‘You are here on a holiday, yes?’ Matt says, upending his pen on the table with a soft click but not looking at it. He is staring intently at Joe, his other hand across his mouth, obscuring his expression.

‘Yes, with my sisters, that’s right.’

‘You have been having a nice time?’

‘Sure.’

‘Sure … okay,’ Matt says.

‘The usual.’

‘Right, yes, yes. And what do you mean by sure and the usual?’ Matt says, putting on a faux-British accent as he says the words.

Joe is sure that Matt is not a nice person, but, then, he thinks that about most people. He is blinking deliberately often, as though he has been told to, like somebody imitating a human. He nurses a coffee in a squat cup that rests on a white saucer. Joe has a plastic cup of water that has three melting ice cubes in it.

‘We’ve had a nice, relaxing break,’ Joe says tightly, the lie steaming into the room out of his mouth. His breathing is fast. He is hanging all his hope on the story they concocted being enough, like putting up a fake painting and hoping it fools people into thinking it’s real.

‘Here I have a photograph of Will,’ Matt says, sliding a laminated A4 piece of paper over the table to Joe. Matt has large, leathery hands that look older than his face. Hands that could definitely punch, that could cause damage. Joe looks at his own hands, surgeon’s hands, elegant hands, and thinks that even if he wanted to, he couldn’t get out of here.

He tries not to show the physical reaction he has to seeing Will, alive, young, in Carabinieri uniform, minus the hat. A bright, white smile, an American smile. Eyes that slant downwards at their edges. Pink cheeks. Joe swallows, but his throat doesn’t seem to be working, is too dry. He takes a sip of water to cover up a cough.

He waits a beat. He should remember this man from the market, he knows he should, but he simply deletes it from his memory. He can’t admit to it. Not now he’s here in this stuffy little room with this lawyer waiting for him to slip up. Sod it. He’ll say he wasn’t at the market.

He looks at the prosecutor and thinks, Let Cathy and Frannie say they recall him from there, and let me remove myself. If Frannie is ever rumbled, let Joe not be – let Joe not be involved at all. He closes his eyes in self-loathing. He knows it’s dishonourable. But he also knows a lot of people would do the same.

‘Never seen him,’ he says, trying to smile Will’s bright, white smile at Matt. ‘Sorry.’

Matt says nothing, his face expressionless. The only movement in the room is the rhythmic clicking of his pen and the ticking of a clock on the wall. Joe counts the seconds. Three. Four. Five.

‘You not recognize him?’ Matt says, inching the paper over again towards Joe.