‘I need your help. I know you’ve just opened up, but can I bring Jess into the museum for a few hours, ask you to look after her?’

Katie was twisting the flex of the phone round her wrist, in a unconscious physical imitation of the twisting stress that was winding round her guts. She nodded at whatever the voice was saying, and then replied.

‘Yeah. There is something wrong. Billy’s gone.’

She pulled the door closed behind her with a foot hooked round the edge. Both arms were occupied holding Jess and everything Jess would need. The hounds were on her before she got to the bottom step.

‘Mrs Hunt. How do you feel about the police looking for your husband …’

‘Mrs Hunt … over here please …’

The whirr of cameras.

‘Mrs Hunt. Has your husband been in touch at all …’

The two cops who’d watched with their big arms folded over their big chests stepped forward at last. ‘Okay, guys. Let the lady through. You can’t obstruct the highway.’

She hurried to the car, fumbling for her keys. The cop strolled behind and stood beside her. ‘We have to know where you’re going, Mrs Hunt.’

She looked at him with distaste, Jess copying her mother but stretching a chubby fist out to the man as though she held something in her fingers he might want.

‘Am I under arrest?’

‘Well … no, but …’

‘Then if you want to know where I’m going, earn your pay. Follow me.’

Mercifully, she located the car keys, opened the creaky old door of the Toyota and bundled Jess in. As Katie drove off, the blue car that sat outside all night stayed where it was, and a patrol car waiting round the block did as she suggested, earning their pay.

‘Well, are we ready to shred?’

Pasqual made a camp-leader punching movement in the air with both fists and looked at Del Parkinson for response. He was sitting at the table by the window, still eating his hash browns and eggs. The weather was so bad that the lake in front of the Chateau was barely visible in the thick sheet of snow. Still, Del Parkinson wasn’t that keen to get out of his robe, change into a dumb ski-suit and go ski with morons. Things were looking up since Pasqual had knocked on his room door.

‘Have some toast. Come on. Sit down.’

‘Hey, I’d kill for breakfast, but I got nearly a hundred people out there waiting for me to tell them when to eat, shit and breathe.’ She shrugged, as if the power was a burden she accepted like a duty. Del looked at her and opened his legs a little, letting the white towelling robe slip back from his thighs. His thin legs were loose-skinned and baggy, but still brown from a ten-day commercial shoot in Miami.