The bloodstains were still there. Silver said he hadn’t touched them because the police might want to see them. The room had a bare look. Every ornament, the clock, the radio, the video recorder, all were gone. The blind had been raised and the curtains had a forlorn look, hanging there with ragged hems. Silver had left clothes of his in one of the drawers, swimming trunks, a sweatshirt, two pairs of socks, and these too had disappeared along with three large suitcases that had had their temporary home on top of the wardrobe. Truly, we had underrated Liv.

I told Silver about the money. He, who the night before had looked as if he’d never smile again, managed a laugh when I told him about hiding the notes in the curtain hems. He said Liv had missed her vocation, she’d have made a great spy.

“Maybe there’s still time,” I said. “She’s never had a vocation yet.”

We tried to imagine what had happened in the night. Presumably she had begun by packing all the stuff she had taken from the room into the suitcases along with her clothes. I wondered if she had left wearing nothing but my sweater and a pair of jeans. I wondered if she had washed off the blood. She couldn’t have called a taxi because the phone was in our room. We pictured her lugging those three heavy cases down four flights of stairs, staggering out of the front door and forcing herself to go into the street. Her agoraphobia had been real enough, her terror of seeing James and Claudia, but she had conquered both. She must have dragged those cases along the street, perhaps to the Edgware Road, perhaps only to Sutherland Avenue, and picked up a taxi there.

And gone where?

Not to Sweden. She would never have left for Kiruna without collecting her airfare, which was in Silver’s bank account. I remembered her mother’s friend in Elstree. Or had she simply gone to a hotel, perhaps the very one where her father had stayed?

We never found out. Neither of us ever saw her again until I went to her house in Hampstead and she was Mrs. Clarkson with two small children and the molar Jonny had knocked out hanging on a chain around her neck. Why? For what sentimental or agonizing reason? That was eleven years later. When we heard nothing from her, Silver sent her airfare money back to Håkan Almquist.