I sighed. This was one of the questions that had been turning endlessly in my mind, throughout the small hours. ‘The other thing is, there was no sign of a struggle. There was no robbery − and no attempt to make it look like one. The only thing taken was the murder weapon. It doesn’t seem that Nick fought for his life …’ I felt tears welling up suddenly and stared down hard at the flowers embroidered on the tablecloth. Morris reached out a comforting hand and laid it on my arm. I pulled myself together and went on, ‘He was just … felled. Hit once, from behind …’

‘You think he trusted these Russians after all that had happened?’ Ricky asked.

I shrugged. ‘Nick insisted they parted as friends. He refused to believe they intended to do me any harm that day on the moor.’

We were all silent for a minute, sipping tea, then Morris spoke again. ‘What if, his killer simply crept up on him?’ he asked, peering at us over his specs. ‘What if he didn’t know anyone was in the flat at all?’

Ricky’s eyes narrowed behind a thin spiral of cigarette smoke. ‘If his killer had got into the building earlier in the day, say if Nick had gone out, Nick could have locked the place up at night, not knowing his attacker was in there with him.’

I shook my head. ‘Nick hardly ever went out, and he never the left the place, even for a few minutes, without double-locking the door. Do you know, the police found cash hidden all over his flat? Hundreds of little packages, rolled up in rubber bands, amounting to thousands, apparently … he was hoarding it under the carpets … no wonder he didn’t want me poking about with a vacuum cleaner!’ I took a sip of tea. ‘But it was so … efficient – the killing, I mean.’

There had been no trail of bloody footprints, just a few drops of blood on the stairs, presumably left by the murder weapon as it was taken away. Inspector Ford seemed satisfied that this was the missing candlestick, that it could have inflicted the wound that killed Nick: death in a single blow. The killer hadn’t gone into the kitchen or Nick’s bedroom, or down into the shop. He’d come in, killed Nick, and gone, taking the candlestick with him. It was like an execution.