4.

Later that evening. We’re in an evil little pub near Blaengwynfi. A red carpet, darkly patterned to compete with the beer stains and the ground-in food. Stone benches beneath the windows and a smell of damp. There are four drinkers here apart from us, all men. They attack their pints the way infantrymen march: slowly, knowing that the road ahead is long.

I’m here with Dunwoody, Jon Breakell and Buzz. Buzz – Detective Sergeant David Brydon, as far as my colleagues are concerned – isn’t on the inquiry team, but when he was done for the day he cadged a lift out here with a scientific officer from Cathays. He’ll drive back into town with me later.

Brydon and I are a fairly public couple now, treated by a unit as our colleagues. We’re careful to be properly professional while at the office, but out here, at the end of the day, in a time which might be an after-hours social or might, if Dunwoody is feeling generous, count as formal overtime, those rules are more relaxed. Buzz and I sit side by side on one of the stone benches. He had his arm around me earlier, as a way of showing that he was relaxed. He’s removed it now, but I can still feel its phantom weight across my shoulders, the warmth of him down my side.

The table is littered. Bank statements. Phone bills. Water bills. Electricity. Correspondence. Everyone leaves the paperwork to me. Fi Griffiths, the paperwork kid. I don’t mind, except when Dunwoody puts his beer down on one of the phone bills, creating a ring mark.

‘That’s Exhibit A under your beer glass,’ I say.

He moves the paper, not the beer.

With Hayley Morgan, it’s the same deal as it was with Adele Gibson. For eighteen months she received money from the superstore, but that money vanished again, almost immediately, to an account operated by T.M. Baron. For most of that period, the rest of Morgan’s finances were untouched. She had a tiny income, tiny expenses, but she got by. Lived as she chose. Then twelve weeks ago, her account was drained. Every penny that came in was instantly taken. At the end of every day, her account registered a balance of £0.00.

Before long, her phone was cut off. Then her electricity.

I think of Morgan licking the sugar out of an empty packet, in a house gone dark. Think of her looking at the packet of rat poison and thinking, ‘How much longer?’ Wondering how long it was before she put her head to the wall for the first time wanting to see if plaster dust and breeze block could fill her belly.

‘I don’t understand it, really, not in these small places,’ says Dunwoody. ‘Why wouldn’t she just walk down the hill and ask for food? Or call the police and report a fraud? Or anything.’

Buzz says, ‘Yes, but loads of people die where you could ask the same thing. Last winter, how many thousand pensioners was it died from the cold? All they had to do was phone the gas company or speak to a neighbor, but instead they let themselves freeze. Every year, thousands of people.’

‘That’s true, but still. Why let yourself starve?’

There are a few answers to that, or none. We now know – from medical records and the documents I recovered from the cottage – that Morgan suffered a minor stroke some eight months back. She was assessed as having minor cognitive impairment, but perhaps those assessments were wrong. They sometimes are. She’d had mental-health problems too – depression, mostly – and those things might have returned. And her nearest neighbors weren’t of her kind or class. And, with the death of coal-mining in these areas, none of these communities are what they used to be. And perhaps Morgan had some strange old-fashioned pride around begging. Or thought she’d sort things out with the bank. Or suffered some further stroke. Or had some petty feud with the people in the shop or the health center. Or some combination of all these things and more.

We never finally know the truth, never learn the full map of any crime. Motivations and choices recede endlessly from view.

I don’t say this though. Just read the paperwork as the others chat. Dunwoody looks at his empty beer glass and says, ‘I’d swear I got the first round in.’

Buzz gets up to get more drinks. Breakell can’t drink – he’s driving – and I don’t.

I hold up one of the documents. A letter from social services. ‘She used to get fortnightly care visits. Someone cancelled them.’

‘Who? Morgan?’

‘Well, according to this, yes,’ I say, ‘but this letter is dated June of this year.’

Dunwoody shrugs. His face is pink and the beer has already risen to his eyes. He has a close-trimmed beard, which his mother probably thinks is strawberry-blond. To everyone else, it’s ginger.

‘Maybe Hayley Morgan wrote that letter, cancelling those visits, or maybe she didn’t. Her account was emptied about four days after this letter was sent. Stayed empty, every day after that.’

Buzz comes back with the beers. Dunwoody takes his, but his eyes are on me.

I say, ‘Hayley Morgan died because she was starving. And she was starving because she was robbed. If someone deliberately prevented care visits, in an effort to perpetuate their fraud, you could argue that that individual recklessly endangered Hayley Morgan’s life. That’s not payroll fraud. That’s manslaughter.’

Dunwoody takes the letter from me, but the letter is not the point. You need three ingredients to make up a constructive manslaughter. First, an unlawful act. Second, an act likely to cause harm to the person affected. Third, death, though neither foreseen nor intended, results. As far as I can see it, we have a big yes on points one and three and a slightly more doubtful yes to point two. The case law is mostly built on the assumption that the harm-causing act is directly physical in nature. Punching someone in the face in one notable case, or pulling a replica gun on someone with a weak heart in another.

Stealing money and cancelling visits from social workers. Could those things add up to manslaughter? I think they could.

I think they did.

‘I don’t know,’ says Dunwoody, ‘I’m not sure.’ But he hasn’t touched his beer and his eyes have lost some of their pinkishness. There’s anxiety there too, a rapid lateral movement of the pupils.

Which is good. If Hayley Morgan’s death was no more than a nasty accident, Dunwoody has already investigated as rigorously as anyone would expect. If we’re looking at a crime which stands only one rung down from murder, he’s been sloppy. Slow to get to the scene. Insufficient in his demand for resources. Lazy in supervision.

He pulls out his phone. No signal.

‘Sod it.’

He walks out into the car park. Buzz looks at me. This isn’t his case. He’s part amused by the scene he’s just witnessed, part keen to have the last part explained.

‘If I were him, I’d be calling my colleagues in Leicester. He should have been on their case from the start.’

Buzz rubs my back and I half close my eyes as I give myself over to the rub. Jon Breakell, feeling like a spare part probably, goes to have a pee.

‘We should go on holiday,’ Buzz says. ‘You and me. Somewhere nice.’

‘That would be nice.’

‘Get some sun.’

I nod.

‘You’ve got leave, have you?’

I stare at him. I almost never take leave. I do it only when I have to, and then never know what to do with it. That’s changed a bit since I’ve been going out with Buzz. He books holidays, makes all the arrangements, tells me what to pay him for my share. I’ve no idea how many days’ holiday I have owing. He knows that, I’m sure.

Buzz lets me hang a moment, then grins. ‘You’ve got twenty-three days, including fifteen carried over from last year, and you need to use those or you’ll lose ‘em.’

‘Oh.’

‘I thought maybe Greece? Or Turkey? Somewhere still hot enough for beaches and swimming.’

I nod. ‘That sounds …’ I’m not sure what I’m meant to say next, so just nod some more, then tuck my head against his shoulder as Jon Breakell returns.

‘I’ll make the arrangements.’

A little wriggle of emotion escapes from somewhere behind my sternum. An elusive quicksilver flash that I can’t identify and that’s out of sight before I can pin it out for examination.

I say, ‘Don’t forget my course.’

I’ve got a training course coming up. A four-week residential thing in London. Buzz says, ‘I won’t. We’ll go after that.’

His voice twists a bit as he speaks. He doesn’t like me going on the course, but doesn’t want to rehash that argument now.

Under the table, I knead his thigh.

Then the front door bangs open and Dunwoody enters. A blue twilight briefly framed behind him. Brown hills and white moths, papery in the lamplight.

‘Leicestershire police have visited the address.’ His voice is throaty. ‘A family of eight. A Mr. and Mrs. Desai, his mother and five children. The husband is a hospital porter. Wife is a stay-at-home mum. Oldest child just turned fourteen. No computer present on the property. Two phones, both seized.’

He stops. His face is still in motion, though. He’s feeling something, though I’m not sure what or how to describe it. The pressure of great things, perhaps. The responsibility and the fear.

I stretch my legs out. Pushing my toes out and down, feeling the burn in my calves and thighs. Feeling present. Happy.

‘Payroll fraud,’ I say. ‘It’s a beautiful thing.’