They were eating an early lunch in an Indian restaurant on Tottenham Lane. There was a special lunchtime businessmen’s buffet: large silver salvers with domed covers, blue flames licking beneath each. But they were just watching their food, rearranging it with their forks; they weren’t really eating. They simply needed to be out of the flat.

Reeve had told Fliss Hornby about Jim’s death. He’d meant to keep it simple, lying where necessary, but he found the whole story gushing out of him, a taste of bile at the back of his throat, like he’d been puking.

She was a good listener. She had listened through her tears and got up only once-to fetch a box of tissues from the bedroom. Then it had been her turn to talk, and she told Reeve how she’d met up with Jim and a load of other journalists one night in Whitehall. She’d told him that things weren’t going well with her, that her boyfriend had become her ex-boyfriend and had threatened her with violence.

“I mean,” she told Gordon, “I can look after myself-”

“I’ve noticed.”

“But it was more the atmosphere. It was disrupting my work. Jim said he was going to the States for a month, and suggested I look after his flat. Lance might get bored knocking on the door of an empty flat in Camden. And in the meantime, I could get my head together.”

“Lance, that’s the boyfriend?”

“Ex-boyfriend. Christ, boyfriend-he’s in his forties.”

Fliss Hornby on the other hand was in her late twenties. She’d been married some time in her past, but didn’t talk about it. Everyone was allowed one mistake. It was just that she kept making the one mistake time after time.

They’d demolished a bottle of white wine in the restaurant. Or Fliss had; Reeve had had just the one glass, plus lots of iced water.

She took a deep breath, stretching her neck to one side and then the other, her eyes closed. Then she settled back in her chair and opened her eyes again.

“So what are you going to do?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. I was planning to search the flat.”

“Good idea. Jim filled the hall cupboard with all his stuff, plus there are a couple of suitcases under the bed.” She saw the look on his face. “Would you like me to do it?”

Reeve shook his head. “He didn’t tell you why he was going to the States?”

“He was always a bit hush-hush about his stories, especially in their early stages. Didn’t want anyone nicking his ideas. He had a point. Journalists don’t have friends-you’re either a source or a competitor.”

“I’m a source?”

She shrugged. “If there’s a story…”

Reeve nodded. “Jim would like that. He’d want the story finished.”

“Always supposing we can start it. No files, no notes…”

“Maybe in the flat.”

She poured the last of the wine down her throat. “Then what are we waiting for?”

Reeve tried to imagine anyone threatening Fliss Hornby. He imagined himself hurting the threatener. It wasn’t difficult. He knew pressure points, angles of twist, agonies waiting to be explored. He could fillet a man like a chef with a Dover sole. He could have them repeat the Lord’s Prayer backwards while eating sand and gravel. He could break a man.

These were thoughts the psychiatrist had warned him about. Mostly, they came after he’d been drinking. But he hadn’t been drinking, and yet he was still thinking them.

More than that, he was enjoying them, relishing the possibility of pain-someone else’s; maybe even his own. Sensations made you feel alive. He was probably never more alive than when consumed by fear and flight at the end of Operation Stalwart. Never more alive than when so nearly dead.

He telephoned Joan from the flat to let her know what was happening. Fliss Hornby was pulling stuff out of the hall cupboard, laying it along the floorboards so it could be gone through methodically. Reeve watched her through the open door of the living room. Joan said that Allan was missing his dad. She told him there had been potential clients, two of them on two separate occasions. He’d already had her cancel this weekend’s course.

“Phone calls?” he asked.

“No, these were personal callers.”

“I mean have there been any phone calls?”

“None I couldn’t deal with.”

“Okay.”

“You sound tense.”

He had yet to tell Joan what he’d just sat and told a complete stranger. “Well, you know, I’ve got all his things to sort through…”

“I can come down there, you know.”

“No, you stay there with Allan. I’ll be home soon.”

“Promise?”

“I promise. Bye, Joan.”

By the time he got through to the hall, the cupboard was half empty.

“You start looking through that lot,” Fliss said, “while I haul the rest out.”

“Sure,” Reeve agreed. Then: “Shouldn’t you be at work or something?”

She smiled. “Maybe I am at work.”

An hour later, they’d been through the contents of the cupboard and had found nothing relevant. Fliss Hornby had burst into tears just the once. Reeve had thought it best to ignore her. Besides, his mind was on his work. They drank herbal tea and then went into the bedroom. At some point, Reeve couldn’t work out when, Fliss had tidied the room. When he’d first glanced into it, the bed had been strewn with clothes, the floor with books and magazines. Now everything had been hidden.

She pulled two suitcases out from beneath the bed and lifted the first one onto the bed. It wasn’t locked. There were clothes inside. Reeve recognized some of them: a gaudy striped shirt, a couple of ties, a Scotland rugby shirt, saggy, the way all rugby shirts seem to go after the very first wash. The second case contained paperwork.

They spent a lot of time flicking through files, bundles of paper-clipped news cuttings, an old-fashioned card index. Then Fliss found half a dozen computer disks, and waved them at Reeve.

“I may be able to read these here.”

Her PC was set up on the desk in the living room. Reeve studied the bookshelves while she booted up.

“These all yours?” he asked.

“No, most of them are Jim’s. I didn’t bring much from my flat, just stuff I didn’t want burgled.”

There were a couple of philosophy books. Reeve smiled, picking one out. David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. He flicked through, and found a couple of lines had been underlined on one page. He knew which lines they’d be, but read them anyway.

A man, brought to the brink of a precipice, cannot look down without trembling.

He’d spouted philosophy at Jim during a couple of their meetings. He’d quoted Hume at him, this very passage, comparing it with Nietzsche: “If you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” More melodramatic than Hume, probably less factual-but much more powerful. Jim had been listening. He’d appeared bored, but all the time he’d been listening, and he’d even bought a couple of the books. More than that, he’d read them.

Fliss Hornby was sliding the first disk home. It contained correspondence. They read through some of the letters.

“This feels weird,” she said at one point. “I mean, I’m not sure we should be doing this. It’s almost like desecration.”

The other disks dealt with stories Jim Reeve had been working on at one time or another. Reeve was glad Fliss was there; she saved him time.

“Giles used that one,” she said of one story. “This one I think turned up unattributed in Private Eye or Time Out. This one I haven’t come across before, but it looks like he hit a dead end with it.”

“We’re looking for a chemical company, Co-World Chemicals, headquarters in San Diego.”

“I know, you told me.” She sounded impatient. She tried another disk. It was labeled 1993 and proved to be all old stuff. The other disks were no more helpful.

“Nothing current,” she said. “He probably took the current disks with him along with his laptop.”