The two women joined him as he started to look around. The room was approximately four metres deep, no more, with furry, maroon wallpaper and a threadbare carpet. There was a bed, with a stained mattress but no covers. A wardrobe, a desk and an empty bookshelf. Everything smelt musty and old – Priest imagined this was what Egyptian tombs must smell like when they were unsealed after thousands of years.

‘Yes, wonderful things,’ he murmured.

‘Howard Carter, on the opening of King Tutankhamun’s tomb,’ Georgie completed. Priest nodded. ‘Why create a single room and not apparently use it?’

‘To hide something,’ Priest suggested.

The bed hadn’t been slept in and Priest found the wardrobe devoid of anything except the same archaic stench that pervaded the rest of the room, only stronger.

‘Only someone who already knew the layout of the flat would have realised that this room must exist,’ said Fox.

‘So?’

‘So, you were meant to find this room first, Charlie.’

They checked under the bed and in the corners of the room but without finding anything of significance. The door to the rear was locked but, looking through the window, it appeared to lead to an external stairwell that allowed access to the side street.

There remained one feature that all three of them appeared to notice at once. A small drawer underneath the desk. Priest felt the handle: a flimsy piece of wood affixed to the front, off-centre. A thought struck him. He had nowhere to go next. No plan. No clue. If this drawer was empty, it was back home or to the office and, for now at least, he would be beaten.

Come on, Simeon. Tell me something.

Priest slid the drawer open. It was despairingly empty.

‘Damn,’ he breathed, letting go of the handle.

They all seemed to exhale at once before Georgie asked, ‘What next?’

Priest shook his head. Fuck it! ‘I’m not sure.’ He stared down at his hands – they were always the first to go – first the feeling in them then, by abstract dislocation, they would become foreign objects, swirling untouchably in a sea of hazy mist. At its most extreme, he could hallucinate – see things that weren’t there, talk to people who didn’t exist.

He needed to get out of this room and its oppressive reek, but something stopped him. Fox had leant over, touching his arm as she did and pulling at the little drawer until it dislodged from the slide runners and clattered to the floor.

‘Sorry,’ she said, wincing. ‘I didn’t mean to . . .’

She stopped mid-sentence, no doubt because she had just seen what Priest had. He bent down and carefully picked something out from amongst the broken wood and held it up to the light for them to see.

‘It must have been stuck to the underside of the drawer,’ Georgie said.