Priest left Mims’s flat with the dead phone and a heavy heart. Behind the belligerent front and the blue hair lurked a young girl who had lost a friend and a lover. Priest thought about what happened to people like Mims, whose enthusiasm and intellect had been drained and who had stopped believing. How many other suppressed geniuses were out there; with talents that could have changed the world, but which were now wasted and abandoned?

He trudged over to the Volvo, got in the driver’s side. Georgie was fast asleep, slumped against the window, snoring gently. He thought about waking her but she didn’t even stir when he struck up the engine. Out for the count.

He drove her home, pulled over outside of her house and killed the engine.

‘Georgie,’ he whispered, touching her arm.

She stirred. ‘Is it PE today? Can you do me a note?’

‘You’re home. Everything’s fine.’

Georgie came to and seemed surprised to find herself in Priest’s car. ‘Oh. Sorry, did I fall asleep?’

‘Only for a bit. Thanks for waiting, though.’

‘Did I dribble in your car?’

Priest smiled. ‘It wouldn’t have mattered if you had.’

He gave her a brief rundown of his chat with Mims, showed her the phone and explained his theory that if they could establish who had got Simeon involved with The Real Byte fiasco in the first place then they might find his killer; and at the same time they would find Alexia’s killer, assuming Rowlinson’s pathologist was right about the murderers being the same.

‘Where do the three monkeys fit into all of this then?’ she asked through a yawn.

‘No idea, but there might be some answers on this phone as soon as I can find a charger for it. I’d try and source one now, but I have to eat something fat and unhealthy.’

She agreed and, whether it was the fatigued state she was in clouding her judgement or a genuine attempt at sporadic affection, she leant across and kissed him on the cheek before climbing out of the car and stumbling into her block of flats.

*

Elinor Fox had always had problems with her memory, which is why she carried an iPad with her everywhere and wrote everything down. Dates were a particular issue, as was anything involving numbers. She suspected she was a little dyslexic but she had never bothered to get tested. She hated labelling.