. You don’t get stamped moving between Schengen countries.’

In her passport photograph, Miss Shepherd was smartly turned out. Her hair was a darker shade of grey, swept back in a business-like manner to match a white blouse, discreet ear studs and a hint of make-up. She had sharp blue eyes and a direct gaze, with the faintest of smiles at the camera.

Hitchens took a call on his mobile. ‘OK, that’s great. Thanks.’ He turned to Kessen. ‘There was a Vauxhall Astra seen in the village in the early hours of Sunday morning. It doesn’t belong to any of the residents, so far as we can tell. One witness is almost sure she’s seen it in the village before – and the previous occasion was late at night, too.’

‘Any details?’

‘Blue.’

‘Dark blue? Could have been black in the dark?’