How easily he denies his father’s culpability. But maybe he’s right. Maybe they are all at it. The company certainly survived, the board of directors severing all ties with Gerald Cartwright and changing its name. CWI re-floated on the stock exchange and still continued to involve itself in no more dodgy deals than the average multinational. Or so they would have the world believe.

“I think he’s dead, though, if that’s what you mean. I think I’ve always known that.”

Tyler doesn’t answer him. He knows full well how fathers can let you down. Or does Oscar mean something else? Is this a confession?

“I mean . . . he wouldn’t just leave. Not like that. Not after Mum . . .” He looks up, as though noticing Tyler for the first time. He straightens visibly, arching his back and flexing the muscles on his arms.

Despite the fact Oscar is the one in his underwear, it’s Tyler who suddenly feels exposed, sitting on the edge of the windowsill, the hard wood digging into his arse through his jogging pants. He crosses his legs, then uncrosses them again. He wouldn’t just leave. Not like that.

Oscar smiles, and the vulnerability is gone again. Is this a scared little boy play-acting at being a grown-up, or a devious man pretending a false innocence? Tyler can’t decide, nor which might be the more dangerous.

The cheeky grin morphs into something more bitter. “I guess you know all this, though? About Cynthia—” He stops abruptly. “My mum, I mean. About her walking out and all that?”

Tyler knows she left years before Gerald’s disappearance but not much more than that. He knows the original investigation considered Cynthia Cartwright a possible suspect but never managed to trace her. “How old were you when she left?”

“Ten. She just had enough, I guess. I don’t suppose Dad was the easiest bloke to live with.”

Absent fathers, mothers who abandoned their sons. The similarity in their stories is too striking. “Who took care of you when your father wasn’t around?”

“The neighbors. They’re sort of like elderly aunts to me. Lily and Edna. They pretty much raised me anyway, even before Dad—” He stops abruptly, leans forward, and picks up his coffee. He takes a long sip, his shining eyes never leaving Tyler’s own. “Then they shipped me off to boarding school.” He laughs. “I don’t blame them; I was a bit of a shit back then.” He upends the mug and drinks deeply, the protruding Adam’s apple contorting as he swallows.

“Why did you start the work on the house?”

When the mug comes down, the eyes have darkened and the sclerae are yellowed and bloodshot. “Why do I get the feeling I’m being interrogated here?”

Tyler takes a leaf out of Doggett’s book and shrugs. The dark eyes pin him to the windowsill.