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least before winter set in.’
    Emma shuddered. ‘Poor woman!’ she said. ‘It’s absolutely dreadful, isn’t it?’
    ‘I suppose….’ Jack yawned again. ‘Are the twins all right?’
    ‘Of course they are,’ Emma said. ‘Why shouldn’t they be?’
    ‘They’re very quiet.’
    Emma smiled. ‘Typical policeman, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘Just because they’re not making a noise, you presume they’re up to no good.’
    ‘Well, that’s usually the case with them, isn’t it?’
     
    Full darkness fell before police and forensic officers left the woods, trailing after stretcher-bearers and the pathologist. Cutting down this anonymous woman was a delicate task, two people needed to hold her as Dewi climbed up to untie the rope. The knots too tight, the rope too sodden to unravel, he was forced to saw it through, while the others steadied the convulsive swinging and jerking of the body below.
    ‘Well, we can be sure it’s not suicide,’ Eifion Roberts observed. ‘Nobody could strap up their own hands like that…. That belt might tell us something eventually.’ He straightened up, pulling off surgical gloves. ‘Don’t envy you this one. Looks more like an execution than a common or garden murder. You might well find yourselves looking at a terrorist link.’
    * * *
    ‘What sort of day did you have?’ Jack asked his wife.
    ‘Not very enjoyable, to be honest,’ Emma admitted. ‘Chester was terribly crowded. I don’t know why we bother going on a Saturday afternoon, except Denise seemed to need some time to herself … she bought a lovely suit from Browns.’
    ‘And how is our elegant Mrs McKenna?’
    ‘I do wish you wouldn’t talk about her in that nasty tone,’ Emma snapped. ‘She’s very unhappy.’
    ‘So is her husband,’ Jack said.
    ‘Is he?’ Emma asked. ‘Well, that doesn’t give him the right to make her life a misery. She was actually crying today. In public! They’d had another row this morning. And d’you know what about?’ Emma demanded. ‘Religion, of all things. How can any normal person row about religion?’
    Jack sighed. ‘He’s Catholic, she’s Chapel.’
    ‘So?’
    ‘So she keeps harping on about him going to chapel with her even though she knows he won’t.’
    ‘I suppose that’s his story, is it?’
    ‘What’s hers, then?’ Jack said.
    ‘Oh, don’t be so bloody spiteful!’ Emma exclaimed. ‘For Denise of all people to sit in a café crying….’
    Jack stood up. ‘And we’ve all seen Denise cry when it suits her, haven’t we? Tears welling out of those baby-blue eyes … how did you describe it, Em? Like glass beads, you said, sliding down porcelain cheeks, then shattering on the ground. Very fanciful. How long d’you think she spent rehearsing that?’
    ‘Why must you be so absolutely horrible about her? What’s she done to you?’
    ‘Emma!’ Anger put an edge to Jack’s voice. ‘Denise McKenna is spoilt. Have you ever wondered what she does with herself all day? Except spend his hard-earned money? No kids, no pets, every gadget you can think of in that house. And a cleaner! She’s bored! And women like her,’ he added, ‘are bloody dangerous, because they make everybody else as bored and dissatisfied as they are.’
     
    Jack arrived at the police station early on Sunday morning to find house-to-house enquiries in Salem village already organized, and McKenna seated at one of the computers, trawling the missing persons index.
    ‘Roberts is already doing the post-mortem, so he can go sailing this afternoon,’ McKenna said.
    ‘Did he tell you his theory?’
    McKenna looked up. ‘Terrorists? A possibility, I suppose, but unlikely.’ He pushed his chair away from the desk. ‘Our local outlaws haven’t killed anybody yet. They seem quite content with arson and the odd letter bomb.’ Reaching for his cigarettes, he added, ‘Anyway, you expect a bullet in the back of the neck from proper terrorists. After the knee-capping, of