Mr Tanner wore a grim expression. He headed across the playground to his office in suppressed conversation with the pastoral care officer, a confident, clerkly, heavyset woman, unmarried, who was Crotch’s sister.

Outside the Rink, standing in the cold, the mothers congregated. News that one of their number had gone missing had sent those who preferred to wag their tongues in the Bon Croissant drifting over to talk to one another. Nodding heads. Pursed lips. They stood absorbing the rumours, smiling gravely, trying to worm out what was going on. A face peeped around now and then at the gate, as if hoping to see Marvar come shambling through it, and not Dyer.

He had walked all the way from the Taylorian. He had walked as though freed, until he noticed the blonde head of Katya, her gloved hands rubbing each other, standing apart from the other parents. She had not spoken to him since the evening of Mr Tanner’s investigation. Dyer had thought of her as little as possible, as if he was responsible. Seeing her there, he felt a slight tightening.

‘Hi,’ she said with an uncertain smile.

He looked at her – it was a lovely face. She might have forgiven him.

‘Hi.’

She appraised him. His olive cotton shirt and his uncombed hair. The shoulder bag that he clutched with both hands.

‘Aren’t you cold?’ she asked.

He drew himself up. ‘Not really,’ was all he said, ridiculous he thought, as if it had been the most natural thing to leave Marvar’s overcoat behind, on this chill February day, on a brass hook in the Taylorian. The librarian was bound to identify the coat as Dyer’s.

He would collect it next time, pack it into a bag, no one would notice.

Katya watched him with a strange look in her eyes.

There was the gargle of a Summertown voice a few feet away. ‘He always avoided me.’

Without turning, Dyer recognised the speaker. Samantha Puckey. Part of a book group. He had helped her with her novel, it had not worked out. He was associated with the failure.

She was raising her voice to be heard. ‘It’s easy to be wise in retrospect, but I felt there was something not quite, I don’t know, echt about him.’

‘How are you?’ he asked Katya.

The sun had broken through, weak, but flickering a silvery light over everything. The reflection in the noticeboard threw back her bright top.

She had seen Gennady off. He was not in a good mood, she said. She made a movement with her head.

He stood at an angle, keeping his back to the mothers. Her face was very white in the glass. He had the idea that she had been weeping. Just the cast of her jaw.

Her hand touched a mark on her neck. ‘You’ve heard about Marvar?’