‘I don’t think I want to tell you about that.’ The woman with Costain was looking angry and … yeah, afraid. ‘We never saw any politician, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

*   *   *

Sefton and Mi Ling had finally found themselves laughing together at a completely safe conversation about recent celebrity misdemeanours. Sefton was pleased when she went from that to ones she knew about herself, because, as he’d suspected, she was sometimes at the sort of party that had paparazzi waiting outside. It was safe for her to talk about what her famous acquaintances got up to there.

After a while he took a risk and held up his phone to show her a picture of Spatley. ‘Is that the bloke who got killed?’ she said.

‘What about this one?’ He showed her a picture of Tunstall, then Staunce, but the only result was her frowning at him. These people meant nothing to her other than faces on the telly. ‘Would you know if they’d been here?’

‘Course I would,’ she said. ‘We all know when someone famous comes through. Are you a reporter or something?’

‘Look at this,’ he said, showing her a picture of Rupert Rudlin taken from CCTV footage.

‘That’s—’ She stopped. She was looking at the phone intently. ‘I don’t know the man, but—’

‘But?’

‘The woman he’s with … she’s a mate of mine.’

Sefton realized that he was looking at her in shock. He made himself point to the image of the woman who, a few moments after this picture had been taken, would be thrown up against the wall. ‘Her, you mean?’

‘Yeah. She left here. I mean, suddenly. I mean she still owes them money. Nobody knows where she went.’

‘What’s her name?’ The woman looked suddenly awkward, wondering again if she should get involved with this. ‘Listen, look at me, look at me, I’m not after her to harm her, I’m trying to save her. You believe me, don’t you?’

The woman considered for a moment, then finally nodded. ‘That’s Mary. Mary Arthur. She wasn’t full time here. She did jobs on the side. When she disappeared … we all said she must have made it big, gone to Saudi.’

‘Do you know where she lived?’

‘Somewhere in Muswell Hill.’

‘This is saving lives…’

‘That’s all I know.’

The door burst open and an enormous man in a Brazilian football strip, carrying a baseball bat, with a bar through his nose and a huge moustache, threw himself at Sefton.

*   *   *

Costain jumped back off the bed, his hands in the air. ‘Mate, mate, I didn’t touch her!’

His own assailant, shaved head and paunch, pretty designer T-shirt with a much-copied image of some Seventies model, hefty about the limbs, obviously used to dealing damage and carrying what looked like a specialist hunting knife, instinctively glanced at the woman.