‘I think so, yes. The thing is, it turned out to be another unsolved crime – in the end the file was closed. We heard from Dearth that they knew or suspected who the killer was, but he had an ironclad alibi and there was no evidence against him. They made the Ewwel force go through everything all over again, but they still found nothing. This information apparently came from one of the senior officers on Dearth, who said she was certain she knew who it was. But it was only a hunch, or perhaps hearsay. You can’t arrest anyone on that basis alone.’

‘And this informant – was it the dead man’s wife?’

‘Now you mention it, I think it was.’

‘Then that would be Frejah, Frejah Harsent. She was a cop then, she’s a cop now.’

‘I think so,’ said Spoder, again.

‘Did she name the person she thought was the killer?’

‘It’s all coming back to me now, sir. I’m sorry – I should have made the connection myself.’

‘It was Enver Jeksid, wasn’t it? A serjeant on the Dearth force.’

‘The man who is looking for you. Yes.’

‘You spoke to him twice,’ I said.

‘Three times, sir. He made contact with me again this week. Yesterday, in fact.’

‘When you spoke to him, did either of you say anything about this old case?’

‘No – and he wouldn’t. If it’s the same man, he couldn’t risk his whereabouts being known. He’d keep quiet about his past. Of course, I might have remembered his name, but in fact I didn’t and he would have had no idea that I was connected with what he did. To most people his name wouldn’t mean anything. That’s why I’m sorry – I slipped up. But he’s in an ambiguous situation anyway.’

‘Why is that?’ I said.

‘In the first place, he was kicked out of the police in disgrace. I don’t know the reasons, but it was a few months after Harsent was killed in Ewwel Town. Jeksid stayed on in Dearth for a while after he was fired, but eventually he moved to Salay Tielet, the third. Officially he is still a suspect, and when he left Dearth he became technically a fugitive. If the Dearth force knew where he was, they could try to arrest him. But there would be difficulties with that, too.’

‘No extradition treaty?’

‘None at all. The whole of Tielet is a refuge for deserters and other fugitives.’

Of course I did know that. Within the Salay Group, and probably elsewhere in the archipelago, Tielet was an island greatly admired for its liberal havenic policy.

‘You were going to tell me about these calls with Jeksid,’ I said. ‘I need to know exactly what he said.’

‘It’s not easy, sir,’ Spoder said.

‘Can’t you just tell me? You don’t have to dress it up.’