She got me logged in, which was a suspicious amount of help and attention from a Detective Inspector, and explained the priority codes to me.

‘Officially, low means we want it within a week,’ said Stephanopoulos. ‘Medium is five days and high priority is three.’

‘And really?’ I asked.

‘Today, now and “I want it bloody yesterday.”’

I was logging out when Special Agent Reynolds approached me.

‘Excuse me, Constable Grant,’ she said. ‘May I ask you a question?’

‘Call me Peter,’ I said.

She nodded. ‘I wonder, Constable, if you could tell me what makes you think there might be mental illness in the family?’ she asked.

I told her about the shift in James’s art work at St Martin’s and how I thought it might have been an indication of incipient mental illness or drug abuse – or both. Reynolds looked sceptical but it was hard to tell, given that she didn’t seem to like making eye contact.

‘Is there any hard evidence?’ she asked.

‘There’s the art work, statement by his tutor, the self-help book on mental illness and his flatmate smoked a lot of dope,’ I said. ‘Apart from that – no.’

‘So you have nothing,’ she said. ‘Do you even have a background in mental health?’

I thought of my parents but I didn’t think they counted so I said no.

‘Then it would be better if you didn’t speculate without evidence,’ she said sharply. Then she shook her head as if to clear it and walked away.

‘Somebody doesn’t know they’re not in Kansas anymore,’ said Stephanopoulos.

‘That was off,’ I said. ‘Don’t you think?’

‘I did think she was going to ask for your birth certificate at one point,’ she said. ‘Come down to the office before you go. Seawoll wants a word.’

I promised not to run off.

After Stephanopoulos had left I took a moment to stare at Agent Reynolds as she had a drink at the water cooler. She looked tired and ill at ease. I did some mental calculations – assuming half a day of bureaucratic arse-covering I guessed she’d got the overnight from Washington or New York. She’d have had to come straight from the airport – no wonder she looked like shit.

She caught me staring, blinked, remembered who I was, scowled and looked away.

I went downstairs to see how much trouble I was in.

Seawoll and Stephanopoulos had their lair on the first floor in a room that had been divided into four offices, one big one for Seawoll and three small ones for the DIs working under him. This suited everyone, since all us foot soldiers could get on with our work without the oppressive presence of our senior officers and our senior officers could work in peace and quiet in the full knowledge that only something really urgent would motivate us to schlep down the stairs and interrupt them.