‘Madam Theresa! She was long retired. She contacted me about my brother.’ His face twisted with disgust at the implied intimacy, and the last of the cigar smoke seeped from his mouth. ‘Would I like to visit my brother? The old girl has done it quite a bit over the years – inviting me to hold hands with her retarded offspring. Make believe we are family. No, thank you! I told her that I didn’t have a brother. But I did have a job for her. Oh, I knew what she was. And I knew what she sold. You see, we just were just bringing in too many nurses. It seemed a shame not to put them to work.’

‘So it was never your father who was Theresa’s sponsor up in the penthouse of the Hopewell Centre. It was you.’

He took a long drag on his cigar and the tip glowed red in the dying light of the late afternoon.

‘Look, I was never interested in whoring. That’s my father’s area of expertise. Getting someone to have sex with you is absolutely nothing,’ he said. ‘But try finding someone to look after your old, dying parent! Try getting someone to clean the mess off dear old mum or dad when they’ve soiled their bed again! Now that’s bloody difficult, Detective.’

A squad car pulled up in the car park.

And then another.

No lights, no sirens, no fuss.

Nobody wanted to scare the residents. So Edie must have called it in after all. I felt a huge wave of sorrow for her. And for the lovely old lady with the censored box of Milk Tray on her lap.

Warboys stepped out from behind his desk.

‘I think you’ve earned this,’ he said, and tried to stub out his cigar in my right eye.

I must have slipped because I felt the cigar burn and crumble against my shoulder and then his hands were in my face, the fingernails clawing at my forehead as he sunk his thumbs into my eyes, planning to push them into the back of my head as a howl of furious rage strangled in his throat.