‘Well hardly.’ I looked around me at the shrouded furniture, the still unfinished walls. I had a long way to go before I reached that point.

And progress was about to slow down again. Paul was returning to Nottingham next day. He’d shut up his unit in the bazaar and put his plot of land up for sale. He’d be back in a few weeks, he promised, to sort out his workshop. He would give me another hand then, if I still needed it.

He gave me a little present before he left, wrapped in tissue paper. ‘Saw this in a market in Nottingham,’ he told me, ‘and I thought of you.’

Inside the tissue paper I found a gleaming silver hatpin ending in a carved knob of black stone. ‘Whitby jet,’ he informed me.

I thanked him with a hug, reminding myself I must try and find a netsuke for his collection some time. I was relieved he was going away, to be honest. It was altogether too comfortable having him around. No point in getting cosy. He wasn’t mine to keep.

I went back to the shop later and let myself in. It still felt very strange to me, letting myself in with my own keys. I wondered if I’d ever be able to climb those stairs without thinking of Nick, of the morning I had found him dead.

Walking across the bare boards of the living room, my footsteps sounded like thunder. When Paul and I had removed the carpet we had pushed all the furniture up to one end of the living room. It was still there, the dining chairs stacked on the table. I squeezed my way around them to the bureau, opened it and collected every scrap of paper from the pigeonholes and drawers, put them in a cardboard box I’d brought for the purpose and brought it home.

I spent the evening going through it, my feet up on the coffee table, Bill sleeping on my lap. Most of it was correspondence, and most of that told the story of a long and increasingly acrimonious dispute between Nick and the Inland Revenue. He had settled before they took him to court, but only just. I kept the document showing his proof of payment and threw the rest in the bin. It was junk. I doubt if the taxman had murdered Nick, however much he might have felt like it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The phone rang as I was getting breakfast.

‘Good news, Miss Browne.’ It was the inspector’s voice. ‘We think we’ve found one of your Russians.’

I put down the bowl of breakfast cereal I’d been about to tuck into. ‘Where?’