Rebus put on his most sincere face. ‘I’m positive, Mrs Slocum.’

‘I suffer from nerves, you know. I’ve tried everything – pills, potions, hypnosis … But if something’s in you, there’s not much they can do, is there? I mean, if it’s there from the time you’re born, a little ticking time bomb …’ She looked around. ‘Maybe it’s this house, so new and all, nothing for me to do.’

Aldous Zane had predicted a house like this, a modern house …

‘Mrs Slocum,’ Rebus said, eyes on the window, ‘this might sound like a daft request, and I’ve no way to explain it, but do you think I could take a look at your attic?’

A chain on the first-floor landing. You tugged at it and the trapdoor opened, the wooden steps sliding down to meet you.

‘Clever,’ Rebus said. He began to climb, Una Slocum staying on the landing.

‘The light switch is just to your right when you get up,’ she called.

Rebus poked his head into space, half-expecting a shovel to come crashing down on it, and fumbled for the switch. A single bare bulb illuminated the floored attic.

‘We talked about converting it,’ Una Slocum called. ‘But why bother? The house is too big for us as it is.’

The attic was a few degrees cooler than the rest of the house, testament to modern insulation. Rebus looked around, not sure what he might find. What had Zane said? Flags: the Stars and Stripes and a swastika. Slocum had lived in the US, and seemed fascinated by the Third Reich. But Zane had also seen a trunk in the attic of a large, modern house. Well, Rebus couldn’t see anything like that. Packing cases, boxes of Christmas decorations, a couple of broken chairs, a spare door, a couple of hollow-sounding suitcases …

‘I haven’t been up here since last Christmas,’ Una Slocum said. Rebus helped her up the last couple of steps.

‘It’s big,’ Rebus said. ‘I can see why you thought of converting it.’

‘Planning permission would have been the problem. All the houses here are supposed to stay the same. You spend a fortune on a place, then you aren’t allowed to do anything with it.’ She lifted a folded piece of red cloth from one of the suitcases, brushed dust from it. It looked like a tablecloth, maybe a curtain. But when she shook it, it unfurled into a large flag, black on a white circle with red border. A swastika. She saw the shock on Rebus’s face.

‘He used to collect this sort of stuff.’ She looked around, her face creasing into a frown. ‘That’s odd.’

Rebus swallowed. ‘What?’

‘The trunk’s gone.’ She pointed to a space on the floor. ‘Ryan must have moved it.’ She looked around, but it obviously wasn’t anywhere in the attic.

‘Trunk?’

‘A big old thing, he’s had it for ever. Why would he move it? Come to that, how would he move it?’

‘What do you mean?’