‘Nick …’ I tried to point but my arm wouldn’t hold steady. ‘He’s dead.’

The receptionist, a mature lady, got up and steered me efficiently towards a chair. ‘Who’s dead, my love?’ she asked patiently. ‘Mr Nickolai, d’you mean, around the corner? You’d better go and have a look, Darren,’ she told her young colleague firmly. ‘See what’s the matter.’

Darren did not look enthusiastic, but he straightened his shoulders manfully and left the shop.

‘Police …’ I gabbled to the receptionist, ‘We must call the police …’

‘We will, dear,’ she told me soothingly, as if I were a small child, ‘just as soon as Darren’s been to check.’ She looked as if she might be the grandmother of small children, her natural motherliness painted over with make-up that didn’t suit her, her plump body squeezed into a uniform of starched white blouse with buttons straining over her bosom, and black pencil skirt.

‘He’s dead,’ I repeated, trying to get her to understand.

‘Yes, dear, you’ve had a bit of a shock.’ So had Darren. He came back into the shop, all colour drained from his face.

‘I think,’ he began huskily, lowering himself to sit on the edge of his desk and loosening his tie, ‘we’d better call the police. There’s been a murder.’

They made me go back into the flat, hours later. By then I’d repeated what I’d found over and over. First to a uniformed policeman, who’d sealed off the entrance to the alleyway with blue and white tape, and posted a colleague at Nick’s front door; and then to Detective Inspector Ford, who’d listened sympathetically while I garbled it all out again between sips of hot, sweet tea.

He listened patiently, nodding now and again, as if he were mentally sifting grains of what might be useful information from the chaff of my outpourings. ‘Would you describe yourself as a business partner of Mr Nickolai?’ he asked at last.

‘Not really.’ Despite myself, I smiled. ‘More of a dogsbody.’

‘But you’d got to know him quite well? You might know who his friends are … other than these foreign gentlemen whom you’ve described.’

‘Yes … I suppose …’

‘You see, what I’m getting at, Juno, is that there doesn’t appear to be any sign of forced entry, which would indicate that Mr Nickolai opened the door to his killer. It would be helpful if we knew who his regular visitors were so that we could eliminate them from our investigation.’

‘Yes … I see,’ I said lamely, although apart from Paul and dear old Mr Singh, I couldn’t think of anyone who visited regularly.

‘Later on, we’ll ask you to look at some photographs of known offenders, to see if you can identify these Russians.’

I nodded miserably. If only Vlad hadn’t deleted that photograph.