He pulled up outside the little two-storey house on the back-street. He’d been here only once before, when he’d given DS Latimer a lift one morning. Now he sat in his car, looking at the house with its downstairs window lit up brightly. He knew that Meg had a lodger, DC Harris, who worked on fraud and embezzlement. Kathy, that was her name. He remembered it just as she opened the door to him.

‘Is Meg in?’

‘Who is it? Step forward a little.’

Typical cop behaviour. He followed her order and brought his face, drenched from the rain, into the glow of the porch light.

‘Oh, it’s you. Inspector Hobbes. Sir.’

He waved the title away. ‘I just need to see Meg – DS Latimer – about a case.’

‘She’s not in.’

‘Do you know where she is?’

‘Probably still at work. You didn’t try the station?’

‘Yes. I’ll do that.’

‘Or maybe she’s out with her man.’

‘Right. A man?’

Kathy Harris laughed. ‘Some girls have all the luck.’

‘There’s no one else here, is there? Inside the house?’

Now Harris looked suspicious. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Nothing. Nothing at all. Don’t worry about it.’

‘I’m not worried. I’m curious.’

He left it there. No more questions. Back in the car. A strange mood. One thought after another. Nothing connecting. He stopped for a doner kebab on the way, bolted half of it standing outside the café. Rain dripping from the edge of the awning, a couple of other customers alongside, doing the same. Their voices cut off from him: private jokes. He threw the rest of his meal into the bin. A funny taste in his mouth.

The next shop along was an off-licence. He did something he hadn’t done in a while. He bought a half-bottle of whisky and drank a mouthful, neat, sitting in his car, the rain drumming on the roof. A second mouthful. Burning. Soothing. He started the car and pulled away from the kerb. Drive carefully, drive carefully, don’t get pulled over. Make no mistakes. Keep going, one road at a time, one minute, one hour, one clue at a time, but all was lost, one kiss at a time, until love appears before you. No. All lost. No way forward.

He could smell the sickly aroma of the fungus.

At the back of his throat.

Head swimming with random pictures.

One above all. Of course. He could never escape it.

A flutter of blue and yellow cloth.

Were the spores still affecting him?

He had no sense of where he was going, but in the end there was only one destination, and he was guided there by feelings he had never encountered before.

Number 17 Palliser Road, Richmond.

Bridlemere.

He had a copy of the house key in his pocket.

Nobody home.

He turned on the hall light and climbed the stairs. He saw the playbills of Mary Estelle Graves’s triumphs on the stage, including The Moon Awakes. And he noticed for the first time that the actress was wearing a dress in the photo, the dress. Even though the shot was monochrome, he could recognize the style and the pattern, brighter flowers on a dark background. The dress had had a long, long history, before it had arrived in this murder case, as an item of obsession.