She went into the kitchen. He heard her open the refrigerator then the sounds of her searching for glasses. He switched off the overhead light, turned on a table lamp and sat back in the settee staring at the painting over the mantelpiece. The browns and blacks, blues and greens, their starkness against the white of the snow that covered the scene. A group of weary hunters returning from the kill, mean-looking dogs slinking at their feet, a fire being lit at the inn on the hilltop. Through the trees they looked down on to two square frozen lakes where tiny figures wrapped in winter coats were skating. There was a great peace about the painting, a strange sense of satisfaction in it, men and women frozen in the painter’s mind below the palest of winter blue skies that faded almost to yellow.

Sally came in with the bottle uncorked and set it down with two glasses on the stained wooden coffee table in front of the settee. She sat down beside Bannerman and followed his eyes to the painting. ‘Brueghel,’ she said. ‘So gentle by comparison with the horrors and madness of his later work.’

Bannerman wondered if the choice of painting reflected anything in Slater. It was a curious choice for such a man. Perhaps it had come with the apartment. He dragged his eyes away from it and turned his head to watch Sally pour the wine. The bottle was misted, and the glasses misted too when she filled them. Now she raised her glass to her lips. ‘It hardly seems right to toast anything,’ she said, and took a sip. Bannerman lifted his glass and took a mouthful. It was dry and a little fruity and was cool in his throat, which still hurt where he had been kicked. Sally put her glass down and without looking at him, asked, ‘What happened to your face?’

He told her. About the assault in the apartment, and the assailant who’d attacked him in the darkness of his office. She turned in amazement.

‘You mean there was someone in here waiting for you?’

‘Not waiting for me. He was after something in the safe. I disturbed him. I suppose he got what he was looking for, but he must have thought the house was empty.’ He hesitated. ‘Let me ask you something. You normally came on Sundays. Why did you not come yesterday?’

She looked at him curiously, a hint of uncertainty, suspicion, in her green eyes. ‘You don’t think I . . .’

‘I don’t think anything. I’d just like to know.’