‘Alice has a genetic condition that requires specialist paediatric care. You work in the one place she can get it. I told you that before. It was inevitable you’d meet. If you worked in a Columbian cafe and his wife especially liked South American coffee, you’d have met there.’

I squeeze my eyes tightly. ‘What about the fact that Jane was having an affair before she left Zac?’

‘Who told you that?’ Maxine asks this with her usual flatness, the flash of her humanness already so deeply erased you wouldn’t think it possible that it ever existed.

I’m in no mood to fill her in about Mrs Hopwell and the telephone calls to Ireland and Texas I made two years ago. ‘Tell me who the man was, Maxine.’

‘Let me promise you this. I will explore how much more you can be told. That is my best offer for now.’

‘Whatever deficiencies I have, you know you can trust me. You know I keep secrets.’

‘True and noted. But there is nothing further I can tell you right now.’

‘Fine. Then I want to talk to Martin. Tell me where to find him. Give me that much and I’ll take it from there.’

‘Not possible.’

‘Is he in Cheltenham? Are you GCHQ now? Along with George.’

She blinks several times, something I can’t remember seeing her do before. ‘Martin is still in London.’

I continue to press. ‘What department?’

She smiles, as if telling a joke. ‘Covert Financial Enquiries.’

‘Did Jane commit some kind of financial crime?’

She does her usual trick of pretending not to hear the question, which makes me think the answer is yes. I remember that business card, emblazoned with the words Albert E. Mathieson, International Tax Law. Maxine said two years ago that she was following it up. Was she telling me the truth? I ask the question aloud.

‘Of course,’ she says. ‘It was useful.’

‘That’s vague. In what way was it useful?’

Again this is met with the silence she so often uses when I press her directly.

‘Hasn’t it got beyond you keeping things from me? You’ve shown me Jane’s body. You took away her privacy and dignity when you did that, when you turned her into a circus after such a horrible death. You intruded me on her. And her on me.’

‘It was my call. I stand by it.’

‘So why did she turn up where I’m living? Why did she die there?’

‘Now you’re asking the right questions.’ She considers. ‘I think I can say that you seem to be the catalyst in all of this. Maybe not the only one, but a key element.’

‘You’re saying I made someone kill Jane?’

‘Of course I’m not saying that. We think Zac found you. And she found him.’

‘Well, here is another right question for you, Maxine. Why would she want to?’

Then
The Handkerchief Tree