“It’s you,” she said in a small voice. “I thought he’d come back.” She put her arms around his neck and hugged him, her tremble now giving way to a deep tremor.

“It’s OK,” he said quietly. He pulled back a little and looked intently at her. No obvious head injury, pupils apparently normal, pulse a little too fast—this he assessed in seconds. “What’s happened, Siân?” He ruled out rape, given the condition of the flat. He reached for his cell phone and started to dial; but she stopped him, shook her head, tried to pull herself up.

“I started to call the police, Alex, but he threw me against the wall and told me he’d be back if I rang anyone. I thought,” she said, matter-of-factly, “that he was going to kill me. But he just hit me with the back of his hand.” She rubbed her nose and looked at the blood on her fingers, winced as she touched her cheek. “He told me not to move and I wouldn’t be hurt.” She started to rise again and this time made it to her feet.

There were a dozen questions Alex wanted to ask, starting with a description of who “he” was, but his job had taught him to take things slowly and to calm her first. He suddenly realized the object she’d been clutching was the remnants of the leather jacket Will had been wearing on the day of his death. It was cut along its seams, for the emergency staff at the hospital to remove it efficiently. On the floor in front of Siân were the rest of Will’s clothes from that day—the T-shirt, badly torn jeans, even the underclothes. He’d packed his full leathers away for the last phase of his journey home, had worn his lighter clothing including this favorite Ducati jacket, obviously chosen for comfort rather than protection. The plastic hospital bag that had held everything was upended in the bedroom opposite.

Siân traced Alex’s thoughts and looked at him guiltily. “Henry handed me the bag from the hospital after it was returned from the coroner’s. I only asked for the jacket: it was my last birthday present to him a year before the accident, and he loved it so much. It was a limited classic—do you remember?—and I had to order it specially from the States.” Alex nodded once. “I don’t think Henry wanted to deal with any of it. I couldn’t either, so I just stuffed it in the cupboard, forgot about it until he pulled everything out now.”