She looked horrified at the prospect, and he thought briefly that she would never leave the flat at the top of the hotel. Like Miss Havisham in the Dickens book he’d read at school, she’d stay there mourning Jerry until she was covered in cobwebs and dust.

‘I couldn’t face it,’ she said. ‘Not yet. People want to visit, but I tell Peter to send them away.’

‘Did you give Jerry some money when he came home this time?’ Perez was sitting on a low easy chair and he was so close to her that he could keep his voice very quiet. Almost like a lover’s whisper.

‘I offered,’ she said. And she turned to Perez, her eyes feverish and sparkling, glad of a reason to be proud of her boy. ‘I offered him money, but he said he didn’t need it. “I won’t need your cash ever again.” That was what he said.’

‘What do you think he meant by that?’

‘He was on the track of a story.’ Maria was animated again. Manic. ‘A story that would make his fortune.’

‘Is that what Jerry told you?’ Perez spoke again in his soft seducer’s voice. ‘That his story would make him a fortune?’

But she seemed caught up in her memories and didn’t answer directly. ‘That was what Jerry always wanted,’ she said. ‘Fame and fortune. From when he was a little boy. He thought he’d find it in London, but all the time it was here.’

‘What did he tell you about his story?’ Perez thought this was like groping in the dark for a shadow that kept slipping out of reach.

‘Nothing!’ Maria sat suddenly upright and he thought he caught the smell of spirit on her skin. She’d been drinking as well as taking prescribed medicine. Not this morning perhaps, but last night. Perez imagined her and Peter sitting in this room and drinking away the guilt in silence. ‘It was secret.’

‘Is that why Jerry’s editor knew nothing about it?’ Perez asked. ‘Because he needed to keep it to himself?’

Maria nodded energetically. ‘Anyone might betray him.’ Perez thought that sounded more like her son’s statement than Maria’s, and another scene came into his head. This time he pictured Maria and Jerry sitting in this room the night before the journalist died. Dinner was over and they were drinking. No Peter this time. He wouldn’t be able to face it. He’d be downstairs playing the gracious host in the bar. But mother and son. Maria delighted to have her boy home, perhaps sitting literally at his feet. Good wine. The most expensive the hotel could provide. No expense spared for the prodigal son. And Jerry holding forth, talking about his plans, refusing her money with a grand gesture: ‘Just you wait. I’ll never need to borrow from you again.’