When he’d gone, they waited, the way they should have waited the first time. Constance checked on Leonie and found her awake in the cot, needing to be soothed. She brought the sleepy tot through into the living room, where they all watched half an hour of mindless kid’s TV, Ruby taking none of it in. Then they waited a bit more. Ruby got up and made sure that Gregor’s car wasn’t in its space before she dared to relax even slightly. They had to pray that he really was going to Liverpool; if it was true, they had about two hours to search before he stopped the car and checked the cameras from his phone. If it wasn’t true, and he suspected them, then Ruby reasoned that they were already fucked, so it didn’t matter what they did.

Ruby stuck the tape over the camera in the ceiling light.

“Maybe we should leave it off,” said Constance. “If he checks the camera and can’t see a picture, he’ll know we’re up to something.”

“Better that he sees nothing than what we’re actually doing,” said Ruby, fishing the hairpin from the pocket where she’d shoved it.

Picking the lock was easier the second time. She knew what to feel for, where the pressure needed to be applied, and when to be gentle. Soon the lock gave and she was inside, where she went straight to the wardrobe and pulled out the black metal box. After a moment’s thought, she went to the bedside unit and fetched the small silver key. Back in the living room, the key slid easily into the padlock, which opened with a satisfying click. More proof that Gregor trusted they wouldn’t go in his room, if all there was to find in there was a padlock and the key that opened it. Something tugged at her mind, though, a quiet warning. It seemed a bit too easy. She pulled at the tightly fitted lid until it came free, swinging open on its hinge.

Constance was on the sofa, feeding Leonie a cup of warm milk. “What’s in there?”

“Bills,” said Ruby, leafing through the file folders as she pulled them from the box and placed them one by one on the coffee table. “Papers, certificates, boring stuff. The deeds for this place. You’d think he would have a proper filing system.” She pulled out his birth certificate, looked at the dates, the name of the Royal Infirmary Hospital. “Funny,” she said. “According to this, he’s thirty-eight.”

“And?”

“Don’t you think he looks younger than that?” She thought about his voice. Born in Sheffield. Gregor’s accent was carefully neutral, which he’d explained by the fact that he went to a fee-paying school. But sometimes his long vowels shortened unexpectedly, and he sounded almost Bristolian to Ruby.

Underneath the last file was something she recognized.