And it had cost nine people even more than that.

By the time I returned to the living room, he was asleep, breath rasping in his throat, bubbles of snot and blood forming at his nose. I took a moment to clear my head, to try and douse some of the anger, and popped open the lid of the first-aid kit.

Slowly, I started to clean him up.

He reacted a couple of times, wincing – even in his sleep – as I wiped the blood from the bridge of his nose, from the cut at his eyebrow which needed re-dressing. His nose wasn’t broken, but he’d been punched there and a puffy ridge of purple had already formed in the corner of one of his eye sockets. When I was done, I used a mirror inside the lid of the first-aid kit to examine my own face, the cut on my right cheek from where Mills had jammed the shotgun, the bruising that had already begun to colour at its edges. I cleaned it but didn’t dress it for now, and then packed everything away again.

When I was done, I looked over at the doorway again.

Who had been listening to Mills and me on the mobile phone? Was it Jacob Pierce? Someone else at Seiger and Sten? Or did this have nothing to do with the legal firm at all? It was obvious that Mills had come here with at least one other person, because at the same time he was leading me out to the barns, someone had been going through the cottage – so why hadn’t that person stayed behind? Why listen on speakerphone?

I could think of only two reasons.

They didn’t want me to ID them.

And they didn’t fully trust Mills.

I felt a spark of energy at the thought of the second, even as I looked at what was left of my casework, and it only burned stronger when I remembered how Mills had been throughout our conversation: violent in words and actions, but not in the way he’d looked at me. Not in the nod of his head at the end. Not in the act he’d put on for whoever had been listening.

‘I’m sorry, Raker.’

I looked down at Healy again.

He blinked up at me, struggling to focus.

‘Just rest,’ I said to him.

‘This is my fault.’ His voice was weak, strained.

I got to my feet, thinking again about Mills, about why he’d tried to sound authentic to whoever was listening, but I couldn’t work out whether he’d genuinely betrayed his employers – and why he’d ever do such a thing – or whether this was another component in some ornate trick I couldn’t see properly. Uncertain, I glanced at the table again, to the place in which the mobile phone had sat, recording us both.

And I realized I’d missed something.

An envelope.