He heard two phantom knocks in the night, checked outside the window twice, waking Lydia, but there was nobody there. Nobody who stayed around anyway.

The heat of the summer is always there every time Joe opens the door. It never goes away, not even overnight. He can feel his legs burning as he walks to the breakfast room. It’s the second morning, almost thirty-six hours afterwards.

The breakfast hall is a large, double-height room with floor-to-ceiling mullioned windows, made fashionable with the black frames everybody is choosing lately. Two wooden doors are propped open either side of them, letting in sunbeams. A dog roams around the stone floor, a German shepherd who is maybe one or two kilograms overweight. A spiral staircase in the corner of the large, sunlit room leads up to living quarters. It smells of fried butter, croissants, coffee and sun-cream.

Lydia helps herself to a juice, getting Joe one too, even though he needs something soothing, not acidic. She goes to look at the buffet. He rakes a hand through his hair. He’s so fucking tired. He kept thinking of things they’d forgotten last night, but he became tangled up in the thoughts. There were too many of them, overlapping and entwining together, and he was too nervous to write anything down, to make a record of it. Did Frannie get every last drop of blood? Did she clean the shovels? Will a forensic team be able to trace skin cells Will left behind on the road? Is the fire they set actually a warning sign to the police, a semaphore signal they have sent up into the night? Here is where something was covered up, they have inadvertently said. What are they going to do with Will’s wallet and the warrant? It traces him to them; they need to keep it with them, hidden, but they can’t take it through fucking airport security, can they? Joe starts sweating again as he thinks of it, sipping at his too-sweet orange juice.

‘Police,’ Cathy says under her breath to him. Joe stares at the windows. The Polizia di Stato and the Carabinieri are moving across them, their figures distorted by the uneven glass. Five of them. Hanging around the building. Frannie starts jittering next to him, and he throws her a look.

They help themselves to breakfast. ‘Just act normally,’ Joe says to Cathy.

‘I’m not the one covered in sweat.’

Joe has a full fry-up every morning, and so he does today too. He adds three sausages and a spoonful of beans from a steaming silver bowl. The plate is warm in his hands. He’s served coffee as he sits with Cathy, Frannie opposite him, Paul in a highchair by her side. Paul has emptied a four-piece wooden puzzle on to the tray of his chair and is intently studying one of the pieces. Joe reaches for it, and Paul grabs urgently, like a dog guarding a ball, says, ‘My,’ and taps his chest. Joe cannot help but feel the slow drip of love for Paul, who mashes together two puzzle pieces, unconcerned and unaware. This is all for you, this is all for you, this is all for you, Joe tells him internally.