Eliot still sat at his desk. He’d risen briefly when Vera had come in. ‘Inspector Stanhope?’ A greeting, as well as a chilly enquiry about the intrusion. Now he looked at the photograph. It was impossible to tell from his face what he was thinking. ‘Yes, that’s Patrick. It was taken on his second birthday. He died a week later.’

‘No photographs of him at home.’ Not a question.

He frowned. ‘We all grieve in our own way, Inspector.’

‘You never considered having another child?’

Vera thought he was going to tell her to mind her own business, which is what she’d have done in the circumstances, but perhaps he was grateful for the opportunity to discuss it, even with a stranger like her.

‘I’d have liked another baby, but Veronica wouldn’t hear of it. She said she couldn’t take the risk. What if something were to happen, to go wrong? She couldn’t bear another lost child. It would kill her.’

‘Did that seem like an extreme reaction to you?’ Vera kept her voice low and gentle.

He shrugged. ‘As I said, Inspector, we all grieve in our own way.’

‘Of course.’ And yours is to keep moving: hours spent in airports, drives in trucks on dusty roads, new faces, new places. No attachment. ‘Where did you meet Veronica?’

This time he did question her reason for asking.

‘Humour me,’ she said.

And he did, perhaps as used to taking orders as to giving them.

‘It was at the Willows Hotel. An engagement party. Through friends of friends. I think I’d known her as a child. You know how it is when you grow up in the same region. Her parents were rather grander than mine, but they had no money. There was a very sad story about a fire and the house being uninsured. But the party at the Willows was the first time we really spoke. She’d been away, I think. Some au-pair job up in the Borders for friends of her parents. She was lovely. Still is, of course, but then she was stunningly beautiful.’

Loyalty. Another of a soldier’s virtues.

He took a small photograph from his wallet. There was Veronica in her early twenties. Very slender and pale. Long dark hair, pushed back from her face. Serious. No hint of laughter.

‘Was Simon Veronica’s first child?’ Vera asked.

‘Of course!’ He gave a little laugh. ‘It was a very uncomplicated pregnancy. There’d been no problems, no history of miscarriage. Nothing like that. He was a bit early and I missed the actual birth, arrived in from the Middle East when all the messy bits were over. But it was quite straightforward. That was why I thought we could risk another baby after Patrick had died.’ He looked up. ‘What is all this about, Inspector?’