‘So what are we looking at here, Nick, with Driscoll and Nishizaki?’ Morrisette asked after both their stories had wound their way to the bleak and threatening present. ‘A falling-out among thieves? Or something more complicated?’

‘More complicated is my guess. I think Driscoll’s been planning this for a long time.’

‘They’ve been confederates in crime for decades, right? Why would Driscoll betray his boss? Why take a monumental risk like that?’

‘Not sure. Something to do with the death of Shitaro Masafumi?’

‘But that’s more than forty years ago.’

‘I did say he’d been planning it for a long time.’

‘Not that long, surely.’

‘It’s what got Wada involved in this.’

‘We can be grateful for that. She’s our best hope right now.’

‘What do you think she’ll do?’

‘I don’t know. She’s hard to read.’

‘I thought she’d died in the fire at Stóri-Asgarbær. I was certain of it. Will she go to the police, I wonder?’

‘From what you tell me, she’d have a lot of explaining to do if she did. So, I suspect she won’t. But maybe one of the neighbours – yours or mine – saw enough to call them.’

‘Maybe.’

Michaela sighed. ‘Or maybe not.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Which leaves us …’

‘Stuck.’

Wada booked into the Lamb Hotel in the centre of Ely and waited as patiently as she could for word from Holgate. Once she’d found out what exactly had happened at Morrisette’s house, she could decide what to do in response. Though what that might be …

The evening set in. Her room became claustrophobic. She left the hotel and walked to the cathedral, where she sat on a bench on the green and gazed up at its soaring spire and the blue sky it soared up into. The ancient stonework spoke of time and splendour – a history she knew little of. Everything in Ely was timelessly picturesque in a very English way, the grass a slightly different shade of green from what she was used to, the leaves on the trees marginally paler. She was far from home in all the ways that mattered.

She was about to leave the bench when her phone rang.

‘Mr Holgate?’

‘I’m at Cambridge railway station waiting for a train back to London. Are you in Cambridge, Wada?’

‘No.’

‘Sure?’

‘Very sure, thank you.’