A ladder leaned against the wall, but it didn’t look as if it had been used recently, the rungs dripped with rags of spiderweb. The ceiling was part beamed, too low to stand upright. He switched on his phone for the torch. Immediately, texts from Griff came flooding in. He didn’t read them. He shone the torch about the cellar. In the arches of the foundations there were wine racks with twists of newspaper propping up their wooden feet. One of the racks had been tipped over, and there was smashed glass, and cracked bottles lying on the ground, and small, muddy puddles in patches. Crates were stacked against the walls. He saw an enormous rat disappear between them. He went looking for the money. Griff had said Alex had hidden the money under the floorboards. The drama and stupidity sounded like him. If he’d valued it as he should have done, and valued himself, he wouldn’t have been playing games to please his father, he would have used it to make a life, not the mess he did. But then, thinking of Bea, Dan pitied him.

With an unlit candle in one hand and the matches and saucer in the pocket of her skirt, Bea went along the corridor to the ladder on the wall and climbed up, into the roof space. She had to bang the trapdoor with the heel of her hand, like Alex had done. Wiping dust from her cheek onto her arm, she looked up through the hole into the velvet black. The rotting smell touched her, but it was fainter than it had been. She remembered clearing up the mess, and the small floppy corpse of the rat, disintegrating as Alex picked it up.

She listened, then clambered up onto her knees, and then her feet, shaking off her skirt. She took the saucer from her pocket, and the matches, and lit the candle, squashing it into the drops as they cooled. She looked around. The flickering flame made shadows move, the angles tilted and jumped. Things seemed to be alive on the beams because of the small shadows wriggling on their bumpy surfaces. As her eyes adjusted she looked up into the apex of the roof. She felt Alex’s presence there, up in the attic, more than in his plundered room below, as if he’d left a smudge of himself. Perhaps because his memory was still new, his death still fresh. It was strange how strong the feeling was; that without a funeral, he did not rest. The instinct was medieval.