Please don’t sing.

She waited, at least, until he was out of the kitchen and the door was closed. Sellers listened from the hall. It sounded like a skipping song schoolkids might sing: ‘Happy llama, sad llama, mentally disturbed llama, super llama, drama llama, big fat mama llama. Llama llama llama! Who is this big llama causing all the drama? It’s me, bitch!’

Sellers raised his eyebrows at the abrupt ending. Lisa started to sing the same words again. Josh’s cocktails must have been amazing, thought Sellers, if his guests were willing to put up with the llama song on an endless loop. Or perhaps the aim was to instill in them a desire to get drunk as quickly as they could.

Josh’s bedroom and lounge looked exactly the same: nothing had changed, moved or been added. There was only so much looking at two small rooms one could do. Standing around hoping for something to magically appear was pointless.

Doesn’t make this a pointless exercise. You’ve already learned something new: Josh’s llama song. It might be ridiculous, but you didn’t know it before. No one working on Billy did. Which means something else, something useful, might also be here for the taking.

Sellers opened the drawer in the TV stand, looked under the chair and the two sofas. Nothing.

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?’