‘I think his wife must’ve died,’ Latimer explained. She seemed to be reading Hobbes’s thoughts, something he’d noticed her doing more and more in the few months they’d worked together.

‘So then, Meg. Why am I here?’

‘First of all, this.’ She turned the man’s left arm from the tabletop and pulled back his blazer and shirt sleeves, revealing a collection of scars on his forearm and wrist, each scabbed over or faded to a line of pale flesh. A large sticking plaster had been half peeled back, revealing a newer incision: a couple of inches long, it looked to be quite deep. Blood had recently dried around the cut.

‘You seen anything like this before?’ Latimer asked. ‘Because I haven’t.’

Hobbes considered. ‘What do you think? A failed attempt at suicide? Or a few failed attempts over time, from the look of things. And then the pills.’

She let the plaster fall back over the wound. ‘Well, that’s not the right place to kill yourself.’

‘No.’

‘But here’s the thing: he needed the blood. He squeezed it out.’

Hobbes frowned. ‘Come on, Meg. What the hell’s going on?’

‘Follow me.’

They went back into the hallway and took a door on the right, which led into a spacious living room: one wall was lined with books, another with more of the old photographs, all of them framed, protected behind dusty glass. An upright piano in the corner, and a television that looked like it had been purchased in 1966 or thereabouts. A small chandelier hung down from the centre of the ceiling, the smell of years and years of cigarette smoke in the air, the once white walls now stained with a yellow tinge.

Latimer was standing to one side of the marbled fireplace. Hobbes followed her gaze down to the hearth rug. A woman’s dress was laid out on it. It looked to be 1950s style, a blue background with a pattern of yellow flowers. Stretched out at the dress’s hem was a pair of beige nylon stockings, with a pair of low-heeled blue shoes below them. A yellow scarf covered the neck of the dress. It was, to all intents, the figure of a woman modelled by her clothes. A vanished woman. Hobbes bent down and examined the most interesting part of the display: the right midriff area of the dress was torn and smeared with red. He touched the edge of the discoloured patch gently: it was slightly sticky.

‘This is the old man’s blood?’

‘Looks that way. I can have it tested.’

‘It’s, what, a few hours old?’

‘Probably.’

Hobbes nodded. He noticed a Gillette razor blade lying on the rug near the shoes. This, too, was stained with blood. ‘Christ. So he cut himself?’

‘That’s all I can think. And then he took a plaster …’ she pointed at the box that also lay on the floor ‘… and covered the cut.’

Hobbes stood upright. ‘What was his name again?’

‘Graves. Leonard Graves.’

‘Let’s see. Mr Graves collects together a woman’s outfit, lays it out on the floor. Rips the dress.’