She could see how her two visitors had played her: the calm, consoling woman, the hard-faced, looming man. They’d made her worry about herself and about Mal, and she’d cracked. It would be best if she told the truth, had said that traitorous little thought. So she’d opened her mouth and waited for the truth to hop out, like toads from the lips of a cursed girl in a fairy story.

She remembered very clearly meeting Mal outside the closed Tube station. In the same way, she remembered being at the Six Brothers with Mal years ago. And being on the far side of them, where the other three brothers lived, where the Birdmen were. She remembered those things, but her logical mind knew there was nothing there.

She had tried to tell the policewoman and her colleague about Mal’s reappearance in Camden, and every word that she’d forced out had seemed thinner and thinner, waxy and see-through like greaseproof paper. She had scared them off, she reckoned. She’d just said madder and madder things until they were embarrassed to be in the same room. So they’d left.

But if she’d just imagined the Camden break-in, why would those officials be reinvestigating Mal after all these years? There had been stains on the broad man’s long coat, and its hem had been heavy and wet with something other than rain or piss or spilled beer. Mal had been broad at the shoulder too, bulked out with muscle like she’d never had, scarred, tough.

Lee sat up. The police had more questions. People were dead and she was a lead, if not an actual witness. And what might they let slip, as they grilled her? Might she discover enough to follow where Mal had gone?

Distantly, she marvelled that she had already swung all the way back: now she was telling herself it had all definitely happened, even the impossible bits. And she was champing at the bit to investigate.

There was a knock at the door and she stood up unsteadily. A large man in a shirt and tie could be spied through the peephole, a beige coat folded over his arm. He rapped again, knuckles close enough to her vantage that she flinched back.

“Hello, Miss Pryor?” he called. “Police.”

Already? It wasn’t the same ones, but she supposed she hadn’t exactly signed up with them for a loyalty card or anything. Cautiously, she opened the door and looked up at him. He definitely worked out more than Julian whoever-he-was, broader and taller. There were sweat stains at the armpits of his shirt, and she imagined him vaulting up the stairs, thrilling at the free aerobic workout.

“Did your colleagues forget something?” she asked.