Charlie found Simon where he’d said he would be, in the bar at King’s Cross station, surrounded by a large group of squaddies in uniform, all of whom looked younger than twenty and had foam moustaches from the pints they were not so much drinking as throwing at their faces. Simon was wedged into a small space between a table that looked sticky with weeks-old beer and a fruit machine that leaned to one side.

There was no second chair at the table, so Charlie pulled one over. She missed the days when pubs and bars were smoky. Devoid of the smell of cigarettes, they were life-size models, not the real thing. ‘No drink?’ she said.

Simon shook his head in irritation. Shut up, I’m thinking. Charlie knew the look well.

‘Mine’s a vodka and orange.’ She perched on the cleaner half of the chair she’d grabbed, wishing she’d chosen more carefully. When he didn’t move, she sighed and said, ‘I hate London cabbies. They never shut up. You’d have thought seeing me with my phone clamped to my ear . . .’

‘Who’ve you been talking to? I’ve been trying to ring you.’

‘To say?’

‘Gibbs phoned. He and Sellers were at Ruth Bussey’s place.’

Charlie pressed her eyes shut. ‘They saw the wall.’ She tried to tell herself nothing bad had happened, nothing new. Sellers and Gibbs had known already. Everybody knew already.

‘It’s not as bad as you feared,’ said Simon. ‘She’s not going to break into your house in the middle of the night and stab you. She admires you.’

‘Admires me?’

‘She collects self-help books. One of them’s about building up self-esteem—I can’t remember the title. I was in with Milward when Gibbs rang me. He said the book’s got exercises in it, things you’re supposed to do if you want to learn to love yourself. Techniques and tasks and stuff. Homework, I suppose you could call it. One of them’s to identify someone you admire who’s been through a tough time and come out stronger and wiser.’ Simon shrugged. ‘You get the idea. Oh—the book said it should be someone famous, so that you can collect stuff from newspapers and magazines about them. A celebrity.’

‘You’re making this up,’ Charlie breathed.

‘Does it sound like the sort of thing I’d make up? There was a receipt in the book—Bussey bought it from Word in September 2006.’

‘Exactly when I was newsworthy,’ said Charlie, trying to make light of it.

‘Exactly when you thought the whole country wanted you dead, yeah. You were wrong. At least one person didn’t. If she admired the way you—’