The narrow stairs creaked a little, but they were carpeted now. It hardly seemed like the same house. The chilly bareness of the disused top floor had gone, replaced by the smell of someone else’s children, like cheese rinds and warm flowers.

In the first of the little rooms there was Lego everywhere, and amid it, tucked under the sloping ceiling, a low-slung bed with a Thomas the Tank Engine duvet.

The aura of happiness was striking. He tried to imagine what it must be like for a young kid to come up here every night, to climb the steep, narrow path to their own little sanctuary at the very top of the house. His granddad had died before he really knew him, and after that his dad moved the agency to offices on Town Street, just up the road. So, he’d never known the attics as anything other than cold, bare rooms. His grandma refused to let them be used for anything else.

‘We stopped trying to get them to tidy up,’ she said. ‘And to be honest, we prefer Lego to them being glued to screens all day.’

‘I’m with you on that.’

He tried to imagine the plastic flowers in the hearth, the old floorboards, the cold, damp air. But he couldn’t. It had gone. All of it

‘You got kids?’

‘One. He’s at university. Funny thing, but I can never get him to use a screen. Not to contact me, at least!’

‘Well, I’m sure he’s very proud of you, I mean, about the Graphite Assassin and everything.’

He thought about it.

‘She’s in custody now. It was a sad case, in many ways. Did you follow it?’

‘Yes. I think most people did.’

He wondered whether she’d be amused to know that Sam and his girlfriend were the main reason why the case had generated so much press interest. He decided no. Other people’s stories? They’re never quite the same; they don’t mean that much. And now it was over. It was all over. Clowns, the agency, the Romanos.

It had been over for years.

‘Thanks for showing me this,’ he said. ‘I should be going.’

Rita was waiting for him in the Brick, thumbs busy on her phone, an untouched pint of lager in front of her. She saw him come in, watched as he got himself a drink and came over to join her.

‘The hero returns! Commendation in the offing, I hear.’

He grunted a reply and got his head down into his pint.