“And is it?” Thackeray asked. Walter shrugged.

“It pays the mortgage,” he said.

When he had gone Thackeray flung himself into Jack Longley’s most comfortable chair and ran his hands through his unruly dark hair.

“As your crime manager I have to tell you that half the crime in this town would disappear overnight if there was no black market in drugs,” he said.

“Noted,” Longley said. “Now, let’s get back to the real world. Do you have any evidence that the Adams lad got his pills at the Carib?”

“None at all,” Thackeray said. “Why do you ask?”

“I had Grantley Adams bending my ear again this morning,” Longley said. “Apparently he’s persuaded the school to keep the two of them on to take their A Levels so he doesn’t want any more repercussions from us. If there’s no charges apparently they’re prepared to accept that Jeremy and his lass were drunk, not high, and that’s acceptable for a sixth-former, apparently”

“This is the man who wanted the dealers locked up and the key thrown away, is it?” Thackeray asked. “And the headmaster who was so worried about his school’s reputation that he wouldn’t let either of them back in to collect their sports kit? So what happened?”

“Knowing Grantley Adams I expect he’s made a hefty donation to the school’s building fund,” Longley said. “Come on Michael, it’s no good looking shocked. You know how these things work.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Thackeray said.

“You’ve nowt to charge them with. You’ve no evidence they were dealing. And what’s the point of a caution for possession? The whole thing’s a waste of police time. You’ve a murder case to deal with.”

Thackeray sighed, knowing that it was not the fact that two teenagers who had committed a minor misdemeanour were being let off which riled him, but the fact that Adams would be left believing that throwing his weight about had brought about the desired result. He was surprised that the superintendent did not seem to recognise the implications of that.

“Are you making any progress with Stanley Wilson?” Longley asked, obviously keen to change the subject.

“We found the boyfriend and he gave us a couple of new leads,” Thackeray said. “He reckons someone loaned Wilson the money to set up the computer porn business, so I’ve got Val Ridley going through his bank accounts to see if there were any unexplained payments. And Harman also reckons Stanley had a new attachment, a young black visitor, so we’re getting him to look at some mug shots, on the off-chance it’s someone known. The house-to-house has turned up a neighbour who’s seen a black lad coming and going too, and thinks he saw him around the night Stanley was killed. And fingerprints have found at least half a dozen sets apart from Wilson’s and Harman’s. They’re looking for matches but haven’t come up with anything so far. And of course if we can lay hands on a suspect there’s the possibility of DNA matching.”

“Keep me in touch, Michael,” Longley said, turning back to the files on his desk dismissively. Thackeray got up to go, although Longley had not quite finished.

“Keep your eye on the ball, and you might make superintendent yet,” he said. Thackeray paused, with his hand on the door-handle.

“I don’t think I could stand the politics, sir,” he said.

“Then you’re a bigger fool than I take you for,” Longley snapped.

Kevin Mower’s small living room was heavy with cigarette smoke and the smell of lager consumed from the dozen or so empty cans which stood in ranks on the coffee table. Mower himself sat at the dining table in the window tapping impatiently now and again at the computer keyboard in front of him. He had been drinking but was not drunk. In fact his head felt clearer than it had for months. Laura Ackroyd stood at his shoulder watching the flickering monitor and Dizzy B Sanderson lay slumped in an armchair, can in hand, eyes half closed, the tinny rhythm from his Walkman headphones the only other sound in the room.

At length Mower let out a long sigh.

“Why the hell didn’t Donna tell me?” he said. Laura put a hand on his shoulder, feeling the tension through the thin cotton of his shirt.

“What should she have told you?”

“She’s been browsing round the Internet looking at construction companies, including these City Ventures people who wanted to buy the Carib. No doubt she downloaded whatever she found and that’s what was in the file that disappeared. She’d have been much safer storing it in the machine, but maybe she didn’t know how to do that. But what the people who trashed the Project didn’t realise was that the machine keeps a record of the Internet pages that have been visited anyway. So there we are, look. Let’s have a look at it ourselves, shall we?”

Dizzy B got to his feet and came to look over Mower’s other shoulder as he found the page he was looking for and a logo and a set of views of new housing and other developments in towns across the North of England spread themselves slowly across the screen.

“Looks like quite a major set-up,” Dizzy said.

“And Foreman’s involved in that?” Laura asked. “I’ve never heard anything about him going into construction. I’m sure Michael knows nothing about it.”

Mower glanced at her.

“The boss is convinced he’s making his money from drugs,” he said. “But I don’t think he’s got much to go on. Perhaps it’s a whole lot more innocent than that. Perhaps he’s just working for these people, sussing out suitable properties like the Carib. Or maybe he’s just diversified quite legitimately into the building trade.”

“So why not say so, especially if it’s a successful venture? He seems keen enough to impress in other ways,” Laura said.

“Maybe he’s using the building trade to launder his drug money,” Dizzy B, who had taken off his headphones and was listening intently, suggested.

“Possible,” Mower said. “But bloody difficult to prove.”

“Does this tell us where this company’s based?” Laura asked. Mower followed a few more directions on the screen and brought up an address in Leeds, with a photograph of an anonymous office building called Ventures House, and in small print at the bottom of the page a list of the company’s directors.

“No one there we know,” Dizzy B said dismissively. “Foreman’s not a director.”

“No, but his girlfriend is,” Laura said quietly. “Look, there - Karen Bailey’s listed. The only trouble with that is that she’s disappeared. Or maybe she hasn’t. Maybe she’s just keeping a low profile so that no one connects Foreman with this company which Councillor Spencer says has a good chance of getting the contract to regenerate the Heights. I wonder if Spencer knows about the connection? Whichever, it’s a bloody good story.”

“Or a bloody dangerous story,” Mower cut in. “Don’t get too carried away, Laura. It’s just possible that Donna was killed because she stumbled on this information.”

“Killed?” Laura looked at Mower in stunned surprise. “I thought …”

“What you were supposed to think, maybe?” Mower said.

“You’ve got no evidence, Kevin,” Dizzy B said. “Come on, man, she had her problems …”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mower said. “She had her problems, but were they so bad she had to slit her wrists? I don’t think so. In any case Amos Atherton is sure that the cuts on her wrist were made by a knife, not a razor blade. There was no knife in the bathroom when I found her. It can’t have been suicide. I never really believed it was.”

Laura felt her stomach tighten as she realised that perhaps Thackeray’s concern for her safety was more justified than either of them could have realised.

“She always struck me as a fighter,” Laura said quietly, her grip on Mower’s shoulder tightening slightly. “Joyce thought so too.”

“I need to have another look round her flat,” Mower said, his voice urgent. “Perhaps she’s got stuff hidden away there that I missed.”