‘Oh yeah,’ said Zach as if remembering suddenly. ‘But I don’t think she comes in today and anyway she’s not my cleaning lady, she was Jim’s. Now he’s not there she probably won’t come. I don’t want them to think I’m a slacker – his parents – I want them to know he had a mate.’

‘How did you meet James Gallagher?’ I asked.

‘Why do you always do that?’

‘Do what?’

‘Call him by both his names all the time,’ said Zach slouching down in his seat. ‘He liked being called Jim.’

‘It’s a police thing,’ I said. ‘It avoids confusion and shows some respect. How did you meet him?’

‘Who?’

‘Your friend Jimmy,’ I said.

‘Can we stop off for some breakfast?’

‘You know it’s been left entirely up to me whether we charge you or not?’ I lied.

Zach started absently tapping the window. ‘I was a mate of one of his mate’s mates,’ he said. ‘We just got on. He liked London but he was shy, he needed a guide and I needed to a place to crash.’

This was close enough to the statements he’d given first to Guleed and then to Stephanopoulos for me to think it might even be the truth. Stephanopoulos had asked about drugs, but Zach had sworn blind and on his mother’s life that James Gallagher hadn’t partaken. Didn’t have any objections, mind, just wasn’t interested.

‘Guide to what?’ I asked as I negotiated the tricky corner at Notting Hill Gate. It had begun to snow again, not as heavy as the day before but enough to make the road surface slick and unforgiving.

‘Pubs, clubs,’ said Zach. ‘You know places, art galleries – London. He wanted to go places in London.’

‘Did you show him where to buy the fruit bowl?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know why you’re so interested in that fruit bowl. It’s just a bowl.’

Amazingly, I didn’t tell him it was because I thought it was a magic fruit bowl. It’s the sort of thing that can open one up to ridicule.

‘It’s a police thing,’ I said.

‘I know where he got it,’ he said. ‘But we might have to have breakfast first.’