We went down to Smiths of Smithfield for our breakfast. I was just getting the bill when Stan walked past the window, his lead trailing behind him. Scout went outside to collect him as I got Jana on the phone. I could hear furious barking, sounds of terror and fear, human and canine howls of protest.

‘How’s Stan doing?’ I said.

‘Ah,’ Jana said. ‘Ah, yes. Sam is very fine.’

Scout came into SOS with Stan. He was wild-eyed and panting with thirst and exhaustion. A kindly SOS waiter brought him a large silver bowl of water. Scout set him down and he began to lap it up, very loudly.

‘You’re sure Stan’s fine?’ I said.

At the sound of his name, Stan looked up at me, his huge eyes bulging with outrage. Then he went back to his water, Scout’s small hands fussing over him.

‘Ah,’ said Jana. ‘Yes, Sam – lovely little Sam – is very fine. Sam is – ah – enjoying the beautiful park with his friends. There he goes now! Ha ha! Into the trees! Good boy, Sam!’

I looked at Scout and Stan, down on the floor and delighted to see each other, and I knew that from now on we would be walking our own dog.

At the morning briefing in MIR-1, DI Whitestone stood with her back to Mallory’s wall. A blown-up photograph of the seven boy soldiers was visible just behind her. She had a list of names in her hand.

‘Then there were four,’ she said.

She turned to face the wall and carefully drew a red cross over the face of the boy on the extreme left.

‘Adam Jones – deceased.’

She drew another red cross over the face of the boy on the extreme right.

‘Hugo Buck – deceased.’

And finally she drew a red cross over the boy in the dead centre. The one in dark glasses. The one who wasn’t smiling.

‘This is the Honourable James Sutcliffe,’ Whitestone said. ‘Younger son of the Earl of Broughton. Or rather, this was the Honourable James Sutcliffe. Two years after this photograph was taken he committed suicide. Walked into the sea off the Amalfi coast where his parents were renting a villa.’

We were all silent.

‘The summer he turned eighteen,’ Whitestone added.

Mallory said, ‘He has a daughter, doesn’t he? The boy’s father, I mean. The Earl of Broughton.’

Whitestone nodded. ‘The Honourable Cressida. She was a bit of a wild young thing in the eighties. Took a pee on the Cenotaph during an anti-capitalism riot.’

‘That’s the one,’ Mallory said.

‘Ran off with some German artist thirty years her senior. Reconciled with her parents now, all forgiven.’

‘When the boy killed himself, did the carabinieri find a suicide note?’ Mallory asked.

‘No, sir,’ Whitestone said. ‘They didn’t even find a body. Just his clothes folded on the beach and a half-finished sketch. He was an artist. Apparently the most brilliant of the bunch.’