He collapsed into the armchair. Its cushions exhaled dust. Kate sat in the stiff wooden chair beside the desk, on which stood a grimy Royal Epoch typewriter.

‘Are you a writer?’ she asked.

‘I wouldn’t use that old bastard if I was,’ Marcus said. ‘That was my dad’s. Most of this stuff was.’

‘How long have you lived in Belport?’

‘Oh, I don’t live here. If I lived here, I’d have to kill myself. I’m just passing through. About two or three years ago, I got into a little trouble.’ He placed a pair of mocking air quotes around the words a little trouble. ‘I lost my job because my boss was an arsehole. Ran out of money. And since my mother refused to set foot in this place but also refused to sell it, I figured the old shithole was as good a place as any to figure things out.’

Two or three years is a long time to be passing through a place, Kate thought.

‘I was sorry to hear about your mother,’ she said.

‘Did you know her?’

‘No, but from what I hear she and John were close. I heard about what happened, how she wrote John into her will.’

Marcus licked his lips. ‘From the look of the Lexus across the street, I’d say it’s not the first time he put the squeeze on one of his patients. To swoop in right at the end of someone’s life like that and manipulate them out of their hard-earned – that’s a pretty fucked-up side business. You think that’s why he got topped?’

Kate flinched, and worse, Marcus noticed.

‘John wasn’t like that,’ she said. ‘If your mother offered him anything it was because she wanted to.’

He stood quickly, and for a moment Kate thought he was lunging towards her. But then he moved past her and into the adjoining kitchen. An unwashed, sweaty smell went with him: a wave of what Mia would describe as stank.

The kitchen was cluttered and nicotine-stained. The sink had been removed, revealing a rectangular cavity full of rusty pipes and cobwebs. An ancient refrigerator hummed like a drunken busker.

He grabbed one of the beers, came back into the living room and fell into the armchair again. He fixed her with a look that seemed to say, I’m a busy man, so either get on with it or get out.

‘Did you ever meet John?’ Kate asked.

‘Sure.’

‘When?’

Marcus shrugged, drank and thought it over. ‘About two weeks ago.’

‘Two weeks ago? Are you sure?’

‘Uh huh. The doc sat right where you’re sitting now.’

Kate gripped the arms of the wooden chair like a nervous flyer, as if she might still be able to pick up the vibrations made when John sat in it. ‘He came here, to the house? Do … do the police know that?’

‘Why would they?’ Marcus asked, then belched.