I had no idea what it was that Vlad thought I had in my possession, but I wasn’t sure the inspector believed me. ‘And poor old Paul!’ I went on. ‘When he got back from Truro, there were police crawling all over his place, his door’s broken, half his workshop had been flooded and he got a ticking off for not securing it properly.’

Morris tutted and passed me a slice of cake. ‘Well, the police would never have caught Vlad without you.’

‘Except his name’s not Vlad,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s Sergei Zhotahyehski,’ although he would always be Vlad to me.

‘And do we know what he was after?’ Ricky asked, taking out a cigarette and tapping the end of it on the breakfast table.

‘No. He’s being very tight-lipped about that. In fact, according to Inspector Ford, he’s being tight-lipped about everything, refuses to co-operate.’

‘What I don’t understand,’ Morris began, stirring his tea thoughtfully, ‘is how this Vlad found out that Nick had left the shop to you. I mean, that’s why he came after you, wasn’t it? Because he thought Nick had left you something that he thought belonged to him?’

Ricky paused in the act of lighting his fag. ‘Oh, come on! You’ve only got to hang around Ashburton for five minutes and you can pick up gossip on just about anybody.’

‘Especially if they’ve been talking to either of you two,’ I put in sweetly.

‘But he hasn’t been hanging around Ashburton, has he?’ Morris objected. ‘Not recently.’

‘Well, not that we know about,’ I conceded.

‘Of course!’ Ricky clicked his fingers, hit by sudden inspiration. ‘Bert Evans told him.’ He turned to me. ‘Didn’t Vlad say to you yesterday that Bert didn’t have this thing he was after, whatever it was?’

Morris’s brow crumpled in confusion. ‘But why would Bert Evans tell Vlad Juno had it?’

‘To save his rotten skin, of course!’ Ricky puffed out smoke and dropped his lighter on the table. ‘Keep up, Maurice! If two blokes kept stuffing your head in a fish pond, wouldn’t you tell them that someone else had got it?’

‘There’s just one problem with this theory,’ I pointed out, before the conversation could get more heated. ‘Bert was already dead, long before the reading of the will.’

Ricky’s shoulders sagged as his theory imploded. ‘So he was,’ he muttered.

For a moment the three of us were silent.

‘He might have seen it, though,’ Morris glanced from Ricky to me. ‘The will, I mean. Nick might have showed it to him. Somebody had to witness it, didn’t they?’

‘That’s true,’ Ricky admitted, nodding thoughtfully.

‘I suppose Mr Young would know who witnessed it,’ I said. ‘I could ring him.’