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Wednesday morning

Charlie could feel that his leg had stiffened up, even with the short time sitting still. It was only two hours since the last painkiller; too early for another. Would moving around help or hinder the healing process? Surely it was worth a try? At the very least, he could get a breath of the newly fresh air. He forced himself onto his feet and out of the break room. From the police station front door, Charlie could see the Everything Shop , unofficial name of what he supposed was a hardware store. Except that it sold teapots and tablecloths, reading glasses and light-up reindeer for Christmas, as well as the more traditional galvanised buckets and screwdrivers. From a tiny storefront on the High Street, it led both upstairs and down. Three floors of everything you might need (except for a meat thermometer when you need one, Tom had said bitterly, after trying to guess how long to cook a joint of beef for Sunday lunch.) If anywhere had sold both petrol cans and hammers to someone in Llanfair, it would be the Everything Shop. Whether they would remember selling them was another matter. He would hobble across the road and find out.

Of course, Charlie hadn’t taken into account that Llanfair was a small town, small enough for everyone to be related (whether by blood or friendship) to everyone else. He enquired of the middle-aged woman on the till. There was no need to introduce himself, and he had difficulty persuading the woman that he was there to collect information, not give it out.

“Hammers, you say? That was an awful thing, the takeaway. Blew up. Gas, apparently. That’s why you’re on crutches. Who would do that, now?”

“Hammers,” Charlie repeated. “Two of them.”

“There’s more than one kind of hammer, you know. It all depends what it’s for. What about that down the industrial estate? I blame the hot weather.”

Charlie peered at the name badge on the woman’s green nylon tabard. “Gwenann. I can’t talk about Mo’s Autoparts or Hassan’s takeaway, but I need to talk about hammers. Do you have a display? I could show you what one of them was like.” He could remember the hammer that had been dropped by Unwin’s murderer, though if he tried to describe it, he would undoubtedly get some technical term wrong. Gwenann didn’t seem like the kind of woman to let him get away with it.

She came out from behind the counter, revealing that she was wearing a flowered skirt and the kind of strangely shapeless shoes worn by people who were on their feet all day. She led him to the back of the shop to a display of all kinds of tools, ranging from the tiniest set of watchmakers’ screwdrivers up to a cement mixer, along with everything in between. In the middle were the hammers, and in the middle of the hammers, Charlie saw a replica of the wooden-handled hammer they found next to Unwin’s body. He peered at the price: ￡8.95. A very cheap way to kill a man.

“It was one like this,” he said.

“That’s a ball pein hammer,” Gwenann said. “She should have had a claw hammer to put up pictures, but no, she wanted this one. It’s three pounds cheaper, see, and then she went and lost it. Back two days later, she was, for another one.”

Charlie tried not to grind his teeth. “Who bought the hammers?” he asked.

“That girl from the estate agents. Said her boss wanted to put some pictures up, and took some hooks and nails, and one of these. I said, you need a claw hammer in case you have to take the nails out see, but she said she’d been told to get the cheapest. Is it true they found a dead body on the industrial estate? A foreigner I was told.”

“It’s an ongoing investigation,” Charlie said, repressively, with no expectation that it would stop the questions. “Do you happen to know the young woman’s name, or which estate agent she came from?”

“Huw Jones, round the corner. That other lot, they’re all lads with shiny suits and pointy shoes with the labels still stuck on the soles. Not locals, not like Huw Jones. Now let me think what her name is. It’ll come to me.”

“When it does, I’d be grateful for a call.” Charlie held one of his cards out to Gwennan, who took it and tucked it into a pocket. She looked up and tipped her head to one side, like a bird. “Well, the rain’s started. I should think the firemen would have been glad of that, the other night. Did you have to go to the fire as well?”

Mention of the fire reminded Charlie of the other item the shop might have sold. “I don’t suppose she brought a petrol can while she was here?” He really ought to have been able to predict the answer.

“Why would they need a petrol can to put pictures up?” A pause. “Oooh. Is that what they used to start the fire? Except the estate agents wouldn’t want to start a fire anyway.”

“So, the young woman didn’t buy a petrol can?” Charlie decided to ignore the rest.

Gwenann shook her head, pursing her lips at Charlie as if he were wasting everyone’s time with foolish questions. He wanted to know why the estate agents wouldn’t want to start a fire, but he wasn’t sure he had the mental strength to listen to the answers. Instead, he thanked her for her help and headed back up the stairs to the shop door.

“Aren’t you going to buy that hammer?” Gwenann called after him.

Charlie rehearsed several answers:

I’m not putting pictures up, and if I was, I’d buy a claw hammer. I already have one just like it in the evidence store. We got it from a dead body. I’ll get one off the internet now I know which one to buy, so thanks for that …

Tempting though it was, he simply said “not today, but thanks” and left, manoeuvring himself and the crutches through the door with some difficulty.

Outside the sky was dark and heavy with unshed rain. The air felt chilly after the days of heat, and Charlie shivered in his summer shirt. He debated going around the corner to the estate agents, and as he dithered, the first heavy drops fell, leaving dark circles on the dry pavement. Charlie tried to run, but could only hobble, nowhere near fast enough to save being soaked to the skin by the time he let himself into the police station.

He was stripped to his underwear and scrubbing with a towel at his cold wet skin, and hoping the bandage wasn’t too wet, when Eddy came into the men’s locker room.

“What do you know about Huw Jones the estate agent?” Charlie asked.

“Only that they own half the town,” Eddy replied.