‘It’s probably downstairs somewhere. I know we had some equipment sent to us from Tunis.’

‘Can I see it?’

‘Why? There’s nothing on the machine. The disk has been wiped, ready for a fresh install.’

‘So how are you going to publish the people-trafficking story?’

‘Your mother’s files were backed up to cloud storage.’ Milligan nodded at his own laptop. ‘I can access them from here.’

‘I was wondering if there was anything else she was working on. Something much bigger than people trafficking.’

‘Bigger than trafficking? Not that I know of.’ Milligan glanced up from the laptop. ‘Look, I know what you’re trying to do. You want to make sense of this and understand why your mother died.’ He gestured at the screen on the wall. The chaos in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. ‘But there is no sense to it. She was just doing her job and happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

‘Are you sure about that?’ Silva held Milligan’s gaze, sensing he was being evasive. ‘Because somebody broke into her cottage. They tried to make it look like a simple burglary but they removed the hard drive from her old computer.’ Silva lifted her hands and turned them over. The grazing from her fall into the weir was evident. ‘And when I was there yesterday someone attacked me and pushed me into the river. I nearly drowned.’

Milligan cocked his head. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m in one piece,’ Silva said, lowering her hands and noticing the slight shake as she did so. ‘Physically anyway.’

‘Did you report it to the police? They could help. Victim support. That kind of thing.’

‘No.’ Silva wondered why she hadn’t done just that. She’d been assaulted and the house had been burgled. At least the police would have been able to give her some reassurance. Unless… her train of thought was curtailed by an involuntary shudder. ‘But it got me thinking if my mother might have stumbled across something, something which could have got her killed. I’ve an idea about what it might be and it has absolutely nothing to do with people trafficking.’

Milligan reached for a remote control and blipped the volume on the TV monitor up several notches. Sirens in the background. A reporter talking to camera. A blast of music as the channel went to an ad break. Milligan shook his head and mouthed the word no. He reached for his jacket on the back of his chair and stood.

‘Let’s take a walk,’ he said.