‘Karl had access to her medical notes, although I’m not sure how yet. I saw a letter from a psychiatrist at his house about Elinor’s fragile mental state. She’s done a lot of time in a psychiatric hospital but she’s now deemed capable of independent living.’

‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘She suffers from a complex personality disorder, but it’s what’s happened to her memory that’s interesting. You see there are two sorts of memory: implicit memory and explicit memory. These are dealt with by two very different subcortical structures in the brain: the amygdala, which processes implicit memories – these are emotional responses – and the hippocampus, which processes explicit memories; these are your traditional memories, the things you can actually recall.’

‘I assume then that her implicit memories are intact, but her explicit memories are decayed?’

‘That’s right. So, Elinor knows, somehow, that she hates the Eliases, but she’s not sure why. Equally, she knew the plight of a girl trapped in a basement for five years of her life, but doesn’t realise that it was her. As a defence mechanism, her mind has detached that part of the recall for her. She interpreted this as a fiction, something she made up. A good story.’

Georgie took another bite. ‘Still, she tried to kill me with one of your fish.’

‘I think she wanted to scare you.’

‘No. She knows I have anaphylaxis.’

‘Did you tell the police that?’

Georgie thought for a moment. Swallowed more burger. ‘She’s going to spend a lot more time in hospital whatever I say, right?’

‘Maybe. But none of this will bring Hemingway back.’

She managed a smile. Then something seemed to occur to her.

‘You remember when we left the RCJ together on day one of the trial, and we bumped into Dominique?’

‘Yeah.’

‘He saw her. Elinor. You were talking to him and he saw her, on the steps – I’ve only just remembered what happened. He went quiet, distracted. I don’t think he knew who she was at the time – she must have been almost unrecognisable after all these years, but something about him changed all of a sudden.’

Priest thought back – she was right. He hadn’t known Elinor at that stage but Georgie had said she was there, mingling with the other journalists.

He didn’t have time to think it through. Georgie was on to the next question. ‘But if Karl killed Simeon because he said he was going to tell the truth, why did he dump the body in Elinor’s car?’

‘He wanted to make sure Elinor had the exclusive and what better way to do that? He knew she was never in any danger of being arrested, forensics would see to that. And he was right, she got the exclusive. It was his warped idea of a gift to her.’