So he was not even going to deny it. Bannerman kept his anger in check. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. But you and I both know that Slater was blackmailing Gryffe.’

Palin’s face gave nothing away. Did he really know that? Bannerman watched him switch the matchstick to the other corner of his mouth and the chewing became more agitated.

Bannerman said, ‘The way I read it, Jansen and Lapointe were also involved somehow.’ Although he had no idea how, or even if it was true. Platt was still wearing his implacable face. Bannerman pressed on. ‘I don’t know who murdered Slater and Gryffe, but it’s not unreasonable to assume that it might have been on the orders of someone like Jansen. Or Lapointe. Or both. And whatever you knew, or didn’t know, it was enough to figure out that one or the other might be interested in a folder of cuttings that Slater had compiled on them.’ He was flying a kite here, without the least idea of which way the wind was blowing. ‘What were you after, Palin? Money?’ He shook his head. ‘Doesn’t matter. It makes you an accomplice after the fact. An accessory to murder.’

Palin fought to maintain a façade of calm. ‘I heard they’d dropped the case.’

‘Maybe they have. But I haven’t. And you know I’m going to get to the bottom of it, Palin, don’t you? You know you’re in deep shit.’

And finally Palin cracked, professionalism and morality eroded by drink. He leaned forward on his desk, dropping his head into ink-stained hands, and Bannerman watched him with indifference. A man of ability diminished by addiction, and finally succumbing to his own stupidity.

Palin looked up, and Bannerman was shocked to see tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. A pathetic figure teetering on the brink. He reached into his back pocket for a hip-flask and flipped it open with unsteady fingers. He tipped his head back, and the neck of the flask disappeared between pale lips while he suckled on it like a baby at its mother’s teat. Then he banged the flask on the desk and looked wretchedly at Bannerman. ‘I really don’t know anything,’ he said, his voice breaking somewhere in the back of his throat. ‘Only that Slater had something on Gryffe. Little things I picked up. The tail end of telephone conversations. The file he’d been putting together.’ He took another pull at his flask from a shaking hand. ‘Then I found the cuttings on Jansen and Lapointe. I reckoned he must have had something on all three. But I never thought it was blackmail. Just a story he was doing. Something big. Something he was trying to hide from me. And that got me interested.’ There was an appeal for understanding in his eyes, and when none was forthcoming, he heaved himself out of his chair and turned away towards the window.