Charlie didn’t want to talk about this, not now. She wanted to tell him that if she could choose anywhere in the world to live, she would choose Torquay. She’d always loved it. She’d had her first and only holiday romance there.

Their pizzas arrived suspiciously quickly, their temperature somewhere in the no man’s land between cold and warm. Charlie didn’t care, and Simon certainly wouldn’t, she thought. That was one thing they had in common, though Simon was more extreme. Food was something he put in his body in order not to die. He didn’t care what it tasted like as long as it filled him up. As recently as last week, he’d have taken pains to avoid eating in front of Charlie. Now he seemed fine about it, as if having a meal together was a natural thing to do. Like the four chaste nights they’d spent together so far, Charlie saw this as progress.

Once the waiter had gone, she said, ‘All I know is, Trelease is protective over her work. Whether she’s protective enough to kill to retrieve one of her paintings, I have no idea, but the picture-hook teeth? That’s a woman’s touch.’

‘I disagree,’ said Simon, ripping strips off his pizza like a savage and stuffing them into his mouth as if he didn’t have a knife and fork in front of him.

‘A man wouldn’t have had the idea. It’s too . . . intricate.’

‘So’s the way Seed’s mind works. He’s a craftsman. Whatever his motives, there’s nothing crude or obvious about them. How can there be? A man who confesses to a non-murder. An atheist who leads a secret life as a Quaker . . .’

‘Maybe he’s been infiltrating all the major religions,’ said Charlie. ‘Maybe Monday’s his Quaker day, Tuesday he’s a Hindu . . .’ She sighed, bored by her own joke. ‘I’m going back to Spilling after lunch to talk to Kerry Gatti. I need to do something under my own steam. Want to come?’

‘No.’

Charlie gave him a look. ‘Tell me you’re not crazy enough to try to get near Stephen Elton.’ She pulled her phone out of her bag and switched it on, now that she was as sure as she could be that she and Simon had stopped fighting. ‘Olivia,’ she told him, listening to her sister’s message. ‘She wants us to go round. I asked her to find out as much as she could about Martha Wyers.’

‘A name you didn’t mention to our metropolitan friends,’ said Simon.

‘Because there’s probably no link.’

‘So we’re not going to Olivia’s?’