Mitch remained quiet, allowing Heath to elaborate. He did.

‘My folks are dead.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Mitch, indifferent.

Heath shook his head. ‘They died years ago. When I was in my late teens.’

‘How?’ asked Mitch.

‘Cancer. Mum, breast, Dad, bowel. Two years apart.’

Chandler felt that this was cause for a moment’s sympathetic pause. But Mitch was on a roll.

‘Do you still think about them?’

Mitch looked at the table for a moment. ‘Yeah but I’ve accepted it. Also accepted that I may be more prone to cancer, too.’

There was a lassitude with how Heath let the words tumble out of his mouth that was almost morbid, as if he expected death were lying in wait just around the corner. Maybe his brush with Gabriel had confirmed this, or maybe this self-imposed death sentence merely made him feel that he should take as many people with him as he could.

‘Have you been told you’ll die?’ asked Chandler.

Heath’s focus switched to Chandler, Mitch clearly enraged at having his flow interrupted.

‘Apart from Gabriel telling me, no. But everyone dies.’ Again the words fell out with nothing to hang them on, just weary acceptance, as if he were already nothing but dust.

‘It’s just a matter of how, isn’t it, Mr Barwell?’ said Mitch.

The loaded question won back Heath’s focus.

‘What do you mean by that?’

Mitch waved his hand to suggest it was an offhand comment. ‘Never mind. Carry on telling me about your family.’

‘I have a brother and sister. Both older.’

‘Names?’ Mitch made a scene of preparing to jot their names down, a tacit promise that he would chase this information up, a warning for Heath not to lie.

‘Ross and Pippa. Philippa. We don’t talk to each other. A dispute over the will.’

‘Your folks left it all to you? As the youngest?’

‘No,’ said Heath, tinged with disappointment. ‘The opposite. I got a few bits and pieces; they got a share of the house. But that’s long gone now. We don’t speak.’

‘Wouldn’t they care that you’re in custody?’

‘They’ll only care when word comes through that I’m dead,’ he said, bitterly. ‘Gabriel was close to granting their wish.’

Mitch nodded. ‘But you don’t have anything to confirm your identity?’

‘He took all that stuff; wallet, driving licence, everything.’

‘Okay,’ said Mitch, non-committal.

‘You have the wrong person, Sergeant.’

Mitch raised his eyebrows, a flash of anger at being inadvertently demoted.

‘At the minute you’re the only person we have, Mr Barwell,’ he said, looking across at Chandler in apparent frustration before moving on. ‘You mentioned the number fifty-five.’

‘That’s what he said I was.’

‘Did he talk about the others?’

‘No.’

‘Nothing?’

‘No. Nothing.’