We ordered coffee, black for both of us – I couldn’t risk asking for my favourite, a triple espresso, fearing more blank stares followed by suppressed laughter – and King fixed me with a frank but friendly gaze, leaning forward, giving me his full attention.

‘My office is here to help your investigation in any way it can,’ he said. ‘As, of course, am I.’

He had a smooth, clean-cut, untouched version of his brother’s face. He was a reassuring presence. I could understand why someone would vote for him.

‘This must be a very traumatic time for you,’ I said, ‘losing two close friends in a short space of time.’

He smiled sadly. ‘We lost Adam many years ago.’

There was a pause as the coffee was placed before us.

‘I had been dreading that phone call for years – the one telling me he had gone. But Hugo – that was a blow, yes.’

‘So you were not in contact with Adam Jones?’

‘A few years ago he approached me for money – or rather my office. I didn’t see him.’

‘And you didn’t give him any money?’

‘I would have given him money for rehabilitation. I would have given him money for treatment. I wasn’t giving him money for heroin. I think he approached a number of old friends. Guy saw him.’

‘He told me,’ I said, and the thought rushed in – but you knew that already. ‘It’s a tragedy that he couldn’t get help. What a waste.’

Ben King looked at me. And I saw that he had a way of looking at someone as if he was suddenly seeing them clearly for the first time. He cocked his head to one side, as if readjusting his gaze, as if I had just said something unique, or momentous, or true. As if I were suddenly a man of substance in his eyes, coming out with things that had never been said before. He looked at me as if I were the last man left alive. That was the way he looked at me. But perhaps all politicians do that.

‘That’s three of your old school friends who have died before their time,’ I pointed out.

He thought about it for a moment.

‘You mean James? That was a tragedy. As I get older, I find myself thinking of James constantly.’ For the first time he seemed genuinely moved, the eighteen-year-old suicide somehow a wound that was more raw than the two recent murders. ‘Hugo and Adam,’ he said. ‘Are their deaths connected?’

‘That’s our conjecture,’ I said, echoing Mallory. ‘We’re going to be visiting Potter’s Field in due course.’

He sipped his coffee before speaking again. ‘But why would you go to our old school?’ His voice was calm and quiet.