Silas shakes his head. Rob’s properties in Cornwall, London and Brittany have been painstakingly searched by forensics in the past week. Silas would like to have questioned Rob, but the evidence against him is still overwhelming.

‘Thailand was Rob too,’ he says. ‘An old phone was found hidden in his Shoreditch apartment. There’s a video on there of Rob talking to himself on a beach on Ko Samui. The date it was recorded fits – nine years ago, just before his twenty-first birthday. Forensics showed it to me tonight. It was a long drunken dialogue with himself but set up to look as if another person was addressing him.’

‘And we’re sure he wasn’t talking to Gilmour?’ she asks.

Strover won’t let it go. Getting it wrong about Gilmour will make her a better detective in the long run.

‘Rob was looking straight at the camera, telling himself that if he was to really succeed in business, he must be prepared to do bad things, questioning whether he had it in him. “You’ll need to do this, you might even need to do that.” And they were pretty bad things, including taking another’s life.’ Shortly afterwards, he was arrested, after being seen waving a gun around at someone else’s party.’

‘It wasn’t his twenty-first party then?’ Strover asks.

Two people come out of Bex’s front door. It sounds like a good evening, full of laughter. Silas will catch up with Kate properly when things have settled down.

‘We think he was travelling alone,’ he says. ‘Two days later, Rob found a drug dealer on the beach and shot him dead. At least, that’s what the Thai police now think happened, based on the video. Cheap life, no big deal. And that’s when Gilmour Martin, the name Rob had given to police two days earlier, came of age.’

115

Kate

‘The boss sends his apologies,’ DI Strover says to Kate as they stand in the corner of Bex’s sitting room. The party’s been going a while, but Strover has only just arrived.

‘He’s a busy man,’ Kate says. She wants to see DI Hart, thank him for his help, but now’s not the time.

‘How you feeling?’ Strover asks, glancing at Bex’s computer in the bookcase beside Kate.

Kate follows her gaze. The screen’s just lit up. Someone must have knocked it. ‘My body’s still sore,’ she says.

‘And… psychologically?’ Strover asks quietly.

‘The good news is that I don’t seem to have Capgras,’ Kate says.

‘I’m so pleased,’ Strover says.