‘Because I need a shit.’

I’m at the flat and half-undressed, shedding my clothes as I go and desperate for sleep, when I hear sounds from the study.

I have a study in my apartment. A glorified name for it. When did I last study? I spend my life answering emails. I swing the door open, fast as I can, less to surprise the intruder as to force my own hand; it would be so easy to bottle it and sneak away.

He is sitting at my desk. Dark suit, dark shirt, no tie. Sandy hair. A smoker’s face – a rarity these days. Burst blood vessels in his nose. Kind eyes, and hands like hams. The desk, the floor and every available surface are smothered in papers, scattered folders, spilt plastic wallets, and this is strange, because I don’t remember storing so much paper in here. There’s more paper thrown about this room than I thought I owned.

He’s very confident, whoever the hell he is. He scuds a vast pink hand through the air before him, by way of hello.

‘What are you doing?’

‘You won’t find anything missing.’

‘Who are you?’

He stretches his legs, puts his hands behind his head and flexes the knots out of his back. He wants me to see how big he is. ‘Cobb. Adam Cobb.’

‘You get what you wanted?’

‘There was nothing to get.’

I think about this. Once I’ve got my breath back, it’s not hard to figure out the elements of this. ‘Vaux sent you.’

Cobb smiles, showing even, yellow teeth. ‘Vaux sent me.’

‘He should be more careful about how he goes about threatening people.’

‘Yes?’

‘You’re in a world of shit, mate.’

‘Why? Are you going to do something?’

‘It’s already done.’

Cobb’s smile widens. ‘You mean your cameras?’

I bite my lip.

‘It’s all right. They’re still running. They’re still streaming. Do they talk to the police, or to a private security firm? Nice installation, anyway. Can’t be too careful, nowadays.’

‘Was Amber part of this?’

‘Who?’

‘Amber. Kept me entertained tonight while you’ve been smashing up my flat. Vaux’s girl. One of many, I’d guess.’

Cobb shrugs. ‘I don’t doubt that. You want to sit down? I promise you I’m not going to do anything.’

‘Get out of my house.’

‘In a minute. First, there’s something I have to say.’

‘Out.’

‘Mr Vaux accepts that in the past he was responsible for certain misunderstandings.’

‘What?’

‘He wants you to know that he regrets any upset following certain compromising episodes. I’m referring here to his stay at your father’s hotel. I think we can both agree that these events took place a very long time ago.’

‘Are you his thief or his lawyer?’

‘I’m his private detective.’

‘Tell Vaux I don’t know what he’s talking about.’

‘All that aside, Mr Vaux takes his digital privacy very seriously indeed. You’re presumably aware that his medical records, in particular, are off-limits, and attempting to access them is—’ At this point Cobb runs out of quasi-legal steam. ‘Well, it’s illegal, isn’t it?’

My blood runs a little colder. ‘You want to tell me exactly what I am supposed to have done to deserve this visit?’

Cobb waves the question away. ‘You get the visit. Your university friend gets a string of strongly worded emails. She’s fine. Her job is fine – if she desists. But you do not set your friends digging around in Vaux’s medical files.’

So this is what this is about. Gabby, or Gabby’s graduate student, has snapped a tripwire somewhere in their search. ‘These misunderstandings—’

Cobb stands. ‘You’ll be getting a letter in a couple of days setting out the details of Mr Vaux’s proposed no-blame settlement. He regrets any upset, he says.’

I don’t know what to say to this.

At last Cobb takes pity on me. ‘I assume this has to do with his knob. This is what it usually boils down to.’

His knob. Christ. ‘So I made a mistake.’ Vaux thinks I’m after him for a spot of rough fellatio on the river path. ‘He thinks I’m trying to sue him? I’m not trying to sue him, for crying out loud. Do I look like a goosed secretary?’

But Cobb is losing interest now I’m up to speed. ‘Have your lawyer look over the settlement if you want, but we need your reply and a signed copy of our NDA by noon Monday.’

This is monstrous. ‘He’s paying me?’

‘He’s trying to swat whatever bee in your bonnet made you think you could dig through his personal medical data. Frankly, it’s cheaper to pay you off than have to listen to you. Clear?’

Vaux is afraid of having his dick made a tabloid headline. It doesn’t seem to have entered his head that I am pursuing the mystery of my mother’s death.

The thing is, if Vaux really did kill Mum, how did he manage to get her body into the boot of our car?

‘So are we clear?’

‘You shouldn’t have broken in.’

Cobb smiles. I don’t know what it is about that smile unlocks the rage in me but suddenly I’m lurching forward, fists clenched, furious. ‘You want I show you the trouble you’re in?’

‘Try it.’ He sees me hesitate, smiles – and disappears. Vanishes. One moment he is sitting in my living room. The next moment – nothing.

The cameras I have mounted round my flat – my household insurance policy requires them – will reveal nothing, because there is nothing for them to reveal. Cobb, whoever Cobb was, was never here. I have been talking to the air.

The room has flipped back to normal. It is as clean and tidy as I left it. There are no papers anywhere.

Nothing has been touched.

SEVENTEEN

Midway through Easter break, Michel turned up at the hotel to help me carry my bags over to Sand Lane.

I had been living alone since school broke up. Dad was already off working for his private clinic. How typical of Dad that, having invented a way for blind servicemen to see, and all but set up a clinic in his home, he should now be doing the same work, at the other end of the country, at some other person’s beck and call, for a pittance.

The sale of the hotel was due to go through any day. How this could even be legal baffled me. It meant that the business, the property, the chattels, everything must have been made out in my father’s sole name. Yet it had been Sara’s family money that had paid for the place. Perhaps Dad realised from the very beginning that Mum was not to be trusted with the family’s finances. And, looking at this the other way, perhaps Sara had been right all along about Dad’s oppression of her, and his will to control.

How and when Dad made his arrangements with Poppy, I never knew. The only time I remember him and Poppy ever meeting was when we ran into her in the supermarket, a few days after Sara’s disappearance became public knowledge.

She came up to us at the checkout and, in heavy tones, she had said that if ever there was anything she could do for us, we had only to ask. She’d never shown the slightest interest in us before. ‘Now call me,’ she said.

Now we had this gimcrack arrangement whereby I would stay with Poppy and Michel until the end of the school year. Picture Michel and me, studying for our exams, elbow to elbow in those cupboard-sized rooms, deep in the heart of that housing estate I could not stand. What Poppy made of this arrangement – why she ever suggested it – is a mystery I have never been able to fathom.

Poppy’s front garden was even more doll-like than its neighbours. Nothing had been permitted to grow above waist height. It was the garden of someone grown suspicious of life’s potential. The back garden was more or less a mirror image of the front: dwarf conifers and heathers, and an anaemic-yellow lawn so close-mown, so fine-bladed, you could see the earth beneath.

The back door was open. The kitchen smelled of detergent. Poppy sat reading a library book – a collection of humorous newspaper columns. She saved her place with a tasselled plastic bookmark and stood to greet me. ‘I’ll show you the house.’ She couldn’t have freighted the process with more dignity if she’d been leading me around a stately home.