As they walked up the drive, Fin noticed the security lights and CCTV cameras mounted around the house and in the grounds. Paul Kelly was evidently keen to avoid unwanted visitors. The front door opened as they reached the entrance porch, and a young man in an open-necked white shirt and sharply creased grey trousers folding neatly over Italian shoes surveyed them with cautious eyes. His black hair was cut short, and gelled back from his forehead. An expensive haircut. Fin could smell his aftershave from six feet away.

“Need tae frisk you.”

Without a word Fin moved forward, legs apart, arms raised to either side. The young man patted him down carefully, front and back, along each arm and down each leg.

“The woman, too.”

Fin said, “She’s clean.”

“I need to check.”

“Take my word for it.”

The young man looked at him very directly. “More than my job’s worth, pal.”

“It’s okay,” Marsaili said. And she presented herself for the search.

Fin watched with a simmering anger as the man put his hands on her. Front and back, buttocks, legs. But he didn’t linger where he didn’t have to. Professional. Marsaili remained expressionless, although her face coloured slightly.

“Okay,” the man said. “Follow me.”

He took them through a cream and pale-peach hallway with a thick red carpet and a beechwood staircase rising through two floors.

Paul Kelly was lounging on a white leather settee in the conservatory at the rear of the house smoking a very large Havana cigar. Although a light breeze rustled through the spring leaves in the garden outside, Kelly’s smoke hung in still strands, blue-grey where it was caught by the sunlight that angled through the trees. There was an impression here almost of being in the garden itself, although you could neither smell nor hear it. Red plush armchairs sat around a brushed steel table, and bright daylight reflected off a polished wooden floor.

Kelly stood as his flunky showed them in. He was a giant of a man, well over six feet tall, and although a little overweight still in good condition for someone in his mid to late sixties. His florid round face was shaved to a shine, steel-grey hair cropped to bristle. His starched pink shirt was stretched a little too tightly over an ample belly, his jeans ironed to an incongruous crease.

He smiled, a slight query in the tilt of his head, and he offered a large hand to each of them in turn. “An ex-cop and tales of the Dean Bridge. I must admit, you’ve aroused my curiosity.” He waved the same big hand towards the red armchairs. “Take a seat. Can I offer you something to drink? Tea? Coffee?”