“I don’t like being interrogated. You’re supposed to be my friend.”

“I’m not interrogating you, and I like to think I am your friend. Friends need to be honest with one another.” Banks went into the kitchen, opened his last bottle of Nero d’Avola and changed the music with his mobile, choosing an album called Blues Dialogues, a series of blues-themed violin pieces played by Rachel Barton Pine. When he got back, carrying the bottle with him, Zelda was sitting exactly as he had left her, a slightly petulant expression on her face. She accepted a refill, then Banks filled his own glass and sat down. “I’m sorry,” Zelda said. “There is just so much on my mind. So much I want to forget. I get upset when there are too many questions.”

“Just understand this, Zelda. I’m not out to get you or trip you up. I’m on your side. I’m also in the midst of a very nasty and very depressing case at the moment, involving the murder of a thirteen-year-old Syrian migrant who was stuffed in a wheelie bin on the East Side Estate.”

Zelda looked sadly at him. “Yes,” she said. “I read about that. It sounds terrible.”

“It is. And it’s throwing up all kinds of connections.”

“Not Phil Keane?”

“Not yet, no. But it wouldn’t surprise me. We think the boy was involved in a county line drug operation that fell afoul of an Albanian gangster called Leka Gashi. Ever heard of him?”

Zelda shook her head. “No,” she said. “But you need to be careful. I do know something about the Albanians from experience.”

“You were there?”

“Briefly. Tirana. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You don’t have to. Gashi and his cohorts are taking over a number of local drug operations and managing to dispose of the competition as they do so. Another name that came up was Tadić. Petar Tadić. A Croatian. Does that name mean anything to you?”

But Banks hardly needed to ask. Zelda seemed to freeze, turn rigid, as she said through a clamped jaw, “No.”

“Zelda. I know you know who he is. He’s the other man in that photograph with Keane, isn’t he?”

Zelda paused for a while, then nodded.

“Why didn’t you tell me? It might have helped.”

“Because he was of no interest to you. You wanted to know about Keane. I told you Tadić was a bad man who liked to hurt girls.”

“Did he hurt you?”

“Yes.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

“Is that who you were visiting in Croatia?”

“No. Of course not. He is someone I would stay away from. I was visiting a friend. Tadić is not a friend.”

“Who, then?”

“A woman. She runs a hostel for girls who have escaped. And that’s all I will tell you. She values her privacy more than anything.”