‘Let’s go out into the mall.’ I walked out of the room because I didn’t think it was great to be in such a small space, alone, with a strange, freaked-out man. Even though I found that I trusted him. He’d gone from killer to sidekick in a couple of minutes.

We walked back out into Beachview, and I led him back to the bench. Lots of people were around. It was good out here. Noisy, ordinary.

‘This is difficult to say,’ I said, watching a woman pushing a pushchair and thinking of my mum in Joe’s version of this place.

‘Everything’s difficut,’ he said. ‘Go on.’

‘OK. When we saw the trophy in your picture, we thought it meant you’d killed Joe. That you’d come here to get it back from him, and then you’d argued and you’d punched him in one of those freak ways, and he died. We didn’t think you’d done it on purpose. Your dad works here, doesn’t he? So we thought he’d helped you cover it up and that was why you moved to France.’

Troy didn’t look shocked.

‘I guess that would make sense,’ he said. ‘But it didn’t happen. Thank God. I would never have been able to keep quiet about it. I’d have confessed straight off. I mean, my conscience has messed me up for years as it is, and I didn’t even do anything.’

‘Yeah. I know that now.’

I realized that we’d been so sure of our theory about Troy, and now we were back to square one. I’d been gearing up to say goodbye to Joe forever and he was staying.

‘So what did happen?’ said Troy.

I told him about the angry guy from the mall. In the absence of anything else at all it was the only lead we had left.

‘Have you got a picture of him?’ Troy said.

‘No. Joe was going to take one with Gus’s digital camera, but then we got all caught up with you. Sorry. I feel really shabby about suspecting you now.’

He waved that away. ‘I’d have thought the same. Forget it. Joe should take a photo.’

‘Yeah.’

‘God, this is frustrating! If he’s stuck in that room every afternoon it’s likely to have happened there. At least that’s all we’ve got to go on.’

‘Yes.’

‘Let’s dig deep into this. As deep as we can. When you thought Dad had helped me with the body, how would that have worked? Because it wasn’t Dad, but I guess someone did it.’

‘He’d have got it out.’ I thought about it. ‘He’d have got it out without anyone noticing. So probably not through the mall.’