Sofia looked exhausted by the confession, so I picked up the thread again. ‘Marcelo never takes his watch off, we all know this. Except when he underwent a shoulder reconstruction. A surgery that Sofia conducted. She used the surgery as an excuse to swap his watch with a fake. I noticed because Marcelo punched me in the jaw earlier and I still have all my teeth. That model of Rolex, with the platinum chain, is supposed to weigh just shy of half a kilogram. A punch, even from an old man – no offence – should have floored me like he was wearing knuckle dusters.’

‘He would have noticed the difference,’ Juliette scoffed. ‘Surely. If the fake was so light.’

‘You’re right. But Marcelo was recovering from surgery. Anything would have felt like a brick on his wrist at first, and so he grew accustomed to the lighter weight, thinking his arm was growing stronger in recovery instead.’ I saw Marcelo lift some invisible weights with his right arm, testing the heft, confusion plastered across his face. ‘But the problem was, it wasn’t any old wristwatch. I’ll admit, I’ve always been a little bit jealous of the thing. I’ve googled how much it was worth on occasion, so imagine my surprise when Marcelo tells me the watch belonged to my father. He was a criminal, sure, but not a showy one. He never bought flashy jewellery or souped-up cars. That seemed strange to me. I assume it was stolen in the first place, but even so, Dad wouldn’t have been the guy to take it from a haul. And then I learned about the photographs. Which everyone wanted and no one ever found, even though the gang’s thugs turned over the very bank his wife worked at to get to his safety deposit box.’

‘Robert left the watch to Jeremy,’ my mother muttered.

‘Rolexes are designed to last – their whole marketing campaign is based on them being handed down through generations. In particular, a platinum Rolex is so heavy because it’s so robust: it’s even got bulletproof glass.’ SAFE AS A BANK VAULT shouted one of the ads that had peppered my social media feed. ‘So, it’s going to last a long time and be protected. There’s no better place to keep something vital. Provided it’s small enough to fit under the glass, right?’ I took the loupe out of my pocket and held it up. ‘Juliette, toss me Frank’s medal, will you?’

Juliette frowned in confusion, but obliged and tossed the glass case in a careful, underarm lob.

I caught it. I’d already checked; it was the one thing I’d done to confirm my suspicions, and so I knew how important it was. As I said in Chapter 15, I didn’t spend eighty words describing the damn thing for nothing.