‘It’s probably closed down,’ said Casey now.

‘But . . .’ Miranda was watching her closely.

‘It doesn’t quite make sense,’ said Casey. ‘Luke Armitage said that Cavendish was liked by everyone, and generally seen as a good sort.’

In her hand, Casey held a rough draft of the Post’s obituary of Cavendish. The reminiscences, all of them, were glowing.

‘He and his wife bought that house years ago,’ said Casey. ‘And that’s where they planned to live out the rest of their lives. It was beautiful, yes. But it wasn’t the lifestyle of a retired gangster.’

She thought about Cavendish’s battered straw hat, the chipped urns, the lion without a paw.

‘It was hardly,’ Hessa agreed quietly, ‘the lap of luxury.’

‘Maybe the fight went out of him when the wife died,’ suggested Miranda.

‘But she died in Sri Lanka,’ said Casey. ‘Before he even went out to Dhaka. And it doesn’t make sense that it was then that he suddenly decided that he wanted to retire to gold taps and caviar.’

‘Luke said he adored her, didn’t he?’ said Miranda. ‘People do stupid things when they’re sad. You just don’t know. He might have been vulnerable. To a pretty girl in a bar, or just a kind ear.’

‘Maybe,’ said Hessa. ‘My mother says that man is from Chittagong, by the way. She listened to the recording, said she was sure of it.’

‘Thanks, Hessa,’ Miranda nodded at her.

‘What if Cavendish was doing it for some other reason?’ asked Casey. She sat forward and punched an extension into her phone.

‘Harry?’ Casey said. ‘You couldn’t pop in here for a second, could you?’

The obituaries editor sat in the newsroom, just a few desks away. Tall, gangly and impeccably polite, Harry de Villiers spent his days charming amiable anecdotes from weeping widows. ‘Although sometimes no one can remember a single nice thing,’ he said once, eyes wide with horror behind darkrimmed glasses. ‘Can you imagine? Not a single nice memory about a person.’

‘Probably a news editor,’ the Home Affairs editor had growled.

‘Harry,’ Casey said now. ‘Sir William Cavendish’s family. Who are they?’

He is survived by . . .

Harry glanced down at his notebook. ‘One son, forty-three, lives in Hong Kong at present. Unmarried, no children. Works in insurance. A daughter, Vivienne. She is married, to a Mr Hargreaves. Two children, three and tiny. They live in rural bliss, down in Devon. The daughter’s forty-one.’

‘Photographs?’

‘A few,’ Harry handed her printouts. ‘A nice one from his time in Cairo. And that one was taken at his daughter’s wedding.’

Casey studied it: a pretty girl in white lace, young, carefree, smiling on a proud father’s arm. Casey looked closer.

‘Have you spoken to the daughter?’ Casey asked.

‘Not yet. She didn’t pick up the phone half an hour ago.’

‘What does she do?’