Sabih followed her along the corridor to her flat.

‘He’s been dreaming about you,’ Sabih said.

She’d surmised as much, but having someone else articulate it made the prospect sound unsavoury.

‘His old boss said he was away with the fairies,’ Harri replied as she unlocked her front door. ‘But I don’t think he is. I think there’s something else going on.’

‘Guilt?’ Sabih asked.

‘I don’t think so,’ Harri replied, wondering whether her feelings for Ben were clouding her judgement.

They stepped inside her little flat and she switched on the lights. She ignored his raised eyebrows when he registered the place was still a mess.

‘Whatever the cause, I’m not surprised his brain’s on the fritz. He was in a car crash when he was twenty. Three of his friends were killed.’

Harri realized why Sabih was here. He had the background she’d asked for, but her former colleague’s diligence took second place to an immediate sense of pity for Ben. No one could experience something like that and remain unchanged.

‘Benjamin Elmys was the only survivor,’ Sabih continued. ‘In a coma for three months. Went off to study in Australia. Came back to the UK a little over ten years ago. Maybe the accident tripped a fuse.’

Sabih grinned and tapped his temple, but his smile fell when he realized Harri wasn’t in the mood for cheap cracks. He reached into his pocket and produced a USB drive, which he placed on the kitchen counter, between a dirty plate and a grimy glass.

‘It’s all here, along with everything I could find on Elizabeth and David Asha. Elizabeth died of cancer. David died a few weeks later. Fell from – or jumped off – the cliffs outside Barmouth, near a village called Arthog. I spoke to one of the uniforms involved in the investigation. PC Simon Lake. Good lad. A witness, Margery Allen, was walking her dog, saw Asha pacing around on the cliff edge. The body was carried out to sea – never recovered.’

‘He just left his kid?’ Harri asked in disbelief. What could make a father so desperate he’d be willing to inflict such trauma on a child?

Sabih shrugged. ‘Well, we don’t know that he did, deliberately. The witness didn’t see him go over the edge, no firm evidence of suicide, so it’s death by misadventure, remember? Either way, the boy ended up in the custody of your weirdo.’

Harri winced at the word. ‘Don’t call him that.’

‘Sorry, I thought you two were over.’

‘We are, but still . . . don’t call him that.’

‘Well, whatever he is, he holds everything in trust for the boy.’

‘And if anything happens to Elliot?’ Harri asked.

Sabih shrugged. ‘Why are you so interested in these people?’

Harri grabbed the copy of Happiness: A New Way of Life from the sofa, and opened it at the page with Beth Asha’s message. She handed it to Sabih.

‘ “He’s trying to kill me”?’

‘I bought this in Nantwich. It’s an old library book,’ Harri explained. ‘The last person to borrow it was Beth Asha.’