Spoder had started pacing impatiently around my patio, his mouth full of the croissant he had lifted from my plate without my noticing. He advanced towards me.

‘I think with respect you should get your priorities sorted, sir,’ he said. He leaned towards me, hands resting on the edge of the table, still chewing. Flakes of fine pastry floated down.

I said: ‘So how long ago was the murder? If I’m right, this person, Dever Antterland, killed his brother Lew about fifteen years ago. If the crime scene is still intact, and we’re talking about someone killing Dever in revenge, it can only have happened recently.’

‘The file says it was about ten years ago.’

I was aware that Spoder and I had been duplicating our research efforts, at least in part, but it sounded as if he had turned up rather more, as often happened.

I said: ‘So Dever was killed, what, about about five years after Lew died?’

‘Yes. I heard about it at the time. The Salay forces talk to each other, you know. I wasn’t involved in the case, no one on the Raba force was directly involved apart from having to file paperwork and copies. But in the police stories are passed around all the time. The main thing I remembered about it was that the victim, Dever Antterland, had a twin brother who had committed suicide by somehow managing to bash his own brains out.’

‘He was murdered,’ I said. ‘By Dever.’

I assumed that after Dever killed his brother he made good his escape, either carrying all the cash he had stolen, or making some arrangement with a bank on Hames to transfer the money to an account he controlled. He would then have laid low while the Salay Hames police fumbled around, failing to solve the case. But I also assumed that people other than the police would be looking for him. Whoever they were they eventually caught up with him and delivered swift rough justice. But for some reason that took another five years.

‘Tell me more about the crime scene,’ I said. ‘Are you saying it has remained untouched for ten years?’

‘It is apparently still exactly as it was on the day the body was found. This is why we must visit it.’

‘Murder is always messy,’ I said. ‘You know how disgusting crime scenes can be. No one could leave the place exactly as it was.’

These thoughts were discordant while breakfasting at the beginning of a day that had promised to be peaceful and lovely. I decided against eating the rest of my food.