He also had odd quirks. He travelled around on an elderly motorcycle, which I put up with but which Jo detested because of the noise. He was over-effusive about some of the subjects I asked him to look at, urging me to use everything he had found, no matter how trivial. Sometimes his enthusiasm for the work wore me out. We usually communicated by landline. He did have a cellphone but rarely used it. He often called me ‘sir’, which I found slightly uncomfortable, but I had grown used to it. We met irregularly, usually when he had papers he wanted to pass to me in person.

I paid him a monthly retainer, and considered it money well spent. I had grown to like Spoder, and he did good work for me.

On the phone I said to him: ‘Spoder, I’ve heard about a sudden death in Salay Hames, the fifth, about a decade and a half ago. I believe it was a suicide. A man named Antterland. Would you know anything about it?’

‘I was never involved with suicides. They are not usually a police matter, unless there’s something suspicious when the body is discovered. Anyway, Hames was not my area.’

‘I know that – but it was linked to a murder on Salay Sekonda, not long after.’

‘Same again,’ he said. ‘I rarely went off-island, and I never went to Sekonda for a case.’

‘Can you try to find out what happened?’ Spoder said nothing. He was silent for about a quarter of a minute, until I said: ‘Spoder?’

‘I’m trying to remember.’ He was silent again. I had learned about his occasional silences, so I waited. Then he said: ‘These two deaths, sir – you say they were connected. Is this the case of the two brothers? The name Antterland rings a bell.’

‘There were brothers involved. That’s what I’d like you to check for me.’

‘I might have something for you. I wasn’t involved myself – I think I was on some other case at the time. But I remember now that it was something the guys used to chuckle about, in the squad room. I assumed it was some kind of private joke, the way Antterland had killed himself. Is this for a new book you’re planning, sir?’

‘I think it might be,’ I said, not wanting to go into the whole background. ‘Yes.’

‘I’ll get on to it as soon as I can. It’s starting to come back to me now. The brother who was murdered – he was the twin of the brother who killed himself.’

‘A twin? An identical twin?’

‘I think so,’ Spoder said. ‘It wouldn’t change anything, would it?’

After we had hung up, I thought: Identical twins? That wouldn’t change anything. Not in the real world it would not.

I was getting interested.