‘There was a body in the Kinmont mausoleum,’ I said. ‘A man in a blue suit. He left a little present for Fairfax after they spoke.’

‘Please …’ said Mrs Parker, despairingly. ‘Please stop.’

‘Did you kill him?’ I asked, staring at the small, shrivelled husk of Mr Parker. ‘Was he Jean Favre? Did he see the man you used to be? A Resistance fighter named Abel? Did you kill him and ask Fairfax to cover it up …?’ I was pulling at my hair, desperate for answers. ‘I need to know!’

I felt a chill on my neck as the door to the room opened. I spun, unable to help myself.

‘Do you?’ asked the man in the doorway. ‘Do you really need to know?’

Beside me, Felicity’s hand flew to her mouth.

I looked hard at the face of the newcomer and suddenly understood who I was staring at.

I was looking into the face of a dead man.

FELICITY

Transcript 0010, recorded October 31, 2010

The last time I’d seen Fairfax’s son he’d been eighteen years old and heading off to war. His dad hadn’t wanted him to go. Christopher was never a strong lad and he had poor eyes and a weak chest but he’d been dead set on doing his bit. He’d made his dad proud, even if Fairfax would have given his right arm and both legs to stop him from signing up. Christopher nearly got safely through it. We’d already stormed Normandy and were closing in on victory when the bomb fell on the radio post where he was working as a wireless operator.

It was Leslie, the young girl from the post office, who hand-delivered the telegram to Fairfax’s house. The way she told the story, Fairfax had turned whiter than milk before she’d even knocked on his door. Saw her through the window and knew his world was about to fall apart. Knew, with some horrible cold certainty, that his boy was dead.

‘Christopher,’ I gasped, looking at the man in the doorway, and if I’d been a Catholic I would have started crossing myself and never stopped.

He’d changed a lot in the years since he went off to war. Looked more like Fairfax than he used to. There was a paleness to him, as if he was too used to an indoor life. He had a greyness to him, and it wasn’t just the suit and overcoat that hung on his thin shoulders like it would on a hanger. He had the same long, rectangular face I remembered and the hair at the front of his head still flopped forward like it would on a pony. He had a scar on his chin now and there was a lot of silver at his temples. He wasn’t smoking and yet he still seemed to be wreathed in a fug of fumes.