The rain was crunching off the bus shelter now, off the road too, creating a fine gossamer mist between Mills’s house and where I was standing. I checked the windows of his home and nothing had changed. The shutters were closed, no lights were on. I didn’t even know if he was actually home.

My phone started ringing again.

This time, the number wasn’t private, it was blocked.

‘What do you want?’ Quinn said, straight out the gate.

Wherever he was now, it was quieter.

‘I just want to talk to you about Patrick Perry.’

He didn’t answer immediately, maybe wondering whether he could deny ever knowing Patrick. But then he must have realized it was pointless: ‘What about him?’

‘He called you in the months before he vanished.’

No response.

‘Eleven times,’ I pressed him, trying to keep my voice passive. ‘Patrick made nine calls to you, including an initial sixteen-minute one, and you made two to him.’

I wanted him to know that I had everything I needed to connect the dots, but I also wanted him to talk to me – so I chose to wait for him, our silence long. In reality, I had zero interest in turning this into a conversation where he either talked or I promised him the world would know what he’d done for Patrick Perry. But if he thought it was a possibility, I might get him onside.

‘So what do you want from me?’ he said eventually. His tone was suspicious.

‘You were his source when he was a journalist, correct?’

‘Sounds like you know the answer to that already.’

‘That was when you were both in Manchester?’

‘Yes.’

‘But then you moved south and you stopped talking?’

‘I moved south,’ he said, ‘and then Perry went into PR.’

‘So what made him pick up the phone to you again?’

He let out a long breath. ‘He wanted some information about someone.’

‘Who?’

‘Some woman.’

‘A woman? What was her name?’

‘It was two and a half years ago – how the hell am I supposed to remember?’ But then he sighed, and I heard him moving, doors opening and closing. ‘Hold on.’

Another prolonged period of quiet followed – and then, suddenly, there was an explosion of voices, the sound of a drawer squealing on its runners, before the voices faded all over again. He’d been back to his office for something. A notebook, perhaps.

‘Beatrix Steards,’ he said.

‘That was the name of the woman Patrick asked about?’

‘Correct.’

‘How are you spelling that?’

He gave me her surname and I wrote it down.

‘Who was she?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know.’ There was an aggressive slant to his voice now. He was starting to get impatient, angry at himself for being compromised. ‘Some university student.’

Again, I felt thrown.

Why would Patrick call Kevin Quinn about a university student?

‘So – what? – Patrick wanted an address for her?’