The carpet foam had taken most of the stain away, leaving a faint pink mark, made more noticeable because the halo of carpet surrounding the stain was now cleaner and brighter than the rest. I didn’t have time to scrub the entire carpet, and I wasn’t prepared to do it anyway. It really needed taking up and burning and that wasn’t my decision to make. There was only one way to solve the problem for the time being.

I nipped into Nick’s bedroom, dragged the rug from beside his bed into the living room, and laid it down over the stain, covering up my handywork.

Finally, I closed the windows and sprayed lots of air freshener around in the room. I’d done as much as I was prepared to do. If his children wanted deeper cleaning done, they could damn well do it themselves.

I checked my watch: hardly any time left for sleuthing. I dusted the top of Nick’s bureau and turned the key, pulling down the lid and exposing the wooden pigeonholes inside. They were stuffed, the slots jammed tight with paperwork. It would take hours to search through them. And any connection with Vlad or Bert was unlikely to exist on paper. I doubted if Nick kept written records of his illegal dealings. I wondered where all his account books were. Perhaps the police had taken them.

I closed the lid of the bureau, pulled open the drawers in turn and poked about with a yellow rubber forefinger. I found nothing but old pencil stubs, a couple of odd radio batteries, a few barley sugars, and springs and bits of metal that looked as if they’d come from inside a pocket watch. I sighed hopelessly. I was being an idiot. The police must have already searched through this stuff.

The chimes of St Andrew’s Church clock sounded as it prepared to strike the hour. Mr Young would be returning any moment. I’d wanted to search the bedroom but I didn’t want him to discover me rummaging through Nick’s drawers, and I still had to tidy up my cleaning things.

As I emptied the bucket down the sink, watching the dreadful pink water swirl around the plughole, I congratulated myself on how calmly I had coped with the emotions of the situation. I rinsed the bucket and put it away, stripped off my rubber gloves, collected the rest of my things from the living room and surveyed my handiwork. And suddenly I could see Nick, shuffling about in his carpet slippers. I am not ready to be ghost. His words came back to me and I buckled, sank to my knees near the fireplace and wept.