Rob curled his lip, upended his glass, and waved the empty at the waiter. I wondered how many he’d had before I arrived. “I’m so bored I could weep. And I don’t like weeping so sometimes I behave badly to be less bored.”

“Drink and women?”

“And rudeness. My ex-wife said it was the rudeness that was worst of all. That has to be a British thing, doesn’t it? A wife who will overlook you fucking her … well, no need to be specific, is there? But ultimately can’t bear the tone you take with waiters.”

“Poor old Rob.”

He closed his eyes. “Just don’t be boring. Please don’t be boring. I suppose you want to talk about David, or that friend of yours, that lovely girl who died.”

Rob held up the telephone box on the palm of his hand. His hands were surprisingly childish, soft-looking and small with pink, plump fingertips.

“And you found this in Peter’s flat? Perhaps he’s become an artist. It’s rather Banksian, isn’t it? I can see a whole series of them: a cricket bat with a dog turd on it, a giant dildo sculpted from Kendal Mint Cake, the corpse of a corgi wearing a diamond tiara. It’s too easy. Come on, you do one.”

“Last time I saw him, he said he’d seen David.”

“And this,” he indicated the box, “is relevant to Dave how?” Rob put the telephone box down on the table and wiped his hands on his napkin. I told him about the phone box outside my house, about the fire. How I was certain it was Peter who’d torched it.

“Because?”

“Because I had an affair with David that summer. Because he liked him.”

Rob raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure he’s not just in a dark room somewhere, ketamined to the eyeballs, having the jolly old chem-sex time of his life?”

I shook my head.

“I was at the same college as your friend Peter. I was a year ahead of him so we didn’t have tutorials together, never knew him well, but he stuck out. Odd, self-conscious, even the way he spoke, like it was still the 1920s. Always trying to insert himself, not a good drinker. Rumors about him wandering around talking to himself at night like a nutter. And then there was this one time when, well…”

My throat thickened. “What happened?”

“If he’d taken it in good spirit, it’d probably have been different for him.” Rob stood up and went to the long windows. Outside, Saint James Street was quiet, the day graying into evening. He tapped on the glass, and as if in response, the streetlights came on. Looking down at his hand, for a moment his face became foolish with delight.

“Did you see that?”

“I did.”

“Little victories.”

“What did you do to Peter? Bugger him? Made him lick your boots?”