‘Hmph.’ She asks him his old address, nods as if to affirm her familiarity with it. ‘You been here long?’

‘Seven years.’

‘Six. Came over with my best husband, Donald. He passed over last July.’ And then, her voice softening slightly, she says, ‘Well, anyway, how can I help you? I’m not sure I have much more than what I said in court.’

‘I don’t know. I guess I’m just wondering if there’s anything, anything at all, we might have missed.’

‘Nope. Like I told Mr Flaherty, I have no idea where the painting came from. To be honest, when Mom reminisced about her reporting days she preferred to talk about the time she got locked in an aircraft lavatory with JFK. And, you know, Pop and I weren’t much interested. Believe me, you hear one old reporter’s tales, you’ve heard them all.’

Paul glances around the apartment. When he looks back, her eyes are still on him. She regards him carefully, blows a smoke ring into the still air. ‘Mr McCafferty. Are your clients going to come after me for compensation if the court decides the painting was stolen?’

‘No. They just want the painting.’

Marianne Andrews shakes her head. ‘I bet they do.’ She uncrosses her knees, wincing as if it causes her discomfort. ‘I think this whole case stinks. I don’t like the way my mom’s name is being dragged through the mud. Or Mr Halston’s. He loved that painting.’

Paul looks down at the cat. ‘It is just possible Mr Halston had a good idea of what it was really worth.’

‘With respect, Mr McCafferty, you weren’t there. If you’re trying to imply that I should feel cheated, you’re talking to the wrong woman.’

‘You really don’t care about its value?’

‘I suspect you and I have different definitions of the word “value”.’

The cat looks up at him, its eyes greedy and faintly antagonistic at the same time.

Marianne Andrews stubs out her cigarette. ‘And I feel plain sick about poor Olivia Halston.’

He hesitates, and then he says softly, ‘Yeah. Me too.’

She raises an eyebrow.

He sighs. ‘This case is … tricky.’

‘Not too tricky to chase the poor girl to bankruptcy?’

‘Just doing my job, Ms Andrews.’

‘Yeah. I think Mom heard that phrase a few times too.’

It is said gently, but it brings colour to his cheeks.

She looks at him, for a minute, then suddenly lets out a great hah!, frightening the cat, which leaps off his lap. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sakes. Do you want something a bit stronger? Because I could do with a real drink. I’m sure that sun is somewhere near the yardarm.’ She gets up and walks over to a cocktail cabinet. ‘Bourbon?’

‘Thanks.’

He tells her then, the bourbon in his hand, the accent of his homeland in his ears, his words coming out in fits and starts, as if they had not expected to break the silence. His story starts with a stolen handbag and ends with an all-too-abrupt goodbye outside a courtroom. New parts of it emerge, without his awareness. His unexpected happiness around her, his guilt, this permanent bad temper that seems to have grown around him, like bark. He doesn’t know why he should unburden himself to this woman. He doesn’t know why he expects her, of all people, to understand.

But Marianne Andrews listens, her generous features grimacing in sympathy. ‘Well, that’s some mess you’ve got yourself into, Mr McCafferty.’

‘Yeah. I get that.’

She lights another cigarette, scolds the cat, which is yowling plaintively for food in the open-plan kitchen. ‘Honey, I have no answers for you. Either you’re going to break her heart by taking that painting or she’s going to break yours by losing you your job.’

‘Or we forget the whole thing.’

‘And break both your hearts.’

Her words lay it bare. They sit there in silence. Outside the air is thick with the sound of barely moving traffic.

Paul sips his drink, thinking. ‘Ms Andrews, did your mother keep her notebooks? Her reporting notebooks?’

Marianne Andrews looks up. ‘I did bring them back from Barcelona but I’m afraid I had to throw a lot out. They’d been eaten to nothing by termites. One of the shrunken heads too. Perils of a brief marriage in Florida. Although …’ She stands up, using her long arms for leverage. ‘You’ve made me think of something. I may still have a bunch of her old journals in the hall cupboards.’

‘Journals?’

‘Diaries. Whatever. Oh, I had a crazy idea that someone might want to write her biography one day. She did so many interesting things. Maybe one of my grandchildren. I’m almost sure there’s a box of her cuttings and some journals out there. Let me get the key and we’ll go have a look.’

Paul follows Marianne Andrews out into the communal hallway. Breathing laboriously, she leads him down two flights to where the stairs are no longer carpeted, and a tranche of bicycles lines the walls.

‘Our apartments are pretty small,’ Marianne Andrews says, waiting as Paul pulls open a heavy fire door, ‘so some of us rent spare caretaker’s cupboards. They’re like gold dust. Mr Chua next door offered me four thousand pounds to take over the lease for this one last year. Four thousand! I told him he’d have to treble it, and then some.’

They come to a tall blue door. She checks through her ring of keys, muttering to herself until she finds the one she wants. ‘Here,’ she says, flicking a switch. Inside the dim light bulb reveals a long dark cupboard. One side is lined with metal garage shelves, and the floor is thick with cardboard boxes, piles of books, an old lamp. It smells of old newspapers and jars of beeswax.