‘Of course. Well, I’ll get straight down to it. I have reason to believe Tobey Durbridge will soon be cleared of Dan Jeavons’ murder and the police will come gunning for one of the rest of us who were present on the night that Dan died. I’m trying to establish incontrovertible proof that none of us did it.’

Silence. Patrix stared at me like I was sprouting horns right before his eyes.

‘Mr Ellerman?’

‘What makes you think that’s the case?’ Patrix was wary, to say the least.

‘A friend in the police service told me as much.’ Which wasn’t a million miles away from the truth.

‘I don’t see what that has to do with me. Obviously I didn’t kill Dan Jeavons.’

‘Is it obvious?’ I asked.

Patrix leaned forward in his chair, his faux power pose abandoned. ‘Of course I didn’t kill that blanker.’

‘You had every reason to.’ I was unable to keep the frost from creeping into my voice.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘I heard about you and Dan and your gambling issues,’ I said. ‘If I know, it’s only a matter of time before the police do too – if they don’t already.’

‘So I owed Jeavons a few hundred thousand. So what?’

A few hundred thousand … Whoa.

‘I heard Dan was tired of waiting for you to pay it back.’

‘You heard entirely too much,’ said Patrix. ‘Listen, Jeavons was nothing but a greasy, jumped-up social climber with ideas above his level who thought he could use me to progress. So I returned the favour. What was he going to do? Take me to court and sue to get his money back? And just where did his money come from in the first place? Drugs and extortion and people trafficking. Not a penny of it was legally obtained. In Albion courts, the rule of “clean hands” applies. He couldn’t use the law to recover money from me when it was obtained illegally in the first place – and I told him as much. So what if I took money off that unctuous, no-class lowlife? A bit of quid pro quo here and there never hurt anybody.’

Quid pro quo? Is that how this sorry excuse for a man got to sleep at night? He knew Dan’s money was dirty and covered in blood, but that hadn’t stopped him helping himself. And now he thought he was off the hook. Patrix Ellerman … My instincts hadn’t steered me wrong as far as this scum was concerned.

‘On the night we’re talking about, I understand you spoke to Dan in his study? That was before the first course, wasn’t it?’