He hung up, and drew the curtains open and stared thoughtfully down into the street. Then he turned his gaze around the living room. He might as well make a start with the apartment.

It took him less than half an hour to go through it room by room, drawer by drawer. There were extraordinarily few personal items. The safe was locked, and most of the drawers empty. It was not until he had begun his search that he noticed just how tidy the flat was. Slater had not struck him as being a particularly fastidious man. Of course the place would already have been searched by the police, and when a good cop does his job properly he almost always leaves the place he searched tidier than he found it. But still, it was more than just tidy. It was as if the flat had never been lived in. Even the child’s room seemed naked, except for the rag doll lying on the armchair where Bannerman had dropped it the night before.

Here, too, the drawers were empty. Bannerman opened the wardrobe. A dozen coat hangers rattled and swung freely. Bannerman frowned as a suspicion grew in his mind. He went through to the kitchen and found the larder. There were a few cans of soup, a tin of spaghetti and a nearly empty coffee jar. The refrigerator had been switched off, and its shelves were bare. Then into Slater’s bedroom, again to find an empty wardrobe, empty drawers in the bedside cabinet.

Bannerman sat on the bed and let his eyes wander about the room. They came to rest on three suitcases piled on top of the wardrobe. He took a chair from under the window and placed it below the wardrobe, then climbed on to it and reached up. The cases were heavy and he lifted them down carefully, one by one, raising a stoor from the top of the wardrobe. He opened each case in turn. Two of them were filled with men’s clothing, underwear, socks, personal odds and ends. A photograph in a frame lay on top of Tania’s clothing in the third, smaller case.

Bannerman turned it over and found himself looking at the face of an attractive young woman. It was a black-and-white photograph. The woman looked to be in her mid-twenties. Bannerman knew the face. He had met her once, not long before she died. She was the mirror-image of her daughter.

Slater had taken it badly when his wife died. But still, Bannerman was surprised to find her photograph packed away for the departure that Slater had so clearly planned. Perhaps he had never quite got over her death.