Cat was already curled on the sofa, shoes off. Simon set his beer down.

‘OK, so what’s this –’

But her phone rang.

‘Leave it, you’re not on call.’

She shook her head and mouthed ‘Sam’.

‘Hi, sweetheart . . . How are you? Sam? You’ve got a bad signal, I can hardly hear you . . . OK, that’s a bit better . . . Yes, I’m fine, sitting here having a drink with Simon . . . What’s up? Sammy?’

She looked at the screen for a few seconds.

‘Bloody signals,’ Simon said.

‘I’ll call him back, see if that’s any better. Sorry . . . Damn, now it’s gone to voicemail.’

‘Does he get to see Hannah much?’

‘Sometimes. He went to her show and took her out for supper, and she’s been over to his nursing digs, but they’re both busy. I do worry about them, though, being in London.’

‘Course you do. Let’s hope he rings back or you’ll be wide awake all night.’

‘I’m wide awake now, so you might as well hit me with your questions . . . Hang on, Wookie’s snuffling at the door.’

Simon jumped up. ‘Come in, little rat.’

‘Don’t call him that.’

Wookie trotted over to the sofa and jumped up, settling close to Cat, and then nudging her. She rolled him gently over and started to scratch his tummy.

‘Chinese herbal medicine – what do you know about it? What do you think about it?’

‘Ha, how long have you got?’

‘All night.’

Wookie made a chain of contented snuffling noises and burrowed down.

‘I can only talk about it generally, I don’t know any individual practitioners and I haven’t much idea how they run their practices, though I have had the occasional patient who’s consulted them. The first thing to say is that they’re perfectly legit – they’re not quacks. We don’t subscribe to the philosophy behind their medicine but they do have one, and they train for a long time. The main problem is that some of the stuff their pharmacies sell is unlicensed here and potentially quite harmful – you just don’t know what’s in that little bag of herbal mixture you’re buying for your sore throat and they don’t often have Western training alongside their own, to learn about potential interactions between our meds and theirs, which is pretty complicated.’

‘Can you find out about their qualifications?’

‘Possibly. I’ve never tried. Are you thinking of the one in Starly?’

‘Yes.’

‘That junkie who died in the flat . . .’

‘The flat is unconnected with the pharmacy – same landlord but two separate rentals, so far as we can ascertain, though we’re having a certain amount of difficulty tracking down the landlord but that’s not unusual. My gut feeling is that the death had nothing to do with Mr Wang, though it’s made him twitchy.’

‘Do you wonder?’