Valeria didn’t ask how Jo knew about Lautaro Vale, his death, and the way in which he’d died, or about why Jo might have gone digging around for information on the Vale family. Maybe she just assumed that that was what a detective did before they turned up at someone’s house.

But the truth was a lot more complicated.

‘Adrian had a part-time job,’ the caller had told Jo. ‘Martina said that he worked where his old man used to work. It’s this building supplies company somewhere over in Industry. But his old man got him in there when he was, like, fourteen or fifteen, working on weekends and over the holidays, and Adrian stayed on there – even after his old man died – until he went to Stanford.’

In theory, when Vale had returned to LA two months ago for the summer break, he might not have been working for Caraca BuildIt any more – as it became known in 1982 – but he would have known where to find enough acid to dissolve a body: as much as six hundred gallons of it. In theory, that might also explain why the company that first Lautaro and then Adrian Vale had worked for might not have immediately noticed if ten one-gallon containers were missing from their vast stock. In theory. Jo was still waiting for Paolo Caraca to get back to her about whether any containers were missing from the yard, the whole thing protracted by the fact that Caraca himself had been admitted to the ER two days ago with pneumonia, so the request had been pushed down the line to his deputy. Jo had called him, and he promised he’d get it over as soon as possible.

‘The drinking was hard.’

Jo looked at Valeria, back in the present.

‘Not for me. It wasn’t hard for me. I got used to seeing Lautaro like that years ago. What I mean is, it was hard for Adrian. Having to watch your father like that – unable to stand; angry, or passed out; missing all these things that Adrian was doing at school – that’s hard for a boy growing up. A boy shouldn’t have to see his father like that. He shouldn’t have to bury his father at fifteen.’ Valeria blinked, tears in her eyes. ‘It made him quiet. He found it hard to make friends. He wasn’t unsociable, I just don’t think he could find anyone he related to, or anyone who understood him. I mean, which other father drank himself to death in their child’s first year of high school? So he just studied hard and immersed himself in his school work.’

Jo looked at the mantel.

The photo of Adrian Vale looked back at her.

‘So how did Vale destroy Martina’s life?’