‘I’m sorry it’s so late, Veronica. I’ll try not to keep Christopher long.’

‘Nonsense, Madeleine,’ Veronica says, a little too brightly. ‘Stay as long as you like. I’ve got the clearing up to do anyway.’

Cullen waits and feels his diaphragm move once more.

‘What’s going on, Maddy?’ he says, with his back to her. He takes out two highball glasses and a special occasion bottle of Macallan from the mahogany cupboard, then opens the drawer beneath, looking for the silver stirrer, his eyes alighting instead on his mother’s diamond and gold bracelet, which he’d lifted from behind a bank of lacy handkerchiefs in her bedside table earlier that evening, while she was quietly sleeping. The bracelet was an heirloom from Amanda’s mother but needs must. Making an early claim on his inheritance is all it is. God knows, he’s earned it. In the unlikely event that Amanda even misses it, he can always float the theory that someone in the home must have been responsible. One of the carers, perhaps, or another resident. But he’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it.

Pouring a finger of Macallan into one of the glasses and four fingers into the other, he drops into each glass two cubes of ice and, rebuilding his best smile, turns back into the room, bracing himself for whatever Maddy has to say.

‘I got a rather worrying call from Lea earlier,’ she says, taking the proffered glass. ‘I don’t know if you’re aware that her daughter, Jackie, works as a paramedic at the Royal Infirmary?’

Oh bloody hell, thinks Cullen.

Her eyes flash to the door and her manner suddenly softens and for an instant he’s persuaded that she’s the Maddy who still carries a torch, the Maddy he can twist around his little finger. ‘Chris, what is happening to you?’

‘In what sense?’ he says.

‘In the sense that you apparently showed up at the infirmary at some ungodly hour last night, six sheets to the wind and demanding to see Satnam Mann.’

‘Ungodly? It wasn’t even ten.’

She fixes him with an even look that sends a shudder through him. ‘Is that your best get-around? Or is there a better one coming down the pipe?’

‘She’s been on my mind, obviously.’ He checks the door. God, please don’t let Veronica come in, not now.

‘She’s been on everyone’s mind.’

‘I was under the impression that her parents had requested a visit from a representative at the university. I undertook that task. It was Lea who asked me if I wouldn’t mind.’ A day ago, an hour, a minute even, he felt nothing for Lea but a healthy contempt. If you’d asked him yesterday, he would have said he would rejoice if she got the sack. Now, he’d quite cheerfully bury the bitch alive.