All the windows have open curtains except for one. I bet that’s Biggs’s apartment. A home in mourning.

Thistle pulls into one of the visitor spaces. ‘Let me start, okay?’ she says. ‘They’re hurting. They think Biggs either abandoned them or is dead in a ditch somewhere.’

I wonder if my freezer would be considered nicer than a ditch. ‘Okay.’

To get to the front entrance of the apartment building we have to walk along a winding path through a well-manicured garden. Yellow roses everywhere, the bushes carefully pruned. A discreet steel box where frost-blankets are probably kept. We pass a fountain carved into the shape of a child, a handful of seeds in his outstretched palm. No water.

The doorman is a hulking guy in a puffy black windbreaker. Plenty of meat on him to shield him from the cold. He doesn’t look like he’s feeling it.

‘Which number?’ he asks, reaching for a buzzer. Like he’s here to push buttons for people instead of keeping them out.

‘One two one,’ Thistle says, and flashes her FBI badge for good measure.

The guy looks more closely at us both. He seems particularly interested in me. A man used to staring. Big enough that no one would pick a fight with him.

‘Something wrong?’ I ask.

‘No, sir,’ he says, and pushes the button.

As we wait, I check his shoes. Cheaper than the rest of his uniform. Probably the only part he paid for himself. When the poor eventually rise up, I wonder if the people who live here are dumb enough to think he’ll be on their side.

‘You see Kenneth Biggs last Friday?’ I say.

‘Left at eight o’clock,’ the doorman says. ‘Didn’t come back. Like I told you.’

He says this last part to Thistle. Her resigned look tells me that it wasn’t her he talked to last time. Probably another black police officer of about her age—I make a mental note to find out who.

‘Anything unusual about his demeanour?’ I ask. ‘He seem worried?’

‘No. If anything, he seemed happier than usual.’

‘Like, happy excited?’

The doorman thinks about it. ‘Yeah, maybe. I’m not sure.’

So Biggs didn’t expect to wind up dead and naked in a remote forest that day.

‘He say anything to you?’ I ask.

‘Left me a tip, which was unusual. Most people don’t, unless it’s Christmas. He told me to have a nice day. That’s it.’

The intercom says, ‘Hello?’ A female voice, young-ish. I’m guessing the daughter, Hope.

‘The FBI is here,’ the doorman says.

‘Okay. Send them up.’

The doorman opens the door. I can sense him watching me as we walk through the faux-marble lobby towards the elevator.

•