Memory is treacherous. How could they have discussed Alix’s murderer and his mother? At that stage he had not been Alix’s murderer at all, Alix had not even met him, and nobody had heard of his monster-mother. If the murderer had belonged to anybody in those days, he had belonged to their friend Esther Breuer, who had lived in a flat beneath him in a house at the wrong end of Ladbroke Grove. Paul Whitmore, Pol Pot. Paul Whitmore’s house was demolished now, and Pol Pot’s country in ruins, and Liz’s memory was full of gaps and inconsistencies. They disturbed her. Was there some clue that she had forgotten, some reason why Stephen Cox was now appealing to her with a bundle of old papers and bones and string?

Alix Bowen was able to be more precise about dates than Liz, because she had Brian and her son Sam to confirm them. Yes, Brian and Sam agreed, Stephen had been to stay with them in Northam in February 1985, not long after they had moved up from London. He had been the first person to sleep in their spare room. It had been very cold and he had been given a hot-water bottle. He had praised the room and the hot-water bottle highly, nay excessively. One never knew quite when or why Stephen was taking the piss. Sam’s view was that Stephen was giving a lecture on the historical novel at the uni. Alix had not remembered this but did not dispute it. She thought they had had osso buco for supper. What had they talked about? The disarray of the Labour Party, council-house sales, the failure of Marxism Today? Had they also talked about Pol Pot? Yes, Alix thought they had. There had been some jokes about Pol Pot and Northam’s council leader Perry Blinkhorn and the red flag. Stephen had said he was off to Phnom Penh, but they had not known whether to believe him. He’d only stayed with them one night, and then he had vanished.

Brian had had a letter from him in Bangkok, but he had lost it. He couldn’t remember what it was about. Or when he had received it. He looked for it in a half-hearted manner but was so depressed by the junk he turned up that he abandoned the search. To think I’ve accumulated all this in three years!’ he said, irritably, as he stuffed the papers back into his desk.