‘You should never trust the news. There will be an autopsy and he will have choked on a grape or something. Then it won’t be headline news anymore. Police might want to talk to you. All routine. Nothing to worry about.’

She watched him carefully. She knows I’m lying. She must know. If she did, she chose not to push any further and her appraisal of him concluded with a sympathetic shrug of her shoulders. She swallowed down the rest of the tea. ‘If you say so.’

‘Tilly’s doing well at school,’ Priest remarked.

‘Are you sleeping with anyone at the moment?’ she replied. The question caught him off guard – as was presumably the intention – and he felt the sensation of blood rushing up through his face. He remembered Elinor, and what they had done. She hadn’t been in touch. No texts, no emails. She just fucked him and . . . where the hell was she now?

Jesus, what a mess I’ve made there.

Sarah said drily, ‘I’m going to take your uncomfortable silence as a yes.’

Priest struggled to work out how best to reply. In the end, he settled for shrugging and pulling a face that he hoped looked non-committal.

Sarah nodded. ‘I won’t buy a hat just yet, then.’

‘It’s complex,’ he conceded.

‘As everything about you is. My brother: the human onion. The layers just keep peeling away one after the other.’

She laughed and Priest felt a little of the uneasiness slip away, although he also found himself checking his phone for messages again. Maybe Elinor had regretted the whole thing, disappeared back to Blackheath and that would leave him free to try to patch things up with Jessica? Patch things up with Jessica. It sounds so easy.

‘I’ve got to get back to the office,’ he said, getting up. He fumbled around in his jacket pocket and threw a set of keys across the table at her. She picked them up and studied them. ‘The keys you lent me to Bristol Road. The police have Simeon’s set so you can have these back.’

‘Thanks.’ She thumbed through the set idly. ‘How long will it take to find out what happened to him?’

‘A few weeks, I guess. There’s a lot to do.’

‘Mm. What’s this?’ Sarah asked, holding up a small key that formed part of the set.

‘I don’t know,’ Priest admitted. ‘It’s your flat.’

‘No, this isn’t part of the set of keys to Bristol Road.’

Priest felt a cold shiver ripple down his spine. It was the way she was holding the little key up to the light, as if it was a long-lost ancient relic. He sat back down.

‘What do you mean?’