The woman had stopped smiling. ‘You’re not collectors, you’re fucking journalists. Get out. Get out now or I’ll call the police.’

I was looking at the card.

HON. KRIS HUETLIN

Nereus Fine Art

And I saw what Wren had seen: that the Kris was short for Cressida and the Huetlin came from the German artist she had married at nineteen and divorced five years later. It was the ‘Hon.’ that she couldn’t resist that gave her away.

The Honourable Cressida Sutcliffe, only daughter of the Earl of Broughton, sister of the late James Sutcliffe.

Then I was out on the street, gripping the wrought-iron railings, looking up. Wren had followed me outside and was watching me crouch in the broken glass from the recycling bin. The smashed glass was all from beer bottles.

Peroni. Italian beer.

‘We’re missing something,’ I said, the sound of broken glass beneath our feet. ‘Upstairs,’ I said. ‘A dead man lives there.’

Up a narrow flight of stairs.

The door was unlocked.

Behind me I could hear the Hon. Kris Huetlin arguing with Wren, then falling silent when she produced her warrant card. And then arguing some more.

I went into a room full of canvases, all of them turned to face the wall. I could smell fresh paint. A man was standing in the centre of the small room, next to a canvas on an easel.

The canvas before him was blank.

‘Hello, James,’ I said.

James Sutcliffe was heavy, bearded, with the weight of the long-term committed drinker. I could see no trace of the delicate boy in dark glasses who would not smile for the camera when he posed in his Combined Cadet Force uniform at Potter’s Field. The hair that had been thick and black and slicked back straight off his forehead was now long and grey and thinning. It fell around his shoulders, and over the baggy smock he wore.

‘Hello,’ he said.

‘I’m DC Wolfe,’ I said, hearing footsteps on the stairs and then stopping behind me. ‘This is TDC Edie Wren. Can we talk?’

‘Yes.’

His sister was right behind Wren.

‘Even lower than I thought,’ she said. ‘Not hacks. Pigs.’

I looked at her, remembering her radical past. Then I turned back to her brother.

‘I love your paintings,’ I said. ‘I love the early ones. And I love the later ones, where the city gets darker.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Do you know why I’m here?’

He looked over my shoulder at his sister.

‘Someone’s killing your friends,’ I said. ‘Hugo Buck. Adam Jones. Guy Philips. They’re all dead. Did you know that?’

A small shake of his head that could have meant anything.

‘I’m going to find the killer,’ I said. ‘Don’t you want to help me catch the bastard who’s murdering your friends?’

He focused on me again.

‘They’re not my friends,’ he said.