‘No. She said, sorry, she already felt a bit threatened by how scared the man she’d worked for had seemed of a boss he wouldn’t talk about. If she’d fucked up a job for someone as powerful and dangerous as that, she said, she was going to have to vanish for a while. I wished her well and felt worried about how I’d burdened her with so much of the truth. I decided to stop gathering evidence and move to acting against Vincent as soon as possible. I don’t know how he could have known my intentions, because I’d told nobody, but I think, on reflection, that my plan was what got me killed.’

Quill was starting to wonder at how calm the man seemed. ‘Don’t you want … I don’t know, revenge for what Vincent did to you?’

There was something a little cracked in Spatley’s smile in return. ‘Look at where we are. Here I am, making a difference. I don’t think I’d better allow myself thoughts of revenge.’

Quill wondered at the plasticity of mind of this politician. ‘I gather you lost the card with her employer’s phone number on it?’

‘Yeah, somewhere in my office, I think. Though I kept wondering if it had been taken, because I often got the feeling that the place was being searched. It didn’t matter. I’d written down both the number and the address of the establishment.’

‘Ah. We never found that.’

‘I kept it on me at all times. In my jacket pocket.’

Quill frowned.

‘Anyway, neither seemed likely to be useful going forward with the inquiry; the number always went to a blank answerphone, and if I wanted to have another go at convincing Mary to talk, I didn’t have to go via what I presume was her brothel – I’d written her number down too.’

Quill failed to stop himself looking surprised. ‘You wrote down her number?’

‘Yes. On the same piece of paper.’

Quill put a hand over his eyes. He was pained by now having hope again. Hell told him he could have all the hope he liked, he was never going to get any of this information to his colleagues. ‘I don’t suppose—’

‘Oh yes, I can tell you it. I looked at it so many times, and I’ve got a good memory for numbers. But surely, we’re both dead now, so it hardly matters.’

Quill leaned over the table and pointed into his face. ‘It matters to me.’ He made Spatley tell him the phone number, and wrote it on the back of his own hand. As he went on his way, he started to repeat the number to himself, his own mantra, his own tiny hope.

*   *   *