“Blaydon, the Kerrigans, a dead junkie and a murdered Middle Eastern youth, all in the same night in the same small town? I don’t think that can be much of a coincidence.”

“So what next?”

“We keep pushing. When the CSIs finally get around to it, I’d like you to ask them and technical support to make comparisons between the evidence found at Stokes’s house and the boy’s body. Fingerprints, DNA, fibers, whatever they’ve got. Just in case. If we’re talking county lines, maybe number twenty-six Hollyfield Lane was the trap house, and maybe the boy was the runner. You never know. But first I think I should pay a visit to Le Coq d’Or and see what Marcel has to tell us about Sunday night.”

Annie looked at her watch. “If I were you, I’d time it for dinner,” she said. “Who knows, you might get a free bowl of snails.”

THE FOLLOWING lunchtime Paul Danvers and Deborah Fletcher turned up at Zelda’s hotel. She was about to go shopping, but she couldn’t put them off. They insisted on coming up to her room to ask her “just a few more questions.” She told them the maid was due any moment, and she would meet them in the cafe off the lobby. She didn’t want the police poking around in her room, even though she had nothing to hide. They agreed, and she grabbed her shoulder bag and set off for the lifts.

Danvers and Debs, as she had come to think of them, were already sitting outside at a table by the riverside walk, coffees in front of them and buff folders laid out on the table. Ever the gentleman, plump Danvers half-stood and nodded when she arrived. She sat down and ordered a coffee she didn’t want.

“How are you today, Ms. Melnic?” said Danvers, pronouncing her name correctly this time. “Feeling better?”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

“Enjoying your time in our capital?”

“I’ve been here before, you know. I lived here once. Remember?”

“Ah, yes, the pavement artist days. Well, you’ve left those behind you now, haven’t you? Found yourself a famous artist.”

“Can we get on with the questions?”

“By all means.” Danvers took a sip of his coffee, making an unpleasant slurping sound. “What have you been up to since we last talked?”

“Up to? I don’t know what you mean.”

“It’s English for ‘been doing.’ ”

“I know what it means. I also understand its nuances of connotation, that perhaps what someone has been ‘up to’ is not necessarily wholesome, but I still don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“Let me put it bluntly, Ms. Melnic,” said Deborah Fletcher, coming at her from the side. “Why did you take it into your mind to pay a visit to Mr. Hawkins’s house yesterday?”

So she had been seen. There was nothing for it but to tell the truth, or part of the truth. “I was curious, that’s all,” she said.

“About what?” Danvers asked. “To see the damage? Like a motorist slowing down to look at an accident? I can understand that. Do you have a yearning for the macabre, Ms. Melnic?”