‘Why are we here?’ asked Hepton. He breathed in the stagnant air of the long hallway. Parfit walked noiselessly towards the far door and pushed it open. A lounge, leading on to further rooms: dining room, a small study, and past this the bedroom. The apartment seemed to be a series of conjoined rooms, shaped in a ‘U’ around the hallway. Hepton repeated his question, but Parfit appeared intent on his surroundings, as though planning to make an offer on the vacant property.

‘He didn’t own this, you know,’ he mused. ‘I thought he did, but he didn’t. It was supposed to be an inheritance. That was the story.’

‘Who does own it then?’

Parfit smiled at Hepton, his eyes hooded and intelligent as a crow’s. But instead of answering, he walked on from one room to another. Hepton caught him up as he was beginning to speak again.

‘I never liked him. I was against his recruitment from the start.’

‘Why didn’t you stop him then?’

Parfit’s smile this time was bitter. ‘It wasn’t up to me,’ he said. ‘I really had no say in things.’ His eyes sought Hepton’s. ‘All I do is clear up the mess. Treatment rather than prevention, you see.’ Hepton could feel the man’s irritation. It filled the room and threatened to burst from it. ‘My superiors recruited him, not me. Blake Farquharson recruited him. Well, he had his reasons, I suppose.’ The emotion was melting away again, or rather was being shovelled back into some hidden cellar. But still there.

Why, Hepton wondered, was he being shown this side of Parfit, a man he barely knew?

Parfit walked on, through the study and into the bedroom. The bed was narrow, the room small and airless. There were no ornaments, nothing to brighten it or make it more than just a place for resting.

Resting and waiting. Hepton could imagine Villiers lying here at night, nothing distracting him from his thoughts, and his thoughts filled with death, glory, deceit.

There was a piece of card on the bed’s one pillow. Hepton lifted it and turned it over: SORRY YOU COULDN’T MAKE IT TO THE BURIAL. The message was printed. Parfit read it, then took the card from Hepton and slipped it into his pocket.

Hepton started opening drawers, flicking through books in the study. He didn’t doubt that some team specialised in such things had been through the apartment before him. But perhaps he knew what he was looking for better than they did. There were few clues, however. He switched on Villiers’ word processor, only to find that what disks there were had been wiped clean, or had been empty to begin with.

Coffin … burial. The words rang in his head, growing loud, dissonant. He was wasting his time here. Why had they come?