Belle shook her head. ‘It’s more than that, Mills. Dealing? No. That’s the thin end of this. I think your dad was way above that sort of thing. What about Javier from Colombia, that bloke he’s been trying to cosy you up with? There are families out there who make a fortune from drugs and Javier is probably from one of those. He wasn’t doing anything with furnishings, that was all a blind. There are cartels, they’re hugely wealthy people. I think your dad was in tight with them. And he wanted to get in even tighter, which is where you came in. Keep Javier firmly onside and Charlie could get a fortune beyond his wildest dreams.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ said Milly, shocked.

‘Neither did I, at first. But now? I do.’

‘What are you going to do, Belle?’

‘Talk to my mum again. And my dad. See what they have to say.’

Milly looked at her friend. ‘More bullshit?’

‘Probably.’ Belle’s eyes drifted over to Harlan, standing there chatting, laughing. Charlie and Nula were dead, and he looked like he was at a Christmas party, having fun. It was obscene.

‘You know,’ said Milly quietly, ‘my mum was a little bit crazy, but I tell you Belle, this is where crazy really starts. When they let Harlan into their lives? They let a demon in. A fucking monster.’

Milly surged to her feet and was gone, out into the hall, shoving past the mourners, running off up the stairs.

‘She OK?’ asked Nipper, coming over to Belle.

Belle stared at him with dislike. Harlan’s toy poodle. ‘No. Not at all.’

He sat down on the couch. Oh fuck off, thought Belle. But he didn’t.

‘How do you think it happened? The accident?’ she asked Nipper.

He shrugged. ‘Helicopters are dangerous things,’ he said. ‘The servicing has to be top-notch. You hear of accidents. All the time.’

‘Harlan told me it takes months for the Air Accident people to sift through it all. To find out what really happened.’

‘Yeah. He’s right. The AAIB are bloody thorough. But dead’s dead, ain’t that so? It won’t bring either one of them back, no matter what they find.’

‘I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget that day,’ said Belle.

It was so vivid in her mind, even now, over a month after the event. The panic, the shouting, the wail of the fire engines and the police cars, the ambulances to take the bodies away to the morgue – and then in the days after that, the Air Accident crew came in with heavy lifting gear, disassembling the wreckage that remained and taking it off to their headquarters in Farnborough.

Belle stared at Nipper, sitting there. He was watching Harlan, just like she was. ‘You really think this was an accident?’ she said.

Nipper’s eyes swivelled to her face. ‘What are you saying?’