‘Why was there an assumption of suicide if no note was found?’

‘James Sutcliffe suffered from clinical depression. He was on quite a cocktail of medication.’ DI Whitestone read from her notes. ‘Prozac. Luvox. Lustral. Cipralex. He had a history of self-harm.’

Gane said, ‘What does a rich kid like that have to be depressed about?’

‘Perhaps we need to ask his friends,’ Mallory said.

There were four of them left alive.

The twins – identical apart from the starburst of facial scarring on one of them.

The tall, dark, whippet-thin, foreign-looking youth.

And the leering fat boy with the stub of his tongue poking out.

The three red crosses did something to the old photograph. Whitestone picked up a sheaf of eight-by-ten photographs. Photographs of the living. She tapped the image of the unscarred twin standing between James Sutcliffe and the dark-skinned boy.

‘Ben King,’ she said. ‘He’s famous.’

She pinned a head-and-shoulders shot to Mallory’s wall. A serious, well-groomed man in a suit and tie smiling for some kind of official photograph. It was recognisably the boy in the picture, twenty years on. His face looked vaguely familiar from late-night news shows glimpsed and turned over.

‘I know him,’ Mallory said. ‘Ben King. He’s a politician, isn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ Whitestone said. ‘His late father was the libel lawyer Quentin King. Ben King is MP for Hillingdon North. Educated at Potter’s Field and Balliol, Oxford. PPE first class. On his party’s fast track.’

Gane said, ‘Which party?’

‘Have a guess.’

Gane guessed the wrong one. I would have got it wrong, too.

‘There’s talk of him as a future Prime Minister,’ Whitestone said.

‘Independently wealthy, privately educated, slick on TV,’ Mallory said. ‘Never employed anyone, never run a business, never done a real job.’ He thought about it for a moment. ‘He’d be perfect. What about his brother? The one with the scars.’

‘Ned King,’ Whitestone replied, pinning a photograph of a soldier to the wall. ‘Serving officer in the British Army. Captain in the Royal Gurkha Rifles. Two tours of Helmand Province. Decorations for valour. He also has a conviction for assault, fifteen years ago.’

The scar tissue on the left side of Ned King’s face looked like the price of the medals on his dress uniform.

Next to him Whitestone put up a photograph of a thin balding man in a tuxedo, his bow tie hanging around his scrawny neck like something that had died. He had lost so much weight since his teenage years that he was almost unrecognisable from the fat boy he had been at school.

‘Guy “Piggy” Philips,’ Whitestone said. ‘Known the King brothers since prep school. Father made a fortune in the property market. Played tennis at a high level – junior Wimbledon semi-finals. Then his knee blew up. Teaches sport at his alma mater – Potter’s Field.’

‘What sports?’ Gane asked.

‘Tennis. Fencing. Cricket. Skiing. Posh sports, Gane, OK? And distance running.’