I told Tibbot everything. When I had finished, his head dropped and he sighed, as if knowing what lay behind it all made him weep. Somehow it seemed so tawdry. All this because they wouldn’t let us import the medicines we needed. I spoke to Grest. ‘Then you got what you came for. You took the drugs. The book was there too – if you wanted it, why did you leave it?’ He turned his head to one side and said nothing.

‘I swear to God …’ Tibbot began.

‘I couldn’t find it,’ the Sec muttered. A little blood seeped from his nose, over his top lip and into his mouth. He spat it out and glared at me. ‘You arrived and I stopped looking.’

So it had all turned on that. He had found the box of medicines but I had disturbed him before he got the book. If I had come just a few seconds later, things would have been so different. ‘It had all the buyers and their orders,’ I told Tibbot. ‘He would have needed it to take over.’

Tibbot walked away a couple of paces. ‘How did you get involved in all of this?’ he asked Grest.

‘I was a blue. Just like you.’

‘Not like me. What happened?’

He swallowed painfully. ‘Had a call a couple of years back, woman taken to hospital after a fight. Didn’t sound like much.’

But the woman was Rachel, admitted to hospital after her struggle with Lorelei; and Grest told her that she would escape prosecution if she told him everything. Instead of reporting it, however, he had shoved her into Richard Larren’s care, with her car as a down payment. He didn’t want to arrest them; he wanted a cut.

Tibbot wiped his hand over his head. ‘How much did you take to keep it quiet?’

‘Thirty per cent.’

‘Why did you kill Lorelei?’

And then Grest smiled, a horrible monkey grin. ‘I didn’t,’ he said.

‘What?’ I whispered.

The life had returned to him. ‘I didn’t. She was alive when I got here, and still alive when I left her.’ I didn’t understand what he was saying. ‘She told me where the stuff was, so I left her alone and went to the girl’s room to get it.’ He turned to look at me. ‘Then I heard you come in.’

‘Don’t lie to me,’ warned Tibbot.

‘What then?’ I demanded.

‘You went in there and she says something.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know. “Who’s there? I can’t see.” Something like that. Then there’s all this splashing, like a fight.’

Sometimes we hear a phrase or name, and know for certain that we have heard it before. I was sure those had been her words. I heard them from her lips: Who’s there? I can’t see.

‘And?’ asked Tibbot. His voice was low and dangerous.