I covered my scoff with another hacking cough. All I saw was a rich man revering his own possessions, justifying the pursuit of his dead friend’s widow as noble. It would have been pure pleasure to point out Marcelo’s vanity, more than from Katherine’s pills (of which, to be honest, I desperately needed more), but we’d strayed too far from the topic and I wanted to get him back on point. ‘So if you helped the Sabres, you’re telling me you represented Dad? You were his lawyer?’

‘That’s how we met. And we got to know each other, grew close. I did my best, but your father was on a path and sometimes that can be hard to change. He kept getting strikes, and in the end I couldn’t keep him from forty-five days all expenses paid, if you know what I mean. I think you were three, maybe four at the time.’ I didn’t remember Dad’s six-week sojourn specifically, but it fit with what I knew of a man I measured by his absences. Marcelo continued, ‘That was a wake-up call for both of us. He came out ready to start fresh, and by then I was done with taking envelopes of money without knowing where they were from. But the whole thing . . . I don’t know how to put it, but your father got caught in the current again. It felt like something had changed. Soon there was more violence on the Sabres’ side, less lenience on the law’s.’

‘Michael told me ransoms paid better than robberies,’ I said.

‘Exactly. A real estate agent was shot when he refused to open his safe. He survived, but this was not the type of confrontation the Sabres were known for. They weren’t happy with just jewellery scraped from drawers anymore, they wanted into people’s safes and, when even that wasn’t enough, their bank accounts. This was the late eighties – ransoms were in vogue. The Sabres tried it on, and they liked how it fit them. It pricked the police’s ears right back up. By then, everyone involved could be pinned as an accessory on some level. Robert knew if he got another strike, the next time he saw you you’d be shaving.’

‘So you got him a deal.’ I had to squeeze the words out. My hand was pulsing with such hot pain that I felt I could vaporise snow if I went outside and lay down in it. ‘He traded information for immunity?’