‘She’s not here,’ the man said levelly. ‘They’ve taken her with them, I suppose.’

‘What about Bentley and Castle?’ asked Sanders.

‘Dead,’ said the man. ‘A neat job, clean. One knifed in the back, the other done with a garrotte.’

Neat, clean. Hepton was thinking of only one person: Harry. Sanders seemed to have read his mind, and nodded towards him before turning again to the man.

‘All right, Thommo. I need details.’

‘When you weren’t here, I had to contact your department.’

‘I appreciate that. Has anyone arrived?’

‘Not yet. We only got here ourselves quarter of an hour ago.’

‘Did you get anything on tape?’

‘That’s how we knew. No voices, though, apart from the woman’s.’

‘Jilly,’ Hepton said. His voice was close to cracking.

‘So if your surveillance team heard it all,’ Sanders said, his tone accusatory, ‘how come everyone had gone before you got here?’

‘Surveillance is just that, Sanders. They called us, we came. All told, it took us about five minutes. But by then …’ He shrugged his shoulders.

‘This is a mess,’ Sanders said, rubbing his temples.

‘Jilly,’ Hepton repeated. Sanders put an arm around him.

‘Go sit down,’ he ordered, ‘I’ll fix something to drink.’

Hepton began to move towards the living room.

‘Not in there,’ the man said. ‘That’s where we took the bodies.’

Sanders nodded. ‘Go upstairs, Martin. I’ll bring a drink up to you.’

Hepton felt beaten, utterly beaten, for the first time in what seemed an age. Harry had won, Villiers had won, they’d all won. And he had lost. He nodded his head and began to climb the stairs. Sanders and the other man – Thommo – were speaking together in hushed tones before he had reached the first-floor landing. He caught a few phrases.

‘Clean-up party … how did they know? … tapes … phone call …’

Tapes! Hepton looked down and saw that he was clutching the carrier bag to his body. He ran his fingers over it. He still had the tapes. He walked across the landing, but instead of going into his own room, he entered what had been Jilly’s. She had been reading: there was a paperback lying open, face down, on the bed. It was one of the titles from the living room shelves, a modern romance. On her bedside cabinet sat a cup half full of tea. Hepton touched it; there was still a hint of warmth to it.