‘No one really covered it, though. If you look at this,’ she handed me a photocopy of that week’s headlines, ‘Lord Higham announced the changes to Poll Tax that week, I think. Then he resigned.’

I shivered in distress.

Huriyyah ‘Angel’ Rihad. The girl in Dalziel’s house. The girl on the divan. I looked back at the smiling couple, obviously besotted. I looked at the group of people in the background. I thought one might be Higham.

She had been Ash Kattan’s girlfriend all the time.

Chapter Thirty-Six

I was climbing into the bath when Jen came home. ‘I got ravioli and Häagen-Dazs,’ she called. ‘There’s a letter here for you, by the way.’

She handed me an expensive cream envelope with my name handwritten in thick black ink. I opened it with wet hands, trying not to smudge it. The note inside read:

Like David, line 1, Psalm 32.

I hope this is enough, Rose. You deserve more.

From a friend

When I turned over the postcard, it was a picture from the British Museum of William Blake’s Albion Rose, the pale figure slightly plump and girlish before the flaming sun.

I climbed out of the bath and sat, dripping wet, wrapped in a towel in front of Jen’s battered old PC. I looked up Psalm 32. The first line read: ‘Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.’

The handwriting of the postcard was unfamiliar. I turned it over in my hands, searching for another clue, and then I made a call.

* * *

‘You back then? Doing a Russell Crowe?’

Pat and I hadn’t spoken in over a year, but he sounded unsurprised to hear from me.

‘A what?’

‘You know. A maverick truth-seeking journalist on a quest.’

‘Oh, I see,’ I grinned. ‘I’m slightly more svelte than him, I hope. No, I’m just trying to help my husband.’

‘Yeah, sorry about that.’ He sounded uncomfortable.

‘You still in Miliband’s office?’ I changed the subject.

‘By the skin of my teeth,’ he laughed ruefully. ‘So what can I do for you?’

He gave me the address I needed, a road near the Oval Cricket Ground. ‘Just don’t let on it was me,’ he murmured. ‘All right, sweet pea?’

‘Would I?’ I murmured back. ‘Same bank account, is it?’

‘Don’t bother. Save it for something bigger. I might need it one of these days, the way this lot are going.’

‘You are a star, lovely Pat. Thank you.’

‘Cocktails on you, though, all right, Langton?’

‘Soon, Pat, I swear. Soon as I move back.’