‘I still bear the scars, you know.’ Dalziel pulled his black shirt aside at the neck to show me the fine puckered line of a wound I’d never seen, a wound that travelled from collarbone to breast, that had missed his throat by centimetres. But James had no intention of killing Dalziel, that much I knew. He was struggling with him when the knife in his hand had slipped and gashed his friend.

Slowly Dalziel did the buttons back up, right up to the top so no flesh was exposed. ‘I guess it was no less than I deserved.’

‘It wasn’t about what you deserved. It was desperation.’

‘I was mad, Rose.’ His voice was a monotone. ‘I didn’t know what I was doing.’

‘Christ, Dalziel. Why didn’t you tell us, though? We thought that you were dead.’

‘Let’s not bring Christ into it, shall we?’ He tried to smile that confident smile that I remembered so well, but he was hollowed, a shadow of the boy I’d known. ‘That’s where the trouble started, I seem to remember.’

‘So what happened?’

‘I was incarcerated for a while.’

‘A while?’

‘A few years. A special hospital in Buenos Aires. I have to take a lot of meds today.’

‘Medicine?’ I said. ‘For what?’

‘Depression. Schizophrenia. You name it, Rose. But I’m fine. Really. Don’t be scared.’

‘I’m not scared of you, Dalziel.’

‘But you’re angry.’ It was a curt statement.

‘No. I don’t know. It’s been so long. It’s such a bloody shock.’

Two portly Americans entered the gallery and began to search for the Whispering Wall. I thought of how Dalziel had opened up my narrow world. For all his madness and grand designs, he had lent me a lust for life that I hadn’t had before I’d met him, an enthusiasm that had led me to places I’d never have seen if I hadn’t known him.

‘Why now?’ Dully I watched the Americans. ‘I mean, why are you here?’

‘I came to pay my dues.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘To help get James acquitted.’

‘How the hell could you do that?’

‘I think that’s a question for James, dear Rose.’

‘But James isn’t here, Dalziel. So you’d better tell me.’

‘I only know the bare facts. She tried to blackmail him, you know.’

‘Who did?’

‘I came back to see a doctor a few years ago, at the London Clinic. I spent a bit of time in town before my family corralled me again. I fell into some of my … of my old habits, shall we say. And that girl who had got involved with Charlie recognised me.’

‘What girl?’ I stared at him. ‘Kate?’

‘The silly waitress who loved James.’

‘Yes, Kate. And?’

‘And she tried to blackmail my father. Last year. My little brother put her up to it, though, I fear.’

‘Why?’