He decided to try the bathroom. That looked the same too, though there was a blue carrier bag leaning against one wall that he hadn’t seen there before. Probably Lisa’s, he thought. He peered inside the bag and saw a name he wasn’t expecting to see – not here, at any rate. Having a word with his racing pulse, telling it not to get ahead of itself, he slowly and carefully removed all the other items from the bag – a Kindle with a green cover, a cream butter dish, a hideous man’s tie with a purple background and little characters from Star Wars all over it – so that he could concentrate on the item that interested him.

Slowly, he took it out of the bag and examined it.

Jesus Christ.

Sellers wasn’t prepared to believe it was a coincidence. And, come to think of it, this couldn’t be Lisa’s bag. Why would she have brought these four items to her dead brother’s home?

Sellers found her in the kitchen and asked her, taking care not to let his excitement show.

‘Oh, those things?’ Lisa’s face coloured. ‘I decided to take them home with me. Is that okay? Sergeant Kombothekra said you’d finished—’

‘It’s fine, don’t worry. But do you mind me asking why those four particular items?’

‘All presents from Angela. They had sentimental value for Josh. “And only sentimental value,” as he regularly used to say. But he kept them all in the drawer under his bed, because they were from her.’ Lisa’s eyes filled with tears again. ‘Josh didn’t make friends easily. He could be quite intense. Angela really meant a lot to him.’

‘What did you mean about only sentimental value?’

Lisa made a face. ‘Angela was a bit rubbish when it came to presents – not for want of trying! Did you see the Star Wars characters tie?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I mean, Josh adored Star Wars but he didn’t want to wear it round his neck! He had no use for a Kindle – screens were for work and porn, he said – and the butter dish and recipe book … Angela kept trying to inspire him to cook and host dinner parties in his nice big kitchen, but Josh was a takeaway and leftovers man through and through. Cocktails were all he was interested in making himself.’

‘I need to step out into the garden and make a phone call,’ Sellers told her. ‘I’ll be back shortly.’

Aware that people sometimes didn’t answer their phones when you urgently needed them to, Sellers willed Simon to pick up.

He was in luck.

‘I’m at Josh Norbury’s flat with Josh’s sister,’ he said, realising how breathless he was when he tried to speak.

‘I don’t want to know,’ Simon said. ‘Why are you telling me? Fucking hell, man, what’s wrong with you? Her brother’s just died!’

‘What?’ Sellers was momentarily confused. ‘No, not like that. I haven’t thought about her from that angle, not once.’